World heavyweight champion behind the bar @ your local pub!

[Alex]

By Miles Templeton

Seen Mike Tyson down your local recently? At first glance this might seem like a ridiculous concept. An ex-world heavyweight champion in an English pub? In 1926 one of Tyson’s predecessors, a man from Canada, didn’t just visit an English pub, he was the landlord!

Tommy Burns held the world heavyweight for two years. After losing to Jack Johnson in Sydney on Boxing Day 1908 he retired a wealthy man, free to indulge in his interests. He dabbled as a boxing promoter in more than a few countries and was always on the look-out for a budding heavyweight champion. He maybe thought he had found one in Luther McCarty. But poor Luther died, aged 21, in a contest against Arthur Pelkey at Calgary in 1913. Tommy Burns was the unfortunate promoter. In 1920 Tommy was tempted into his final comeback in a contest with Joe Beckett, the British heavyweight champion, at Olympia, London. After losing in seven rounds Tommy hung up his gloves for good.

Six years later and Tommy is the landlord of the Forth Hotel on Pink Lane in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I grew up in this city, and Pink Lane, in the 60s and 70s, was notorious as Newcastle’s red-light district and the pub was dodgy then to say the least. Today the area has been greatly improved and the Forth Hotel is still there. I always have a pint in the place when I return, mainly because of the link the pub has to boxing’s heritage, and also because it is a great little boozer. There is nothing in the pub today to alert the casual visitor to the fact that someone so famous used to run the place. I think this is a shame.

So what on earth was Tommy doing running a pub, off the beaten track, in the industrial North? I have never quite got to the bottom of this but the question has long fascinated me. I do know that Tommy invested some of his ring earnings in property and as he had strong connections to the United Kingdom, it is not surprising that he sought to expand his property empire here. I suspect that he was not the man to be seen behind the bar every day, pulling pints, but more likely an owner who put in an occasional appearance on the proper side of the bar, hob-nobbing with the clientele.

Continue reading:

http://blog.boxinghistory.org.uk/2011/1 ... d-bar.html

[John Galt]

A lot of ex-champs are seen in worse places than their own bar. A lot of them are in jail, are drug addicts, heavy drinkers, etc. If Tommy Burns was tending bar in his own place, he was doing okay. Lots of ex-champs have done worse.