raylawpc wrote:Of course there was more than one Griffin fight. They fought a four-rounder in 1901 when Jeffries was champion. I think that must have been the newspaper article you read. They first fight was a private bout for bets, and was not reported in any newspaper of which I am aware. I sent three days in the UCLA library looking for a report of the fight in the LA newspapers, and didn't find one.
Yeah i forgot about the second Griffin fight. I was actually talking about a third one.
I am pretty sure i found a brief one line mention in one of the papers (which was about the date of teh one listed in CBZ), but cant seem to find it again at the moment. If i did it would have been online. I will try to look properly when i get the time.
In any case, you have probably seen this link and it is not recent and said by Jeffries, so i am sure you wont trust it
but it is interesting that jeffries states that he was only 17 when he fought Griffin. You should note that this is inconsistent with any other date given at boxrec or CBZ for the Griffin fight. Also interesting that 10 or so rounds he speaks of is a little shorter than what is reported, although not necessarilly I suppose, depending on the accuracy of the or so.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article ... rchLimits=
Griffin made the statement in the Oakland newspaper sometime around 1901. I have the article, and the next time I come across it, I will post it.
okay, thanks.
The documentary evidence indicates Fitz had about 100 fights.
Okay, this is fair enough, but you didnt answer the question i asked about how many unrecorded fights you think that Fitz had in NZ and at Foleys gym.
I don't think about the Slade fight because I don't think it happened.[/quote]
You seem to dismiss a first hand eyewitness account (Fitz) very easily. I am not sure what you base this on (other than Adams very well written and researched book).
But, here is my summary of the situation as i see it (99.9 percent accurate as i am going off memory). The story first started when Fitzsimmons went to the USA and he was asked of his early career. I am pretty sure it was first mentioned after he won the world Title from Dempsey. This would make sense since this is when his early career became of interest to anyone (pro debuts mean nothing).
The story is that Fitz won the NZ lightweight title in a tournament in Timaru held by Jem Mace in 1880. We know for a fact that Jem Mace held such a title in 1881. We also know that Fitz says that his debut was about a year earlier than this. When he won the title and defeated Herbert Slade. Slade was on the scene at this time, in that he was placed in 3rd place in the NZ shotput championships in the near vicinity and also he was advertised in a few wrestling spots. Mace however is not readilly trackable in NZ.
Mace at the time in 1880 was living in Australia. Mace was in the paper pretty much every day. In 1880 he had owned a pub and also had a highly publicised case of being sued for failing to marry a lady he promised to marry. He also sold this pub and went to Adelaide on a short tour. There are only a couple of months here or there in 1880 or early 1881 where this tour could have possibly taken place. The local Timaru newspapers can be searched online and make no mention of the 1880 tour. They do mention the 1881 tour. This leads one to the assumption that the fight did not take place and as i understand is the main reason why Pollack and others like yourself dont believe the bout took place. But it certainly does seem strange (to me at least) as to why Fitz would actually make this up, if it wasnt true. If he wanted to lie about facing Slade, why not just use 1881 which would have been just as impressive and could never have been proved wrong. Rather than invent an 1880 Jem Mace tournament when anyone could have simply said, you are lying, just to make a name for themself. So a little more digging is required. A further search of Timaru newspapers, shows that there is actually no mention whatsoever of any boxing reports in 1880. So maybe it might not be so unbelievable for Jem Mace's tournament not to get any press coverage, because it is accepted that there was at least some boxing presence in the town. A further newspaper in 1880 shows that Jem Mace was in Melbourne and appearing on board a international travelling ship in 1880. No evidence as yet as to whether he travelled anywhere on this, but he was appearing on it. And likewise, in 1880, There is also evidence that a Cockburn, Mace and Family were travelling in New Zealand in 1880 as they sailed from the north island to Wellington in 1880 (at a time when conveniently, Jem Mace went quiet and wasnt mentioned in the Australian papers). Cockburn was a known companion of Mace and is known to have gone on tour with mace for certain, at a later date. My searches show that there is only one known Mace family (it is possible admittedly that there could be more), that was living in NZ at the time. This family originally moved to New Zealand on the north island, but one member of the family is known to have moved to Wellington, so it is possible that this was them, although i dont think it very likely to be honest.
If Mace and Coburn was in NZ at this time, then i think it almost certain that Fitz' story take place. You also need to consider that Mace was like a human headline machine and would do anything to attract publicity and therefore money. At the time that this story surfaced in papers (and at other times), Mace was doing his on tour in the usa. It seems certain he would have read this, and if it wasnt true, you would think that he would call Fitz on it and use it as a marketing tool to increase publicity for his tour. Particularly when you consider that he generally used any means to get publicity. In fact, he is reported to have told John L Sullivan not to worry about the names he is calling him and the things he is saying in the paper about him, because he is just trying to earn a living for himself. If Mace had a prime chance to call a world champion a liar and drum up some publicity, he would have.
So all in all, we have the following:
1. Consistent statements from the Man who was there - Fitz.
2. No denials from the promoter or man who is beaten even thought he promoter would love the publicity.
3. A promoter who lives in a different country and who is in the paper every single day(or at worst week/couple of weeks) he is in that country in the previous years leading up to the alleged tour, yet miraculously disappears from that coverage for a few key spots. And even more miraculously there is a person with the same sir name (a rare sir name in nz), with another who has been linked to Jem Mace travelling to the South island of NZ not far at all away from where the tournament/fight was said to have taken place.
I dont see how you can possibly say with any certainty that the event didnt take place. The best anyone can do is a hunch that Fitz might have been lying. Sounds a bit far fetched to me, to think that Fitz could have concocted a story that seems so unlikely at first glance, but which stands up to all of the above scrutiny. I feel pretty confident it happened, until i see something a bit stronger to say it didnt happen.
Hell, you believe it over 100 years later, and you're using it to try to prove Fitz was more talented than Harry Greb!