Buck Crouse' record correction
Buck Crouse' record correction
I had always been curious about Crouse' 2 losses to Mike McTigue in 1921. Crouse was on the downside of his career but in my opinion McTigue is vastly overrated when one really starts looking at the details of his fights. Stylistically I felt it was odd that Crouse would lose to McTigue in such a way. As such, I thought it was interesting when researching my book on Greb that I came across an account of the first Crouse-McTigue bout on Oct. 21, 1921 in a Pittsburgh paper accompanied by a story whereby Crouse denied that he had fought McTigue, was upset that his name was being used, and insisted that he had been home with his family in Pittsburgh on the night in question. A similar story appeared the day after the rematch between McTigue and Crouse held on Nov. 2, 1921 (both fights were staged in Montreal). I filed this away as an interesting side note with intent to come back and follow up on it as soon as I started getting close to the end of my book. Well, Ive researched both the Montreal Gazette and Montreal Star. The Gazette wasnt much help as its boxing coverage is pretty sparce. But sure enough about a week after the first fight the story appeared that Buck Crouse had denied having fought McTigue. The manager of the man that claimed to be Crouse insisted that his fighter had fought McTigue and was indeed the original Pittsburgh Crouse. The paper assured readers that it would get to the bottom of the story and a day or two later printed a story that the Crouse who had fought McTigue was NOT the Buck Crouse from Pittsburgh who had been a very talented middleweight contender of the 1910's. He was indeed "Young" Buck Crouse of Philadelphia who had dropped the title "Young" when the original Buck Crouse of Pittsburgh had announced his retirement. So there you have it. Buck Crouse of Pittsburgh was never knocked out by Mike McTigue.
