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Read 'King of the Gypsies' by Bartley Gorman. Quite alot of info about boothboxers, his uncle was killed by a travelling boxer (Sid Roper I think), at a wedding. Hard men back in the day by all accounts, most would fight bareknuckle/gloved up/anyway you wanted it. Another guy would go to fairgrounds with a bucket, and place it at his feet with a sign offering anyone 3/5 hits for a pound. He was never knocked out. He also did this at trainstations when squaddies were returning from leave etc. Tough blokes, got alot of respect for them from what I've heard.

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Boxing booths were not always associated with fairgrounds.....right up till the late 70,s there were travelling booths at places like Wanstead Flats and Deptford in London....they were all quite well organised at one point but around the mid 50,s the British Boxing Board of Control stated they would strip pro boxers of their licence if they took part in them......that pretty much brought about their decline.Before that many fighters like Jimmy Wilde,Benny Lynch,the Turpins,Freddie Mills had all done a bit in the booths.

As kids we would be over Wanstead Flats queueing up like idiots till the ol man would catch us and march us into the gym with respect the Marquis of Queensbury ringing in our ears :D

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Tent fighting is still a big thing in Queensland. Wayne McLennan travelled with them and wrote a book, imaginatively called Tent Boxing. Hard lives for some of the fighters and a lot come from pretty crappy backgrounds. They have woman fighters in a lot of the tents too. Pretty wild nights.

 

I've just finished a book called "All in my corner" by Tony Lee and that's got a lot of the old booth fighting in there, but it's predominantly a history of Welsh fighters. Very good book if you're into the history of the sport.

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