BoxRec

This middleweight prospect died at 21. According to his record he only lost 4 times, none of them by knockout, and most of his opponents seem to have had winning records. Anyway, footage is meant to exist of some of his fights, has anyone seen any? He's in the HOF, but in your opinion was he really destined for even bigger future greatness?


Also, has anyone read this book?

Jack `Doc` Kearns rated him very highly and expected big things for him when signed him and brought him over from Australia.
Sadly the bad publicity stalled his career before he died of Pneumonia, or a broken heart if you wish.

Thanks tonyevs, I wasn't sure what you meant by bad publicity, so I did a little searching and came up with this excellent essay. I haven't got time to read it right now but hopefully I'll go through it in the next few days.

It's a .pdf file so this is needed to view it. Or alternatively it can be viewed online by clicking here!

There are quite a few books on Les Darcy, all of which are very interesting reads. Nate Fliescher always considered Darcy one of the great middleweights along with Ketchel and Robinson. He fought and beat many top fighters of the era.

There was a documentary made of Les a few years back, which features
4 of his fights (vs Clabby, Smith and a couple of other top liners of the
day), as well as some footage of Darcy training.

As for his destiny had he survived, Jack Dempsey said he could have beat Willard. Tex Rickard was trying to line him up to fight Carpentier, or Dillon, or another top name of the day.

His arrival to America was pretty hyped, and prior to him being banned from boxing in most states of the USA, there was talk of him fighting the then claimed world champ Al McCoy. McCoy was offered $10,000. Darcy was offered $30,000.

He was called a coward for leaving the country and not going to war, even though many other boxers were allowed to leave at the same time to fight overseas.

The irony is though when his body was brought back to Australia, it is estimated some 250,000 people attended the funeral. He is still to this day a sporting legend of Australia.

Another little interesting piece I recently read on Darcy was that Doc Kearns paid for Darcy to come to America after Darcy had fought and easily beat a group of boxers he had taken to Australia, Tex Rickard got to the boat first when it docked and `stole` him off the Doc.

Some great info in this thread. The more I learn the more I'm interested in this boxer. He seems to have experienced the David Beckham-esque rollercoaster of public hatred/love. It's tragic that most of the love appears to have been shown after he was dead. Thanks for pointing out that documentary jbdave, I'm gonna keep an eye out for that.