New Richland represented well in 1948 district finals
(Editor’s note: Part four of a seven-part series about local, area, and state amateur and professional boxing.)
By RODNEY HATLE
Contributing Writer
A review of the process shows how boxers of Gene Mobley’s New Richland training group faired in the Golden Gloves District 17 boxing tournament of 1948.
The fight card of eight bouts for the Wednesday, Jan. 28, finals lists four individuals as compared with six from Bethlehem Academy in Faribault, and three each from Owatonna and Northfield.
The finals began with New Richland’s Lester Root, flyweight at 105 pounds, and Earl Parriott, bantamweight at 118.
In the fourth bout was 133-pound lightweight Rodney Zwiener, who had advanced Saturday night with a second round TKO when the referee halted it because of the opponent’s increasingly swollen eye, the result of a round-one punch. But Zwiener was himself knocked out in round two of the finals by Jack Kennedy of Faribault. He “went down after a smashing right to the face and failed to get up by the count of ten,” was the Owatonna newspaper report.
Root was given the Fightingest Fighter award for his aggressive style throughout the tourney, capped by his attempted come-back while losing on points to Pat Sheridan of Faribault.“Lester was a game little fighter and had Sheridan on the run in the third round.” To attain the finals, he had “decisioned Donald Shields of Bethlehem Academy [who] was at least a half-foot taller and had the reach,” according to the Star report.
Owatonna’s “Harvey Ronglien was awarded the sportsmanship trophy.”
“Parriott fighting Raoul Savoie ... was the surprise fighter of the evening,” according to the Star. “Savoie of [Faribault] who is well known in the fight circle and a veteran of many bouts ... won a three round decision, but it wasn’t too easy.... Parriott laid into him a couple of times and really had Savoie backing up.”
According to the Owatonna newspaper, Savoie “was able to halt several hard punches in the second round.”
On this night, one of two “exhibitions [was] between Bobby Zwiener, 98, New Richland, and Leland Root, 102, Waseca.” They were brothers of the night’s participants.
The report concluded: “Finals for the three-state area of Minnesota, North and South Dakota will be held in Minneapolis on February 9, 10, 11, and 16.” A week later, eight winners would go as the Upper Midwest team to Chicago.
It was an event for which Parriott had nearly qualified as a boxer and would not be denied as a spectator. “I took my 1935 Ford coupe to Minneapolis with two friends, Charlie Dunnette and Chuckie Munson,” he said, “to see Raul win the Upper Midwest Championship.”
But in 1948 a major part of the sports public listened by way of the air waves. It meant spinning the radio dial. No pictures, just words for the imagination to work with. The new mass media kid in the game, a TV set, hardly reached beyond large cities.
People were accustomed to radio in the era when boxing was big. Joe Louis was heavyweight champion of the wWorld and often defended his title — 26 times between 1937 and 1949. His full record is 66-3-1 to 1952, with 52 knockouts. Louis had a Golden Gloves background, having “won the 175-pound class in 1934.” (GG History, 2012)
Minnesota had several pros in the fight game. Noted examples through the 1940s and ‘50s were brothers Del and Glen Flanagan of St. Paul, and Jackie Graves of Austin. All were world-ranked in the lower and middle weights. The Gibbons brothers, famous 40 years earlier and also from St. Paul, were Thomas and Michael.
“Del Flanagan was the best boxer in the world in his prime, he was so fast with his feet and his hands,” according Denny Nelson in the 2006 obituary. Del died at 75 in Arizona where he and his family raised Arabian horses. Nelson of St. Paul “refereed or judged 50 world championship bouts.”
“Flanagan’s highest ranking was No.2 [middleweight] during the 1950s, but he never got his title shot.” It’s an example of the unfair behavior for which the fight game was guilty. “Champions, aware of his skill and quickness, preferred to sidestep him in title bouts.”
One of Flanagan’s trainers, Bill Kaehn of Minneapolis, said, “He was a combination boxer and puncher. He had the ... thought process to make a great boxer ... the physical tools [and] the headwork that made it work ... a very smart fighter ...he didn’t want to bang up his hands, so he utilized his skills.” (September 2006 obituary)
The older but lighter half of the Fighting Flanagans was Glen, world-ranked at No.3 in 1952. He held “the Minnesota featherweight, lightweight, and welterweight titles and fought for the featherweight world championship ... in Boston [1952], losing a close 15 round decision to Tommy Collins.” When retired he had an insurance and real estate business and “ran for the city council of St. Paul.” (2010 boxing summary)
(To be continued)