Boxing - Fistic Fun in Lawrence

Note sent August 1, 2009 from W. Cavanagh regarding his relatives.
Hi,
I saw the note about Lawrence boxing history and wanted to add to the story. My grandfather Billy Cavanagh and Great Uncle Mike Cavanagh, who were pretty re-knowned in the boxing world were born and Lawrence and were very proud of their Lawrence heritage. For reasons described below, they fought under the Glover name. Mike Glover is pictured in Nat Fleisher's classic boxing history book as coming from Lawrence, Massachusetts in the caption (except it says Mississippi).
My g-grandfather moved to Lawrence in the 1870s and owned one or more bars in town. He made enough money to bring over siblings and cousins. (None of whom I have traced and would like help on that). At number of Cavanaghs ended up in town. He had two boys, Billy and Mike.

  When the town became dry, he moved to South Boston and died when my grandfather Billy was about 10. The Cavanaghs always considered Lawrence to be their hometown and so did the Lawrence paper. It covered their career with headlines "Local Boys Make Good". It also referred to their many cousins in town. Tom Cavanagh, a firefighter, was noted in one.

 When Billy was about 14, one of the boxers in a professional fight didn't show up so Billy came out of the stands to take his place. The announcer announced him as "Kid" and since he didn't know his name and heard him say tighten the gloves, he announced him as Kid Gloves. The name stuck and Billy fought as Billy Glover for his entire career.

  Billy fought in New England for a few years and then hopped a freight train to New York when he was about 18, took a flop house in the Bowery and fought in New York. Billy had about 400 fights, fighting two or three nights a week--the bouts were 6 rounders. At least one time he fought two fights in a night, taking the subway for the second one. The Ring Magazine compilation lists about 80 to 100 fights--those are ones that were covered by newspaper articles in Billy's scrapbook.

  At one point Billy was middleweight champ of Canada. Not sure how that came about. The family has speculated that perhaps William Cavanagh emigrated from Canada.

  At the same time he was fighting, Billy was also managing his brother Mike Glover. Mike was a better fighter but he partied too much. During the 1910s, Jack Brittan and Ted Lewis traded the welterweight title many times. With one exception, they refused to fight Mike Glover when they held the title. The one time one of them did, Mike won the welterweight title (June 1915 I believe but do not have the book in front of me) and lost it again 29 days later. He never got another shot even though he chased them all over the country trying to get a shot. As noted,  Nat Fleisher listed Mike Glover with a picture as one of the great welterweights. Mike died in the 20s.

  When Billy retired from boxing he opened a gym. Flash forward a bit, and he was recruited to become the first boxing coach at West Point in 1918 and stayed there until 1948. Billy was one of those larger than life colorful figures who made quite an impression on West Point cadets.

    Boxing was an important for the West Point curriculum-every cadet is still required to take the course. It also humbled most of them. I have met many of the country's storied generals who went to West Point during that era. Almost without exception, they recount the story of their boxing class and boxing experience as if it were yesterday. In some cases, it was 60 years ago.

Billy also became a big time boxing referee in Madison Square Garden and was the third man in the ring for many title bouts and many other famous bouts in the late thirties and early forties. Joe Louis always insisted that Billy serve as the timekeeper for his bouts (he also refereed a couple) and Sugar Ray Robinson confessed to Billy years later that he never liked it when Billy was the ref for his matches because Billy wouldn't let Sugar Ray get away with much.

  Among other fights, Billy refereed the Bummy Davis-Fritzie Zivic fight. Billy disqualified Bummy for fighting dirty and Bummy went after him.

  Billy refereed Primo Carnero/Ernie Schaff. Primo knocked down Ernie and Billy stopped the bout and was booed for doing so because the crowd thought the fight was fixed. Schaff later died.  Billy was also the referee in one of the James Bradocks fights and is mentioned as such in the movie.

  While at West Point, Billy also coached the boxing team to intercollegiate championships. His best fighter was Don Hull, class of '39, who won the college championship and married my Aunt Dot Cavanagh. After Don Hull retired from the army, he became Executive Director of the AAU. After leaving that post, he became head of USA Boxing and AIBA (which is the governing body for world amateur and Olympic boxing). So boxing has been the family sport.

   Billy was working on his autobiography when he died but he didn't get very far. He also kept extensive scrapbooks of his boxing career, his West point coaching career and his refereeing career so this is all documented.
 Anyway, even though Billy moved to South Boston when he was young, the family has always considered itself a Lawrence family.
 Hope you find this helpful for Lawrence boxing history.
Regards
Will Cavanagh

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