Packy Paul

Name: Packy Paul
Birth Name: Emmanuel Pahl
Hometown: Richdale, Alberta, Canada
Birthplace: Richdale, Alberta, Canada
Stance: Orthodox
Height: 188cm
Reach: 203cm
Pro Boxer: Record

Manager: Bud Davies

• According to Packy, he had 106 pro bouts, most of them in the UK.

• Brother of fellow boxer Danny Paul.

Packy Pahl (name changed for career) is not "Danny Packy". He was born in 1916. Both brothers were managed by Bud Davies.

Notes from a conversation with John Pahl, Packy's grandson:

"...To fill in the blanks, they both started fighting in 1936 and Packy won the Vancouver Golden Gloves and the right to compete in the Berlin Olympics. Back then, you had to pay your own way, so neither could afford to go and they turned pro. They decided to go to England to fight and hopped a freight train to Montreal with their manager, Bud Davies, and then worked on a ship to get to England.

Dan and Packy's father (Wilhelm Pahl) became ill with cancer in 1940 and they both returned to Richdale to help with the farm. When they left, along with fighting, Dan was working in a war goods factory and Packy was a policeman with the London Metropolitan Police interrogating German POWs. He was born Emmanuel Pahl. Packy was a fighting nickname the British press gave him and it stuck for the rest of his life. The last name was changed for perhaps obvious reasons at the time.

I believe he made an effort to get back into the sport at the age of 30 in 1946 (he was actually born in 1916), but at the end of 1946 went to work on the rigs and he did that in a variety of capacities around the world until his retirement in 1976. He died of cancer in 1983.

Danuel moved back to Vancouver and had an assortment of careers including logging and bartending and I had the good fortune to get to know him one summer when he and I were both staying with Grampaw on his ranch near Richdale for a couple of weeks in 1981. He passed away in the late 1980's.

As noted, all of his sons fought as well. My father, Milt Pahl, was a Golden Boy a number of times and held Canadian and American amateur titles from 1954-1964.

Grampaw loved the sport and not only trained his sons, but also founded boxing clubs in Hanna, Rocky Mountain House, Edson and one other place I can't recall while he was working in the oilpatch..."

Packy Pahl's boxing excerpt, from the book Prairie Rose Country, published 1981

My brother Dan had gone to Vancouver to look for work, so I stayed home to winter the stock. One day when I was in Hanna, Art Reuteman invited me to watch him train. Art was boxing at that time and had a trainer, Danny Willis, who had boxed in Chicago. When I got home I filled a gunny sack with oats, found a light halter shank, and trained every day for the rest of the winter. My brother Dick had bought us a set of boxing gloves while we lived in Hanna.

Dan cam home in the spring, and like any younger brother, I challenged him to a match. It surprised us both that I was just about able to hold my own with him, so we decided that come fall, we would go to Calgary and try competing. So the Punching Pahls were born.

Dan won the Alberta Heavyweight championship in 1935; I won the Vancouver City and BC championships in 1936. There were eleven of us in that division; the reason I mention it is to give you an idea how many more boxers there were then than now. Dan never did like boxing, but we made enough to eat and dress well and travel; I'm sure there were many more boxing for the same reason. Dan had 20 amateur bouts; 117 professionals, 58 by knockout, 42 by decision, 9 draws and 8 losses. I had 35 amateurs; 106 professionals, 61 KO's, 32 by decision, 8 draws, 5 losses. In a 1938 Ring Magazine we rated as the best prospects of the month, and in 1939 Dan was rated eleventh in the world heavyweights, and I was twelfth.

Times were still tough. Brother Cliff came to visit us in Vancouver and we all came home, by freight train, to visit the folks. There was very little crop here so we went our sister Mary's at Vegreville and were all lucky to get work on a threshing outfit. Cliff went back to California in 1937 and our manager and trainer, Bud Davies, decided that we should go to England.

A horse buyer friend of Wes Howery's got us a free ride to Montreal with several loads of horses. We had enough money to buy two fares to England so Bud got a job on the boat as the baker's helper. On November 17, 1937 we arrived in London with seven shillings and sixpence between us. The first night we stayed at a Salvation Army hostel, sixpence each for bed and breakfast. The beds were in an old stable, so cold we slept with all our clothes on and still nearly froze, but the place was nice and clean. For breakfast we had poached eggs and toast and tea, the first time in my 21 years that I had tea for breakfast.

Someone steered us to the George and Dragon pub owned by Alf Mancini whom Bud had known in the States. Alf helped us get bouts and also loaned us eating money. In London at that time there was a fight card every day of the week, even Sunday night was fight night at Blackfriars Ring. So London was the place to be. Sometimes, if we didn't get hurt, we would have two fights in the same week.

When the war broke out, boxing came to a standstill. They wouldn't allow large crowds to gather because of the possibility of an air raid. Dan worked in a war goods factory, Bud was an Air Raid Warden, and I joined the London Metropolitan Police. They treated me very well. I became an interpreter for the Enemy Aliens Tribunal, which checked out refugee German Jews. That winter we got a letter from home asking us to return as my Dad had cancer. We arrived home at the end of April, 1940. Dan and I farmed that summer, but there wasn't enough to be made for the three of us, so Dan left for Vancouver in 1941.