Cauliflower Famine

Jack ‘Cast Iron’ Casey

 

The sight of UFC star Conor McGregor’s deformed left ear on the cover of the 20 July issue of Boxing News got me thinking about cauliflower ears in boxing. There was a time when a cauliflower ear was the hallmark of a seasoned pro boxer. But today, you’re far more likely to see one on an MMA fighter or rugby player.

So why this modern lack of cauliflowers among the boxing brigade? I was once told by a London Ex-Boxers Association founder-member — now in his 90s — that it’s because ‘they don’t have enough fights now and they aren’t taught how to slip punches’, the theory being that cauliflowers were often caused by slipped shots cuffing the ear.

No doubt a fair few modern trainers would dispute the last part of his statement. The first part, though, is hard to deny. Today, a prospect will fight, say, five or six times a year, an established top-liner perhaps two or three times. But in the inter-war years, particularly in Britain, it wasn’t unusual for a pro to make 20 to 30 ring appearances a year. Career records of 200-plus pro bouts were common and these were not just journeymen; many were star performers.

Mystery Man Sam

Sam Minto

Boxing has its share of mystery men: fighters who captivate and intrigue us, though the details of their lives are obscure. One such man is Sam Minto of the West Indies, who boxed in Britain for 28-plus years with an eye-watering tally of 345 recorded pro fights.

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. 

Annie - the KO Queen

Pictured (1925): Annie poses in the ring with 12-year-old sparring partner Nipper Pat Daly as trainer Professor Newton looks on

Pioneering female boxer Annie Newton is one of the many colourful characters featured in Alex Daley's book, Born to Box: The Extraordinary Story of Nipper Pat Daly (Pitch Publishing)

Today, women’s boxing is thriving. There’s never been a better time for females to take up the noble art. But what if the likes of Nicola Adams and Katie Taylor had been around in the 1920s?

Back then, their hardest fight would have been outside the ring, contending with a largely hostile society. Not only was the idea of women boxing frowned upon, it was deemed an abomination. Even leading boxing figures like the great Jimmy Wilde felt it was freakish and unseemly.

For one female boxer trying to make it in the Roaring Twenties, this ideology proved an unbeatable foe. Her name was Annie Newton and she’d been steeped in boxing from an early age. Born in Highgate, north London in 1893, she was mostly raised by her uncle, ‘Professor’ Andrew Newton, one of Britain’s top boxing trainers of the time.