1904 in Sports - Boxing

Boxing

Events

  • 29 April — Barbados Joe Walcott meets Dixie Kid to defend the World Welterweight Championship and, though well on top, is disqualified by the referee after 20 rounds for an alleged foul. Kid claims the title but it is subsequently discovered that the referee has bet on Kid to win and so Kid's claim is widely disregarded.
  • 30 September — Walcott meets World Lightweight Champion Joe Gans in a non-title fight which is scored a draw after 20 rounds.
  • 17 October — Joe Bowker (England) challenges Frankie Neil in London for the World Bantamweight Championship and wins over 20 rounds, the first non-American to hold this title.
  • 31 October — Joe Gans meets Jimmy Britt in San Francisco to defend the World Lightweight Championship. Britt knocks Gans down four times but, after the last one in the fifth round, he hits Gans again before he has stood up and is disqualified for the foul. Afterwards, Gans vacates the title which is awarded to Britt. Two years later, Gans will claim that the fight has been fixed by his and Britt's managers.
  • 31 December — during a New Year celebration, Walcott accidentally shoots himself in the hand to effectively ending his days as a top prizefighter. While he will return to the ring in 1906 (losing his welterweight title in the process), he never regains his old form and loses most of his subsequent fights.

Lineal world champions

  • World Heavyweight Championship – James J. Jeffries
  • World Light Heavyweight Championship – Bob Fitzsimmons
  • World Middleweight Championship – Tommy Ryan
  • World Welterweight Championship – Barbados Joe Walcott
  • World Lightweight Championship – Joe Gans → Jimmy Britt
  • World Featherweight Championship – Abe Attell
  • World Bantamweight Championship – Frankie Neil → Joe Bowker

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Famous quotes containing the word boxing:

    “... to paint with oil paints for the first time ... is like trying to make something exquisitely accurate and microscopically clear out of mud pies with boxing gloves on.”
    —Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)

    “I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.”
    —Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)