Boxing letters from 1938 provide a window into the fight game just before World War 2...

Old-time newspapers really are fascinating. In the absence of TV, radio and archival film they provide an unrivalled insight into the lives of our forebears, including those who once inhabited the boxing world.

While fight reports and other newspaper editorial must conform to style constraints and, to an extent, the agenda of a publication, letters from readers need not. Often a letter will tell us as much about the personality of the letter writer as it does the topic of the letter. Like it or not, what we write can say more about us than we intend.

Aside from that, historical boxing letters can offer a rare insight into fight fans’ opinions of the time (without the distortion of hindsight), shed light on the careers of long-forgotten fighters and tell us about the lost customs of the ring; all with an immediacy that gives one the feeling, if only momentarily, of stepping through time.

The below selection of readers’ letters printed in Britain’s trade paper Boxing in 1938 provides a flavour of the fight game of that era.

Continue reading:

http://blog.boxinghistory.org.uk/2012/01/boxing-letters-from-1938.html

Thanks mate - you always post interesting historical info.

Fascinating stuff and interesting to note how articulate these letters were..

Sobering as well to think that these guys are no longer around and are mere footnotes in history....No doubt their lives/careers ended or damaged in some way by the following war....What a terrible waste!!

While I don't envy them their approaching future.....I do envy them their Boxing era!!! One champion...challengers facing challengers for the right to fight the champion....15 rounds etc...

Yep good stuff.....Makes me feel of the time when I was a teenager and the World seemed simple and I didn't understand politics and the like..

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:Fascinating stuff and interesting to note how articulate these letters were..

Sobering as well to think that these guys are no longer around and are mere footnotes in history....No doubt their lives/careers ended or damaged in some way by the following war....What a terrible waste!!

While I don't envy them their approaching future.....I do envy them their Boxing era!!! One champion...challengers facing challengers for the right to fight the champion....15 rounds etc...

Yep good stuff.....Makes me feel of the time when I was a teenager and the World seemed simple and I didn't understand politics and the like..

Really great response. Agree entirely!

What I also find interesting, particularly shown with the Hal Bagwell letters, is the excitement and pride people felt about their local boxers. People don't seem to get excited about boxers from their area to that extent today.

what an excellent insight.

You're right, Alex, let's take Matt Macklin, Frankie Gavin and Don Broadhurst say, as three boxers that are from my area. I don't get any more excited by them because of their close proximity to myself, and am far more likely to follow someone that I just happen to like the style of for example, or the persona of.

Whether that is right or wrong I don't know, probably right in this day and age, but it certainly would be good to have a source of pride in your local fighters (don't get me wrong, I'd be very proud both on a national level and on a local level if a Brummie were to become world champion), but I imagine that is nowhere near the sense of belonging and pride that would have been felt by local fight fans in a similar situation at the time of the letters in your article.

Interesting comparison, Fists. It's certainly very different now.

Obviously boxing is more of a fringe sport today than in the 1930s, which is probably part of the reason for the change, and there are fewer fighters around to facilitate local rivalries and every area having its own boxing heroes.

But it may also be down to changes in society as a whole. In the age of television and the internet we're less community-oriented.

Great stuff again, Alex.

Will echo the views of others, Alex - great stuff and very interesting as ever. Thanks for sharing.

Absolutely...top thread....However Alexd's threads always have the same respected posters commenting on them...

It's a shame some of the newer posters don't read these excellent offerings...

May give them a new respect of the times and widen their horizons some what....

These guys were tough!!..had to win to eat back then..

Would certainly advocate some of the less worthy types reading stuff like this!!