Boxing club served multiple purposes
- Details
- Published on Friday, May 13, 2016
Photo courtesy of Larry Evans. Neepawa Boxing and Wrestling Club 1946-1948: Back row (from left): Hank Goodridge, Reg Jeffery, Gerald Pasquill, Alex Page, Maurice Stewart, Bob Sprague, Tony Evans, Murray Wilkie, Allan “Skinner” Bell, Jim Minnions, Keith Graham, Lewis Adams (Hemings). Front row (from left): Len Bolton, Cec Bolton, Murray Ried, Glen Critchlow and Bill Adams.
Submitted by Rick Sparling
The Neepawa Banner
The Neepawa Boxing and Wrestling Club was operated and promoted by Tony Evans. Tony was well qualified, being a former Manitoba Heavyweight Champion. The club hosted many boxing and wrestling cards locally at the Neepawa Sports Arena and Tony brought in lots of talented fighters from as far away as Michigan. The arena would be packed for these events. Many of the local club members would get their opportunity to show their skills as well.
To give an idea as to the fighters who came to Neepawa fights, in boxing they were: Norvel Lee from the USA Olympic Team fighting against Reg Saunders who was the Manitoba Heavyweight champion. Eddie Roberts was the Manitoba Lightweight champ and Billy Pinkus was the Middleweight champ . In wrestling, Tony brought the flyweight champ, Art Hunt, the Bantamweight champ, Harvey Sherman and Don Trifunor the Middleweight champ.
Some of the local boys got to fight in the preliminaries. Maurice Stewart told me that Bill Watson gave him a tip and advised Maurice to guard himself and fight defensive for the first two rounds and then go offensive for the third round, hoping the opponent had punched himself out. Maurice couldn't recall winning or losing his bout versus Don Bush, a much more experienced fighter. He does know, though, that thanks to Bill's advice, he never experienced anything worse than a bloody nose.
Stan Pypka fought out of Brandon and was touted to be good enough to become the Manitoba Champion in his division, that was until a night in 1949 when he was up against Bill Watson. Bill came flying out of the gate with a series of undercuts that had Pypka out cold at the 10 second mark of the very first round.
The club also travelled to box and wrestle. Tony had a portable ring he would set up wherever he could find a stage. They fought in Brandon, Shilo, Minnedosa, McCreary and as far away as McCauley.
The boys would assemble the ring and take it back down after the fights.
Keith Graham, one of the faster punches on the team, said they fought three, two minute rounds and Tony paid them $2.00 cash, a pop drink and either a ham sandwich or a hot dog...plus they got to watch all the fights. Considering what you could buy for $2.00 back in the late ‘40s, that wasn't too bad.
For the most part, the boxing club served multipurposes. It kept the kids in pretty good shape having to do some cross country running, rope skipping, weight training and sparring. It also kept the boys off the street. Mind you, none of the boys from Neepawa ever got into trouble on the street!
I'll close this off on that note.
