I Fought Them All – authors' extras #1
A series of articles
accompanying the e-version of the biography of Tom Sharkey
Our award-winning biography
of Tom Sharkey, entitled ‘I Fought Them All: The Life and Ring Battle of a
Prize-fighting Legend’, is sold out.
However, it is now available
as an e-book.
These short articles are
based on some of the extensive additional notes published in the hardback
version only and are printed here for the benefit of those interested in the
e-book.
EARLY FIGHTS IN THE US
Tom Sharkey enlisted in the
United States Navy on November 28, 1892, and it was there he would hone the
skills which would see him later challenge the best fighters of the day.
“I boxed more than ever,”
Sharkey said later. “I put on the gloves every chance I had – tackled five or
six men one after another.”
In fact, in that first year
in the navy, Sharkey knocked out fellows named Jack Gardner (in four rounds on
March 17, 1893), J Pickett (in two on April 7), Jack Langley (four on May 3),
Jim Harvey (also two on May 27) and Jack Walsh (August 21) and J Barrington
(September 10), both in the first.
There would, of course, never
be any records of these first fights on board ship or in the dockyards.
It is generally claimed that
Tom was undefeated or at least had by far the better of these fights. His
subsequent record in the professional game would obviously support that.
However, an obituary for
53-year-old Father William Henry Ironsides Reany, ‘The fighting chaplain of the
US Navy’, which was published in the New York Times on November 19, 1915,
claimed: “He was said to be the father of boxing in the Navy and also
introduced other athletics among the sailors. Fr Reany was always ready to put
on the gloves with the sailors and was a very proficient boxer. It is related
of him that he was the only man in the navy who ever defeated Tom Sharkey.
“The story is that Sharkey
was obstreperous and interrupted divine services and the priest ‘called him
down’. As soon as the services were over he reproached Sharkey for his
disturbance and the upshot of the matter was that they put on the gloves.
“Fr Reany with his clean
hitting and scientific knowledge of the sport, soon placed the pugilist hors de
combat and from that time on never had any further trouble with Sharkey.”
The obituary provoked a
strong response from a Helen Manzone, of Brooklyn ,
who was angry not at the claim that Tom might have been beaten but had been
rude.
She wrote to the newspaper’s
editor: “I have read your tribute to Fr Reany. I take pleasure in attempting to
correct that statement relative to Tom Sharkey. You have put it before the
public that Fr Reany had to upbraid Tom Sharkey for being turbulent. That is
false. Such thing is against Tom Sharkey’s principle.”
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