Teddy Murton
Name: Teddy Murton
Birth Name: Zephaniah Murton
Hometown: Plymouth, Devon, United Kingdom
Birthplace: Plymouth, Devon, United Kingdom
Died: 1981-01-01 (Age:78)
Pro Boxer: Record
The following biography is taken from Fighters of the Old Cosmo: A History of Plymouth Boxing 1907-1924, written by Clive Tregarthen Mumford. (References to "Cosmo" refer to the Cosmopolitan Gym in Notte Street, Plymouth.)
Teddy Murton, who was given the somewhat unusual Christian name of Zephaniah, became one of the very best of that band of good Plymouth flyweights and bantams and, campaigning mostly away from Plymouth as a Cosmo exile, brought a degree of indirect fame to Mill Street.
It is probably not extravagant to say that if Teddy Murton had had no weight problems and had been able to stay a flyweight, nothing could have stopped him from being British champion at the period when he was at his peak.
Murton was born in Vauxhall Street, Plymouth in 1903, the youngest of three fighting brothers Syd, (the eldest) and Johnny. Their father ran a shop in Buckwell Street and later Treville Street and it was here that Teddy remembers he was introduced to the noble art in a most bizarre way by Syd, who, in the 1914-18 period was a firm favourite with the Cosmo fans as a flyweight.
One day, when their father was out, Syd, a southpaw, with a vicious left hook which had earned him the lurid Cosmo nickname of the "Clack Handed Terror" was sparring with one Ernie Knowles and sent him crashing backwards through a partition that separated the shop from the backroom, utterly demolishing it! All three brothers were soon to take the game up seriously, and after a stint at the Kitto Institute, where they couldn't get spar mates, they joined the Caprera Boxing Club on the Barbican, where Ben Callicott's mentor Syd King was trainer. Syd later started the Murton School of Boxing.
Incidentally, Syd had developed his crushing punch as a result of boning meat in a butchery.
Teddy Murton trained three years at Notte Street before he had his first fight at the Cosmo, largely because his Aunt, who brought him up following his mother's death when he was two, did not approve of the game. In the January of 1919 he made his Mill Street debut and threw his aunt off the scent by boxing under the name of Daymond's Nipper. He won, but the cat was let out of the bag when the next morning someone said to his father, "Your boy boxed well last night." After this there was no family opposition as Teddy and Johnny set about serious boxing careers. Syd, by this time, had decided to stay on at sea after war service with the marines and thus a promising flyweight career was curtailed.
Teddy soon showed up with a series of wins at the Cosmo and after beating Wal Jordan on points, he moved his base of operations to London where he settled in Walworth and engaged Ted Broadgribb as his manager. The latter was, of course, the man who, as Young Snowball, had the rare distinction of knocking out Georges Carpentier. Later in life he piloted Britain's Freddy Mills to the world cruiserweight title.
Under Broadgribb Murton quickly became one of the country's leading flyweights. An orthodox, up- right boxer, in the best English tradition, Teddy had an elegant left, was a shifty mover and was speedy. He had height and reach, too, and clever switches of style often confused the opposition. A certain rigid approach and failure to adapt to altering circumstances was a common criticism of him as was the lack of a really damaging punch. However, as far as the latter was concerned he got his fair share of knockouts despite recurring hand trouble which plagued him throughout his career.
With a broken finger at the N.S.C. he knocked out Cardiff's Asa Lewis and the paper headlines hailed him as the "Walworth wonder" and thereafter he was in great demand. But it was his fight with Johnny Broker which really put him on the boxing map. Broker, of Marylebone, was thought by his manager, Johnny Lambert, to be a coming flyweight champion. They were matched over 15 rounds at the N.S.C. for £100-a-side and Murton confounded the pundits by winning, in what the press called a canter, a con- test rated as the best of that particular Covent Garden season. One extravagant observer wrote: "Murton's display was almost that of a Driscoll." Can there be any higher praise than this?
At this stage Teddy was generally considered as the successor to Jimmy Wilde (but there again, wasn't his townie Ash also?) Murton had only been in London a year or so and his rise had been startling. He then went on to beat men like Tally Jones of Wales and Scotland's Willy Woods.
In such demand was the Cosmoite that he, perhaps, tended to fight too often. There was the celebrated occasion when he stopped Wally Trainer in eight of a fifteen rounder at Hoxton Baths in the afternoon and then fought Wales' Fred Vincent at the N.S.C. Not surprisingly Teddy lost the latter on points. N.S.C. manager Peggy Bettinson was livid when he heard of Murton's 'matinee' and had Ernie Izzard all fixed up to take his place in the evening. But Teddy assured him all was well and certainly did not let Bettinson down. He then hopped up to Glasgow where he met Woods; on to Edinburgh to beat Willy Todd - and back to the 'smoke' to fight a great draw over 20 rounds at the Ring with fellow Plymothian Frank Ash. Many thought referee Matt Weils should have given Murton the verdict. Five fights, eleven days - Murton would fight anyone, anywhere and at any time!
Had he been able to stay a flyweight who knows what he would have achieved? He could cope with Ash, who as we have seen later fought for the world title. They were to fight twice more, once in Plymouth's Home Park, Murton drawing and winning. He could also beat Cosmo colleague Kid Kelly, as he showed by convincingly doing so at the Ring and the Kid fought Elky Clark for the British title. So it can be seen that had not increasing weight forced Murton up to the bantams, and later the feathers, Plymouth would have had a better than even chance of a national title.
In spite of these poundage snags Teddy Murton made an equally significant mark in the bantams. He k.o'd Harold Jones in 6 at the Ring to enhance his title prospects, something champions Jim Higgins and Tommy Harrison had found hard to do on their way to titles, and when he drew with northerner Billy Hindley, also at Blackfriars, Teddy was rated one of Britain's best bantams. In this contest Murton was bitterly disappointed at only sharing the verdict as most thought he had won; a subsequent loss to Hindley at Manchester's Free Trade Hall when he retired with a fractured right hand, made this first decision more difficult to accept.
The class of Teddy Murton around this time is clearly illustrated by his very narrow defeats at the hands of Johnny Cuthbert and Harry Corbett at the Premierland. Both men later became two of our better British champions~
Murton's ranking in the bantams was duly recognised when he was selected with eight others to fight an eliminating series to find the man to challenge Johnny Brown, who had relieved the Cosmo's Bugler Lake of his British title First he beat Kid Nicholson in 10 at the N.S.C., getting revenge for an earlier Ring defeat when after 'skating' nine rounds, he was ruled out for a low blow. Then at Holland Park he disposed of Birmingham's Len Fowler in 10, despite the considerable presence in the Brummie's corner of the great Owen Moran. Fowler was a rugged hustler and in a wrestling, mauling bout referee Johnny Douglas threatened to throw both men out of the ring.
On Derby eve, always a big social occasion at the N.S.C., Murton tangled with Tooting's Johnny Hill in the final eliminator and to the great disappointment of Cosmo fans was only narrowly outscored over 15 rounds. Hill's better work inside swung it. Teddy's title chance had gone, although later he did get to meet Johnny Brown. The latter had just come back from a successful U.S. trip and only succeeded in outpointing Murton by a whisker, being fully extended throughout.
If any further indication is needed to illustrate Teddy's class as a bantam he drew with Bugler Lake at the Cosmo and subsequently beat him easily at the Ring, although in fairness, this was nothing like the Bugler of the Ledoux fight. He was out of condition, put down twice, and had clearly slipped back Murton was also in demand with European bantams and there were some good ones around. Bouts with two one-time world champions, bantamweight genius Al Brown of the freak dimensions, and feather Andre Routis were both lined up for the Plymothian, but unfortunately fell through.
Teddy will probably want to forget continental opposition because of these two last-named disappointments and he was also involved in an utter fiasco with Kid Francis, the French bantamweight champion. The match took place at the famous Salle Wagram in Paris, and Murton was outpointed in a diabolical verdict. There was such an outcry after this farce that Leon See, then a renowned Paris sportsman and later to be known world wide as the manager of world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera, wrote to Murton apologising for the decision.
The Plymothian gained some degree of satisfaction when he later beat a leading French bantam Charlie Sauvage.
It is interesting to note that at this stage in Teddy's career he had fought 75 contests, one of them being a seven-round top-of-the-bill defeat of Leo Kelly in one of his infrequent returns to the Cosmo, and had lost a mere handful. After two years under the managership of Broadgribb, Murton parted company and signed up with Harry Levene, who also handled Frankie Ash for a while, and was later to become wellknown as a British promoter. He remained with Levene until 1926 when he decided to have a crack at the Australian fight scene. An Aussie representative of the Sydney Stadium had seen Murton in the gym and persuaded him to go down under.
If Teddy Murton had made a name for himself in Britain then it was nothing compared with the impact he created in the Antipodes. He was matched for his Australian debut with a leading American feather Midget Kilburn. The latter was a rugged, hooking fighter who had made a number of deprecatory remarks about Teddy's ability before their fight at the famous Rushcutter's Bay Arena in Sydney where Johnson had, years previously, taken the heavyweight title off Tommy Burns. Murton made the Yank eat his words in no uncertain manner. A perfect short right put Kilburn out for the count; he had to be carried bodily to his corner and Sydney sports went overboard about Murton.
Sydney's boxing public had a good opinion of Cosmo fighters through Joe Symonds and Tom McCormick and Murton did nothing to destroy it. The press were ecstatic. "Murton is no mug," and "Teddy Murton is a clinker" said the headlines. "He knocked him colder than Alaska in Lapland," said another, while one writer avowed, "Murton is one of the classiest boys we have had from the Old Dart...."
There was one sour note, however, among all this eulogy. It had been a rough fight while it lasted and one report said that Murton "gave the impress- ion that he would be equally at home with bare knuckles." Allegations of "shamrocking" were made, a shamrock being a foul blow vaguely containing elements of the rabbit punch. Le Blanche's pivot blow and sundry other illegalities were brought up, but despite these jarring notes Teddy Murton was big news. Yet he was paid less than �100 for his pains!
A big boy at the time was Ignacio Fernandez who went on to fight such world champions as Kid Chocolate, Al Singer, Tony Canzoneri, Bud Taylor, Abe Goldstein and Battling Battilino, and he had gone over big in Sydney. He was on passage to Manila when his manager received from the Sydney Stadium matchmaker Munro the wire: "Murton k.o's Kilburn 3 rounds. Advise you return with Fernandez at once. Murton a sensation. Big house assured." The fight didn't materialise, but Teddy had three more bouts in this six months' stay. He beat Aussie triple champion Billy Grime on a 17th round foul. They fought at nine stone. Grime, later a light and welter, was something of a freak, fighting out of a low crouch. There was nothing in it when Murton was fouled. Teddy lost the return to the heavier Grime at Sydney in the 14th, but he would up his tour on a triumphant note by beating the coloured Yank Ansell Bell at Melbourne on a 9th round foul (low blow). Teddy was so badly abused that he took eight minutes to recover and there was a dent in his foul cup. "Then the coon ripped in a low left," said a report. Actually Murton had utterly outclassed Bell, giving him a boxing lesson.
So ended as successful a tour abroad as was ever made by a Cosmo fighter. Two years later, in 1927 (a year in which he trained with world middleweight champion Mickey Walker at Taggs Island when the American was preparing to meet Tommy Milligan) Teddy returned to Aussie now nearly a lightweight. He was not so successful losing to Irishman Bob Miller and Len White in Melbourne. However, in Sydney he so badly beat Jack Emmerton that the referee stopped matters in the 13th. Murton was near the end of the road now. One other 'contest' deserves a mention. That was at the N.S.C. against George Garrard The latter, being well outpointed by Murton, complained that he had damaged a hand. The ringside doctor said it was O.K. and poor Garrard was disqualified for "not trying". The sad part of it all was that Garrard was to be married the next week and he got no "bottom drawer" as the N.S.C. always withheld a disqualified boxer's cash.
Coincidentally, on this same N.S.C. bill was to have been Moore v. Moody and as we have seen, the latter was also denied his purse after Moore had cried off because he could not make the weight.
Incidentally, to Teddy Murton is credited a new cash deal to many boxers who fought on the Cosmo bill. One Sunday when he was due to meet Private Marsden, Teddy bartered with promoter Harry Jenkins and won an increased purse, a precedent which was in due course to benefit other Mill Street boxers -and ironically to contribute towards the insolvency of the Cosmo as a paying proposition.
Teddy Murton retired in the early '30s and went into business back in his native Plymouth, as a butcher in Exeter Street. This did not work out so he returned to London where among other boxing training jobs, he coached the Belsize Club, Oxford University and was P.T. instructor for the London C . C .
Johnny Murton, like Bugler Lake's brother Percy, tended to be overshadowed by his more famous brother. However, Johnny made trips to both Australia and the U.S. and among the good men he fought were Wally Trainer, Robert Diament, Kid Anthony and Gus Legge whom Lake beat for the Ring belt. While never reaching Teddy's class, Johnny was always a good, honest bantam and in later years also became a boxing instructor with the L.C.C.