Death of the dinner shows/Sporting Clubs

[gasman]

I was reading Graham Houston's final editorial during his reign as Boxing News editor and it was interesting to note that at time of him writing (i.e. 1977) that the climate in British boxing was an influx of dinner shows and sporting clubs, to the comparative detriment of general small hall shows.

Houston wrote that it had be a sad reality that small hall shows were declining as they were uneconomical and the sporting club concept looked like it was there for the foreseeable future etc.

Now, I have been reading bits and pieces about these sporting clubs over the years. i.e. in Micky Duff's book he mentions him setting up his Sporting Club and I think the concept might have came for the States. However, I have a couple of questions:

- How did the Sporting Clubs work - where they members clubs - where members paid a monthly or annual fee etc or how did the funding model work?

- When did the decline of the Sporting Clubs occur and why did it die off?

[JimStone]

Times have changed. Simple as that. There were a lot more successful small to medium sized local businesses still in private ownership back then. The owner of the local garage/pub/supermarket/builders merchant/bookmakers/hotel and so on would have a lot of disposable income and would socialise with others in the same boat. That's not the case any more. Most of the business types I mentioned are subsidiary companies of multinationals and what have you and the people running each branch are making enough to feed their families and pay their rent/mortgage but they've not got a lot left after that.

[gasman]

I cant buy that there are less small businesses etc these days, 99% of businesses are small or medium sized, there has to be more to it than that. Yes, there was a recession at the end of the 70s and I'm sure that had some effect, but it also affects disposable income of paying public to go to say, a small hall show, just like a business that pays for a Sporting Club membership.

It seemed to have went to being a dominant model of boxing promotion to virtually non-existant a few years later.

[expe]

People probably realised that they aren't value for money, a 3 course meal and 3 six round fights for £50+ isn't worth it.

[bluenoseshf]

I cant really comment on the decline in Dinner shows but in my opinion they are harmful to the sport are do nothing but line the pockets of the promoter.

Tommy Gilmour runs them up in Scotland and its practically the only type of show he runs these days. They do nothing for his boxers profile as they are boxing in front of the same hundred or so people, many that have there tickets paid for by their company.

My cousin is promoted by Gilmour and the last time he fought on a Gilmour show that wasnt a dinner show was 2006. His last fight was £110 for a three fight bill which i am not willing to pay.

[lillywhite14]

People probably realised that they aren't value for money, a 3 course meal and 3 six round fights for £50+ isn't worth it.

That's a bargain! A half decent three course meal alone is £40 a head these days.

[Parson Cross]

Jesus Expe - what do you expect ? Someone to pay you to attend ?
Some people.

[expe]

Jesus Expe - what do you expect ? Someone to pay you to attend ?
Some people.

The post above said that Tommy Gilmour's last dinner show was £110 a ticket, for a 3 course meal and 3 fights, how's that value for money? Tickets for the average small hall show start at £30 and they normally have more than 3 fights on, yes you get the food on top, but I think at Gilmour's you have to wear a suit, so there's suit hire to be taken into account as well and the value isn't there. People don't have a lot of disposable income right now and to ask £110 for 3 fights and a meal isn't worth it, for £110 you can go on holiday, look at it another way, tickets for Hall-Malinga, with a full undercard, started at £30 and there's tickets for £35 for Hall-Ward next month, again with a full undercard, those are world title fights, compare them to what the dinner shows offer and which would you choose to spend your money on?

[Ketchel_2008]

Got to agree partly with Aden, businesses don't spend like they used to on socialising.
Also people do business differently, look at comedians like Chubby brown and Bernard manning they were filling decent sized venues on weekdays up north with businesses entertaining clients from down south who were staying over for the night, this doesn't happen anymore wining & dining business clients is now frowned upon. Loads of amateur shows when I was a kid was filled with businesses having regular tables, now the am shows are filled with parents and families, not good for sponsorships and benefactors for local clubs.

[orbtastic]

Lol, when was the last time anyone sat up in the rafters for a dinner show.

[mickey1975]

Got to agree partly with Aden, businesses don't spend like they used to on socialising.
Also people do business differently, look at comedians like Chubby brown and Bernard manning they were filling decent sized venues on weekdays up north with businesses entertaining clients from down south who were staying over for the night, this doesn't happen anymore wining & dining business clients is now frowned upon. Loads of amateur shows when I was a kid was filled with businesses having regular tables, now the am shows are filled with parents and families, not good for sponsorships and benefactors for local clubs.

Chubby is doing a decent sized venue pro boxing dinner in Leeds soon!

[Bricks]

I was reading Graham Houston's final editorial during his reign as Boxing News editor and it was interesting to note that at time of him writing (i.e. 1977) that the climate in British boxing was an influx of dinner shows and sporting clubs, to the comparative detriment of general small hall shows.

Houston wrote that it had be a sad reality that small hall shows were declining as they were uneconomical and the sporting club concept looked like it was there for the foreseeable future etc.

Now, I have been reading bits and pieces about these sporting clubs over the years. i.e. in Micky Duff's book he mentions him setting up his Sporting Club and I think the concept might have came for the States. However, I have a couple of questions:

- How did the Sporting Clubs work - where they members clubs - where members paid a monthly or annual fee etc or how did the funding model work?

- When did the decline of the Sporting Clubs occur and why did it die off?

The smell of sweaty boxers and spit buckets and fat working class men and dinner didn't mix.I heard a ring second farted in someone's fillet mignon and that was the death knell

[bennie]

The old Sporting clubs were really a place for the very rich and often the very famous to get together with their equally illustrious mates to have a laugh and a chat over a great meal and great vino before sitting back to watch the less wealthy get stuck into eachother. Nevertheless, there were more boxing fans back then, even among the rich, and there was a strict code of conduct during the boxing (sometimes a ban of silence). The fighters were paid well. Ken Buchanan famously learned his trade in these clubs, which sometimes hosted British and even European title fights.
A popular theme among sporting clubs in the 1970s was to hold heavyweight competitions, ala the Prizefighter format, in a futile attempt to unearth a heavyweight star. I am not sure how the clubs were funded but I once saw Michael Caine and Dennis Waterman seated on one table together and an entire Aussie cricket team on two or three tables, all of them drinking and puffing away the DAY BEFORE a test match, which separates cricket from boxing all right. I assume sporting clubs were popular with the establishment and their guests, and you can throw in any sporting 'names' who fancied a good night out away from the rabble.

[gasman]

The old Sporting clubs were really a place for the very rich and often the very famous to get together with their equally illustrious mates to have a laugh and a chat over a great meal and great vino before sitting back to watch the less wealthy get stuck into eachother. Nevertheless, there were more boxing fans back then, even among the rich, and there was a strict code of conduct during the boxing (sometimes a ban of silence). The fighters were paid well. Ken Buchanan famously learned his trade in these clubs, which sometimes hosted British and even European title fights.
A popular theme among sporting clubs in the 1970s was to hold heavyweight competitions, ala the Prizefighter format, in a futile attempt to unearth a heavyweight star. I am not sure how the clubs were funded but I once saw Michael Caine and Dennis Waterman seated on one table together and an entire Aussie cricket team on two or three tables, all of them drinking and puffing away the DAY BEFORE a test match, which separates cricket from boxing all right. I assume sporting clubs were popular with the establishment and their guests, and you can throw in any sporting 'names' who fancied a good night out away from the rabble.

Thanks Bennie that is interesting. Yeah, I was reading about that old Prizefighter-style format, Jack Solomans did an Open Heavyweight Contest for novice heavyweights which was basically the undercard. I have read that Sport Clubs (some of them at least) were membership based. But, from what I learned both small hall promoters and the big promoters ran Sporting Clubs in their heyday, I am curious to know more about how they rolled these out, were they all membership based and how did they get these off the ground.

[Graham Houston]

It seemed to me that the beginning of the sporting clubs and their proliferation, starting in the late 1960s, was a business-based thing. These clubs had members who would pay a yearly membership fee. Businessmen/small-business owners/entrepreneurs of various stripe could entertain clients by booking a table for the evening's boxing. I am assuming that this could be tax deductible as a legitimate expense. For the boxing promoters, income for a year was pretty much guaranteed -- they didn't have to worry about having a full house at a small-hall show.

The clubs, certainly the bigger ones, were male-only, and black-tie (dinner jacket) was compulsory. There would be a pre-fight dinner of course (hence the term "dinner shows"), which was quite high-end dining at the bigger (posher) sporting clubs. From memory I believe a comedian would provide entertainment before the boxing started, at least at the Anglo-American Sporting Club and the World Sporting Club, both based at hotels in Park Lane in London's West End, and they would tell quite blue jokes. So it was all a bit of a "lads' night out" type of thing except that the "lads" were very well off financially and often middle-aged.

These were quite late-night affairs. After the meal and the comedian, boxing wouldn't start till maybe 9:30, 10 PM.

Members of the press covering these shows had to wear black tie, otherwise they were refused admission. True.

Mickey Duff started it all with the Anglo-American Sporting Club at the London Hilton. His opening show was outstanding, a fading but still useful Sugar Ray Robinson topping the bill against a London-based Nigerian fighter, Johnny Angel, with an excellent "trade fight" between the Liverpool welterweight Brian McCaffrey and the stylish West Ham boxer Johnny Kramer as the chief supporting fight.

Jack Solomons was no longer a major player in British boxing but he was still very much a presence and he formed the World Sporting Club, and his shows were held at the Grosvenor House hotel, Park Lane. Solomons put on some tremendous shows for his club's patrons. There would be a main event and some supporting bouts. Solomons' shows featured fights such as Chris Finnegan vs Eddie Avoth for the British light-heavy title, Young McCormack against Avoth in a British title bout, former world flyweight champion Walter McGowan, then boxing as a bantam, against a the French featherweight champion, Michel Houdeau, a British featherweight title fight between Evan Armstrong and Jimmy Revie, quite an amazing scheduled 15-round fight when the classy southpaw Londoner Revie piled up points for round after round but faded under Scot Armstrong's relentless pressure, an exhausted Revie being knocked out in the 12th. ... Solomons built up the Coventry-Irish heavyweight Danny McAlinden with a series of fights at the World Sporting Club (including a heavyweight competition, as Bennie pointed out). McAlinden was one fight away from a huge British domestic showdown with Joe Bugner, the date scheduled for Earls Court Arena, but Danny astonishingly lost in three rounds to unexceptional U.S. heavyweight Morris Jackson in a supposed tune-up fight at the WSC and the Bugner fight was scrapped -- Mickey Duff brought in Joe Frazier as McAlinden's replacement. Not a bad substitute.

Duff and his group put on some tremendous fights at the AASC, bouts such as Ken Buchanan vs Maurice Cullen for the British lightweight title; Jose Legra vs Jimmy Revie for the European featherweight title; Kevin Finnegan vs Bunny Sterling for the British middleweight title. The Olympic gold medallist Chris Finnegan made his pro debut at the AASC.

There was the St. Andrew's Sporting Club in Glasgow, and what a great main event they had to launch their club: Ken Buchanan vs Jim Watt, 15 rounds for the British lightweight title.

There was the Midlands Sporting Club, at an upscale hotel in Solihull (then, maybe still now, the most affluent of the Birmingham suburbs), and they, too, put on some cracking main events, British title fights included. The press were invited to sit down to the meal before the boxing at the Midlands Sporting Club; there was a special press table set up. The gentleman who ran the club, Edgar Hiley, was an old-school British type, a stickler for protocol and what then in Britain we called "manners" -- for instance, when the late photographer Roy Chaplin donned his cap at the conclusion of one of the Midlands Sporting Club shows, prior to exiting the hotel, Edgar Hiley snapped at him: "Take your hat off -- hats are NOT worn indoors." Roy took off the cap, sharpish. (This really is a different era we're talking about.)

There was the Anglo-American Sporting Club's Manchester arm, the Premier Ring Sporting Club (headquartered at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington and as I recall was perhaps the only club where black tie was not compulsory although members were expected to attend in suit and tie); The Great International Sporting Club in Nottingham -- these are the ones that stand out in my mind.

The National Sporting Club (headquartered at the Cafe Royal in London's West End) had been going for years, of course, and Ken Buchanan was basically built up as a world-class fighter at the NSC, as Bennie noted.

The clubs gradually faded off the scene. Why? Changing times, perhaps. Maybe members gradually dropped out -- businesses not doing as well, perhaps. A case of the "novelty" wearing off? I don't know the answer. I suppose a catch-all answer would be that, as with so many things in life, the clubs "had their day".

Sorry not to have responded sooner; I wanted to wait for a quiet moment to reply in some detail.

Hope this helps.

[orbtastic]

What Bennie says is correct, about the bouts being conducted largely in silence? That's my recollection of reading about them?

I remember an old Silent Witness episode being centred around a sporting club evening/fight.

I have been to some shows where it was solely table seating at ringside and a meal served etc but there was no dress code. My brother used to be invited to them regularly down South, one of his suppliers was the ubiquitous Rainham Steel. With regards to their decline, I'd imagine the whole transparency about "gifts" and "entertainment" from clients/suppliers, expenses and bribery act has had some impact on it.

[Graham Houston]

What Bennie says is correct, about the bouts being conducted largely in silence? That's my recollection of reading about them?

I remember an old Silent Witness episode being centred around a sporting club evening/fight.

I have been to some shows where it was solely table seating at ringside and a meal served etc but there was no dress code. My brother used to be invited to them regularly down South, one of his suppliers was the ubiquitous Rainham Steel. With regards to their decline, I'd imagine the whole transparency about "gifts" and "entertainment" from clients/suppliers, expenses and bribery act has had some impact on it.

Only the National Sporting Club had the "silence" rule, in keeping with the NSC's tradition. (In the really old days, the referee would be seated outside the ring at the NSC and noise from spectators would make it difficult for the boxers to hear the referee's instructions.) Although in more modern times the referee would, of course, be the third man in the ring, the NSC stuck to the silence rule, although members were allowed to applaud at a round's conclusion. The NSC matchmaker, a rather dour Welshman named Les Roberts, made some outstanding main events. Ken Buchanan against a very good Puerto Rican fighter, Frankie Narvaez; Howard Winstone vs John O'Brien for the British featherweight title; two very tough and exciting bouts between Johnny Kramer and Peter McLaren for the Southern Area welter title come quickly to mind. Members would naturally get caught up in the tension and drama, but every time there was a murmur of reaction to a particularly exciting moment in the fights the MC at ringside would intone through his microphone: "Silence, gentlemen -- please!!"

[orbtastic]

Does sound rather bizarre, doesn't it? Slightly archaic, even.

[gasman]

Thank you for those fascinating insights, Graham, I had crossed my fingers that you would see this thread and respond.
I have been trawling through volumes of old 1970s Boxing News and it is interesting to, not only learn more about the boxers, fights and cards - but the way shows were run in those days.

I suppose that variation of the Sporting Club, the formality, black tie etc. probably had its day. I wonder if a spin-off of that model could ever be successfully adopted i.e. a membership based Sporting Club, but with a different market niche? I know that there are occasional dinner shows etc for charity and a lot of amateur clubs run dinner shows etc, but a reincarnation of the dinner show/sporting club membership concept in pro boxing?

I was also reading about the adoption of this concept in Northern Ireland, particularly Albert Uprichard's - Belmont Sporting Club (at the Belmont Hotel in Banbridge), and promoter Phil McLaughlin's (European Sporting Club - I think) in Belfast. McLaughlin booked 6 dates at the Europa Hotel in Belfast, and from what I understand from a Boxing News editiorial (might have been Harry Mullen's editorial era?) that McLaughlin's first Europa show was a financial disaster - I am not sure if he continued much longer with the Sporting Club concept?

[HellraiserBoxing]

I've been running Mayfair Sporting Club for coming up to 10 years. The shows are good fun & generally well attended. in the past we've had some big names among our guests & regulars from the boxing world & general TV & sport media. We were very busy with shows leading up to the credit crunch but its been tough since then. The past 12 months however has shown some promising signs and I have done a deal with a major 5 star Mayfair hotel to run regular shows again starting in October.

Anyone wanting to attend one of our events can find out more here www.mayfairsportingclub.com

All the best, Mickey Helliet.