 |
| Sam Minto |
It’s thought Sam was from Barbados and arrived in the UK at Hull in 1908. His birth year, according to different sources, may have been 1883 or 1888, but no one — perhaps not even Sam himself — was certain.
It is believed Minto had boxed before he came to Britain, but no prior fight record exists. According to boxing historians Miles Templeton and Richard Ireland (boxinghistory.org.uk), Sam’s first traceable bout was in Withernsea, Yorkshire, on 18 March 1909.
Throughout his career, Minto drifted from place to place, travelling all over Britain and sometimes abroad for fights. In October 1912, he took on the reigning European bantamweight champion and world title claimant Charles Leduox in Paris. Boxing News had Sam winning the first few rounds and acquitting himself well, but he was knocked out in the eighth.
This willingness to fight anyone anywhere at short notice characterised Minto’s career. It was a mindset he had probably picked up on the various boxing booths he toured with each summer, facing frequent unknown challengers from town to town.
Most years of Sam’s career were hectically busy, but he was no journeyman. For example, in 1928 he had 52 fights (29-14-9), most of which were ten, 12 or 15-rounders. That January alone, he had seven fights and won them all. In February, he had ten bouts — won six, lost one, drew three — and in March another ten outings (7-2-1). Twenty-seven fights in three months!
In the 1930s and ’40s, Sam worked ever increasingly on the booths and would run entire shows himself. This included erecting the tent, spieling from the front stage, refereeing and announcing fights, plus handling heckling by spectators. He also, of course, still boxed on the booths, and did so into his 60s (some claimed his 70s).
‘The passing years had slowed him, but his timing, judgment of distance and pacing were spot on,’ wrote 1930s pro Bob Hartley, a booth colleague of Sam’s. Hartley called Minto ‘the most memorable person I ever met’ and described him as ‘a great raconteur and philosopher’.
A master craftsman, Minto passed on his boxing knowhow to many youngsters, including future British and Empire heavyweight champ Johnny Williams, who idolised hm.
Outside the ring, Sam was an immaculately dapper dresser and somehow found time to appear on stage in musical revues and as an extra in Paul Robeson films. Ex-fighter Alf Paolozzi and his wife, Edie, were friends with Sam in later life. They remembered him as a modest, intelligent man who didn’t drink but smoked a pipe and liked the poems of Patience Strong.
One day in 1964, having not heard from Sam for several weeks, Alf and Edie visited his Brixton home and were told by his landlady that he was dead and buried. The only two people at his funeral were the town clerk and the hearse driver. Like so much else about him, the circumstances of his death are a mystery.
Despite this sad ending, Sam lives on in literature. Zeke Pinto, the protagonist of the H. E. Bates short story The Black Boxer, is based on him.
Article © copyright Alex Daley.
This piece by Alex Daley (first published in Boxing News on 30 June 2016) is one of 132 articles featured in the anthology Boxing Nostalgia: The Good, the Bad and the Weird. You can find out more or buy a copy here.
