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| Sam McKeowen in his youth |
Booth owners are among the unsung heroes of British boxing. World champions such as Jimmy Wilde, Benny Lynch, Freddie Mills, Randolph Turpin and Rinty Monaghan plied their trade on the fairground circuit. Yet little has been written of the people who ran the booths: the men — and women — who gave champions-in-the-making their chance to shine.
One name forever entwined with booth fighting is that of Exeter’s Sam McKeowen, who was born Samuel Eli McKeowen in 1889. In 1956, when Sam was in his 50th year with the booths, Boxing News tracked him down for a rare interview.
McKeowen told our reporter how he’d learnt to box as a boy fairground attendant, spending every spare minute outside the booth, catching the gloves the fighters threw to their challengers. It was a tough education but Sam soon learnt enough for the proprietor to ask him to join his troupe of touring fighters.
In July 1910, he unexpectedly got the chance to box as a bona fide pro when the booth visited Plymouth. He was offered a substitute job versus local featherweight Young Kennedy at the city’s Cosmopolitan gym. ‘I was scared to death at finding myself in front of 4,000 people,’ said Sam. ‘I had never fought in a hall before but only on the floor in the booth.’
Despite conceding experience, McKeowen knocked Kennedy out in the fourth of a scheduled 15-rounder. He followed this with a string of West Country bouts, losing occasionally but gaining valuable experience.
Sam learnt a lot from world-class American welterweight the Dixie Kid, who boxed in Britain between 1911 and 1916, including some crafty tricks. One was to yell to an opponent nearing a corner, ‘Mind the bucket!’, and as his rival looked round, Sam would nail him. Another was to look past his opponent towards the referee and shout, ‘It isn’t me, sir!’ If the other boxer looked round, Sam would clobber him with a right.
In sharing these ploys, McKeowen told our reporter, ‘The rules say a boxer must protect himself at all times. If he falls for wiles like these he must pay the penalty of a thump on the whiskers.’
Although he forged a successful career as a regular pro, Sam kept up his booth association, eventually meeting his future wife, Esther, through the fairgrounds. Ultimately, Sam bought a booth of his own from Esther’s father, which the couple ran together. McKeowen’s booth became famous throughout the West Country and was a familiar sight at fairs and shows for over 70 years.
Numerous leading pros, including world champions Freddie Mills and Rinty Monaghan, boxed on the McKeowen booth. In his autobiography, Mills described McKeowen as ‘a wonderful chap, with an equally fine wife’.
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| Future world champion Freddie Mills (far left) on Mckeowen's booth in the 1930s |
After half a century of watching Britain’s and some of the world’s best fighters, Sam told our reporter that the legendary Welshman Jim Driscoll – ‘a master with the left hand’ – was the finest boxer he’d ever seen. Sam Langford, he said, was the greatest non-world champion.
After Sam’s death in 1964, Esther (known as ‘Ma’ McKeowen) kept the booth running until she was 93. She died in 1999, aged 101.
Article © copyright Alex Daley.
This piece by Alex Daley (first published in Boxing News on 5 May 2016) is one of 132 articles featured in the anthology Boxing Nostalgia: The Good, the Bad and the Weird. You can find our more or buy a copy here.
