Llew Edwards Newspaper Series About His Career

[Chuck1052]

There was a fine autobiographical account about Llew Edwards' boxing career. Edwards' description about fighting in the United States during 1920 was particularly interesting. Before going to the United States, Edwards had quite a bit of success while fighting in 20-round bouts in Australia for a number of years.

Edwards found that American 10-round bouts were fought at a torrid pace compared to what he saw and experienced in Australian 20-round bouts. The first fighter that Edwards fought in the United States was Richie Mitchell, a top lightweight of the time, in a scheduled ten-round bout in Mitchell's hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, getting stopped in the seventh round. In his next four American bouts, Edwards did well. While fighting Clonie Tait in his sixth and final bout in the United States, Edwards was knocked down eleven times before his manager threw in the towel during the second round.

By the time of his first bout in the United States, Edwards felt that he was on the downside of his career, something which he had withheld from his manager. He also would have liked to get more acclimated to the fast pace of American 10-round bouts. While in the United States, Edwards saw a number of bouts, including Jack Dempsey vs. Billy Miske with the world heavyweight title at stake and Harry Greb vs. a fighter that Edwards knew in Australia, Chuck Wiggins. Edwards concluded that the United States was the place for a boxer to be during the early 1920s because of the huge gate receipts and fighters' purses. Remember that Edwards was in the United States a year before the bout between Dempsey and Georges Carpentier took place, which meant that the gates and purses would increase dramatically in the United States after Edwards left.

- Chuck Johnston

[Tinnie]

Your interest in our BOTP is a breath of fresh air Chuck and being from the States you've been able to provide some interesting points of view, especially in regards to some American opponents.

Those articles have some good yarns, I especially liked his stories of the early days in Wales with Britton and Wilde. I was transcribing them on another forum a couple of years ago, i never got round to finishing them though.

[Chuck1052]

Tinnie, I think that other website is where I found the autobiographical articles about Llew Edwards. If you did post the articles on that website, thank you very much for doing it. I thought that he was Australian when I first learned that he came to the United States from Australia.

By the way, I think it would have been better for Edwards if he had fought some lesser fighters in scheduled 10-round bouts in the U.S. before facing a top fighter like Richie Mitchell. Two California 4-round fighters, Oakland Jimmy Duffy and Bert Colima made a similar mistake by going back East to face good fighters in bouts scheduled for ten rounds or more with some bad results. But another California 4-round fighter, Dave Shade, got his first experience in longer bouts in the Northwest, mostly against fighters who were at the journeyman or club fighter level with the exception of the reigning world welterweight champion, Jack Britton. Of course, Shade went on to have a terrific career.

The Trove has one terrific collection of newspapers in digital form. Needless to say I learned quite a bit about fighters from Australia and elsewhere, including the United States. Sam McVea, the great black American heavyweight, has been of interest to me since I found out that he started in his career while residing in Oxnard, California, which is located near the my hometown, Ventura. Did you know that McVea left Australia to travel to Europe on a North German Lloyd Line ship, Zeiten, on July 12. 1914, according to one source? Meanwhile, World War I began on July 28, 1914 while the Zeiten was still traveling to Asian ports. The Zeiten had to dodge British ships and travel to neutral ports, which took quite a long time before arriving in Madagascar, which was controlled by Portugal, a neutral country at the time. Needless to say, it was a long and trying ordeal for McVea.

- Chuck Johnston

[hofguy]

Chuck, would the Zelten have gone to Mozambique, which was a Portugese colony, & not Madagascar, which was French, & the enemy. The passengers from the Zelten eventually arrived in Capetown.

[Chuck1052]

Chuck, would the Zelten have gone to Mozambique, which was a Portugese colony, & not Madagascar, which was French, & the enemy. The passengers from the Zelten eventually arrived in Capetown.

hofguy- You are right. Thanks for pointing out the mistake. It was Mozambique, not Madagascar. By the way, it was in Melbourne that Sam McVea boarded the Zeiten, which appears to have had make a previous stop in Sydney on the voyage. Based on such information, it would seem logical that the Zeiten went the southern part of Australia in order to travel to the west. Instead of boarding the Zeiten, McVea undoubtedly wished he boarded on a ship traveling to the western part of the United States as time went on.

- Chuck Johnston

[Chuck1052]

I made another mistake on this thread. Llew Edwards had five bouts in the United States, not six. After his first bout in the United States in which he was stopped by one of the top lightweights at the time, Richie Mitchell, Edwards went to the United Kingdom for a bout before coming back to the U.S. for four more bouts.

- Chuck Johnston