Infamy and Redemption: The Strange Tale of Former British Boxing Champion Dick Burge

Published

7 years ago

October 7, 2018

Dick Burge, born in 1865 in south west England near the rough-and-tumble port city of Bristol, had 22 fights that would find their way into the record books. In these matches, he was 12-7-2 with one “no contest.” Several of these fights had a bad odor about them. Suspicious fights were endemic in his era where a boxer’s earnings were often hitched to the outcome of bets. The victorious boxer got a piece of his backer’s winnings and perhaps a gratuity from others that profited from his triumph; the loser got nothing unless he worked out some deal to insure he wouldn’t go home empty-handed.

A 12-7-2 record is hardly the template of an important prizefighter, but Dick Burge was very important. Three thousand people reportedly turned out for his funeral. The King and Queen sent a sympathy card to his widow, Bella.

Burge’s first sport was pedestrianism (long-distance race walking). Prizefights in Burge’s days were sometimes contested for hours; no fighter advanced far without great stamina and long-distance running was a common gateway into the world of the prize ring. For a time he worked as a booth fighter for a traveling circus, taking on all comers although his opponent was more likely to be a confederate planted in the audience.

On the fair circuit Burge caught the attention of someone with deep pockets and he was soon pitted against boxers whose names resonated with the sporting crowd. In 1891, in his eighth documented fight, he was matched against Jem Carney in a 20-round contest billed for the world lightweight title. The bout, contested under Queensberry rules, was held on the trading floor of the Hop and Malt Exchange in the Southwark borough of London. The match ended in the 11^th round when the referee awarded the fight to Burge on a foul.

The term “world title” was thrown around loosely in those days, but Burge had a legitimate claim to it in that Carney had previously fought the great Jack McAuliffe to a standstill. Contested under London Prize Ring rules (a round ended when a fighter was knocked down or went to the turf of his own accord to catch a breather), the Carney-McAuliffe fight at Revere Beach, Massachusetts, went on for several hours before McAuliffe’s partisans charged the ring to break up the fight, ostensibly to save their bets.

A British Empire title actually carried more cachet in Great Britain as this badge of honor had a less muddled lineage. Burge claimed this diadem in 1894 with a hard-fought win over “Cast Iron” Harry Nickless (Burge knocked him out in the twenty-eighth round) and defended it eight months later with a third round stoppage of Australia’s Tom Williams at the National Sporting Club. These matches were contested at 140 pounds. The lightweight ceiling wasn’t yet firmly fixed.

For a British boxer, nothing matched the prestige of appearing in the featured bout at the National Sporting Club. Located in the fashionable Covent Garden district of London, the exclusive men’s club, founded in 1891, hosted a string of internationally important prizefights. They were held in the basement theater where patrons in evening clothes were discouraged from shouting. It was here that Dick Burge had his most highly anticipated match, opposing George Lavigne, the Saginaw Kid. Contested on June 1, 1896, at 138 pounds, this was a true world lightweight title fight as it was acknowledged as such on both sides of the Atlantic.

Lavigne, who stood only five-foot-three-and-a half, four inches shorter than Burge, was teak tough. He swarmed all over Burge from the opening bell and eventually wore him down. The referee halted the fray in the seventeenth round. But Burge, who spent the better part of the day in a sauna to make weight, fought gallantly. A reporter for London’s Pall Mall Gazette wrote that it was the best fight ever staged there. The SRO crowd included a smattering of big gamblers from New York including the city’s political kingmaker Richard Croker, the Grand Sachem of Tammany Hall.

Burge fought sporadically over the next four-and-a-half years, winning some and losing some. His last bout came on Jan. 28, 1901, against Jerry Driscoll, a middleweight of some repute. It was a no-holds-barred embroilment although it wasn’t intended that way. The referee, unable to get the fighters to heed his commands, left the premises after the second round and the fight wasn’t resumed, much to the disgust of the crowd.

This was a sad way to end a career studded with many exhilarating moments, but the worst was yet to come for Dick Burge. Before the year was out, he was entangled in the sordid Goudie Affair, a sensational scandal that attracted international press coverage.

Thomas Goudie worked as a bookkeeper for the Bank of Liverpool. A bachelor, he rented a flat in a boardinghouse and had very few friends. In his mid-twenties, he acquired an interest in horseracing.

In the spring of 1901, traveling by train to a race meet, he was drawn into a friendly game of cards by two racetrack touts who talked big, boasting of big scores born of inside information. Goudie was more than a little intrigued and was induced to wire them money which they would place for him whenever he was notified that they had a sure thing. Word got around that the sharpies had found a live one and eventually others of the same ilk were able to horn in on the action.

You can guess where this is headed. Those sure things routinely finished out of the money and to recoup his losses Goudie began forging checks. He kept the ledger for the bank’s biggest depositor, a soap manufacturer, and from this man’s account he embezzled almost $170,000. The leakage made it the largest recorded embezzlement in the annals of British banking.

Where did Burge fit in? After Goudie’s arrest, Burge was one of five people indicted for fostering the scam. His exact role was complicated. Like the others, he was hit with an array of charges, some of which stuck and some of which didn’t. It is a fact that some of the missing money found its way into Burge’s bank account.

Two of the alleged conspirators disappeared before they could be brought to trial. Burge and Goudie received the harshest sentences. Each was sentenced to ten years of penal servitude. Burge was released after seven years. Thomas Goudie, the mild-mannered bank clerk, died in prison at age thirty-four. His death was attributed to a heart ailment, but the root cause was said to be a broken spirit.

After his release from prison, Burge acquired the abandoned Surrey Chapel, fixed it up, re-named it The Ring, and turned it into London’s busiest boxing arena. The odd, round-shaped building (supposedly built without four corners so that the devil wouldn’t have a corner in which to hide), which dated to 1783, sat in what was then a tough district of the city, Blackfriars.

The fights attracted some unsavory characters — a man known as Jack Spot, a regular attendee, was the collector of last resort for loan sharks — but there were very few incidents. In a stroke of genius, Burge hired a local minister, Rev. Thomas Collins, as his timekeeper. His mere presence, said a reporter, inspired confidence in the integrity of the bouts and caused patrons to tone down their blue language. Burge also barred bookmakers from accepting wagers at ringside. In his fighting days Burge engaged in a number of suspicious fights, but he brooked none of that in his own establishment.

It seemed, however, that Burge could never erase the stain of the Goudie Affair. In the papers, he was repeatedly referenced as an ex-convict. Then came World War I and Burge rose to the occasion.

Between May 1915 and May 1918, London came under attack from German zeppelin and other kinds of German aircraft. The death toll was set at 557, roughly three times that number were injured, and more than 300,000 left their homes to seek shelter in an underground railway station. Burge pitched in by promoting benefit shows for the families of soldiers at the front lines, but he did more than that. Although he had reached the age of 50, he enlisted in the Surrey Regiment where he was assigned to the ambulance corps.

Working a long shift on a wet and chilly night with Red Cross medics, Burge caught pneumonia. He died shortly thereafter. The turnout at his funeral bore evidence that by his selfless deeds he had lifted the black cloud that had hovered over him. Lore has it that the head of Scotland Yard was among those that came to pay their respects.

By the way, after Dick Burge’s death in March of 1918, his widow Bella, a former music hall entertainer, kept The Ring going. Boxing continued there until 1939 when the building was closed for renovations. It would never re-open. Damaged in a German air raid in 1940, it was reduced to rubble the following year when it absorbed a direct hit from another German bomber.

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Arne K. Lang

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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Published

14 hours ago

May 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.

It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.

In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.

Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.

It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.

“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.

Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.

Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.

Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.

We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.

Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”

But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.

“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”

Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.

Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”

If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38^th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.

Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”

Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.

Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.

On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.

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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Published

3 days ago

May 6, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

It’s old news now, but on back-to-back nights on the first weekend of May, there were three fights that finished in the top six snoozefests ever as measured by punch activity. That’s according to CompuBox which has been around for 40 years.

In Times Square, the boxing match between Devin Haney and Jose Carlos Ramirez had the fifth-fewest number of punches thrown, but the main event, Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, was even more of a snoozefest, landing in third place on this ignoble list.

Those standings would be revised the next night – knocked down a peg when Canelo Alvarez and William Scull combined to throw a historically low 445 punches in their match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 152 by the victorious Canelo who at least pressed the action, unlike Scull (pictured) whose effort reminded this reporter of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – no, not the movie starring Paul Newman, just the title.

CompuBox numbers, it says here, are best understood as approximations, but no amount of rejiggering can alter the fact that these three fights were stinkers. Making matters worse, these were pay-per-views. If one had bundled the two events, rather than buying each separately, one would have been out $90 bucks.

****

Thankfully, the Sunday card on ESPN from Las Vegas was redemptive. It was just what the sport needed at this moment – entertaining fights to expunge some of the bad odor. In the main go, Naoya Inoue showed why he trails only Shohei Ohtani as the most revered athlete in Japan.

Throughout history, the baby-faced assassin has been a boxing promoter’s dream. It’s no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter – and by an overwhelming margin — is “Kid.”

And that partly explains Naoya Inoue’s charisma. The guy is 32 years old, but here in America he could pass for 17.

Joey Archer

Joey Archer, who passed away last week at age 87 in Rensselaer, New York, was one of the last links to an era of boxing identified with the nationally televised Friday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Joey Archer

Archer made his debut as an MSG headliner on Feb. 4, 1961, and had 12 more fights at the iconic mid-Manhattan sock palace over the next six years. The final two were world title fights with defending middleweight champion Emile Griffith.

Archer etched his name in the history books in November of 1965 in Pittsburgh where he won a comfortable 10-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, sending the greatest fighter of all time into retirement. (At age 45, Robinson was then far past his peak.)

Born and raised in the Bronx, Joey Archer was a cutie; a clever counter-puncher recognized for his defense and ultimately for his granite chin. His style was embedded in his DNA and reinforced by his mentors.

Early in his career, Archer was domiciled in Houston where he was handled by veteran trainer Bill Gore who was then working with world lightweight champion Joe Brown. Gore would ride into the Hall of Fame on the coattails of his most famous fighter, “Will-o’-the Wisp” Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.

In all honesty, Archer’s style would have been box office poison if he had been black. It helped immensely that he was a native New Yorker of Irish stock, albeit the Irish angle didn’t have as much pull as it had several decades earlier. But that observation may not be fair to Archer who was bypassed twice for world title fights after upsetting Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger.

When he finally caught up with Emile Griffith, the former hat maker wasn’t quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, a two-time Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the BWAA and a future first ballot Hall of Famer, was still a hard nut to crack.

Archer went 30 rounds with Griffith, losing two relatively tight decisions and then, although not quite 30 years old, called it quits. He finished 45-4 with 8 KOs and was reportedly never knocked down, yet alone stopped, while answering the bell for 365 rounds. In retirement, he ran two popular taverns with his older brother Jimmy Archer, a former boxer who was Joey’s trainer and manager late in Joey’s career.

May he rest in peace.

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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Published

4 days ago

May 4, 2025

David A. Avila

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Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.

Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.

“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” Inoue said.

Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.

After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.

Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.

One thing promised by Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”

Cardenas proved his trainer’s words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.

“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.”

Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.

A real fight was happening.

Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.

Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.

In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.

“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”

Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoue’s combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.

In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.

“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”

Espinoza Wins

WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.

“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” said Espinoza.

Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.

Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.

It was Espinoza’s third title defense.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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