Articles and media mentions of Torpedo Billy Murphy

bstract from: Decline of the tailor from Kiwis with gloves on: A History and Record Book of New Zealand Boxing by Brian O'Brien.

Murphy "hits the road"; brings the boxing booths to New Zealand.

Now installed as the Toast of the Golden Gate, and followed through the streets by admirers of all ages, Billy Murphy, champion of the world, decided that he'd take his prize back to New Zealand to show his family and friends before attempting to cash in on it. It was in July of1890, after he had defeated Tommy Warren, Tommy White and Eddie Greaney in four-round bouts,  that he finally sailed. for· Aotearoa, walking proudly down the gangplank at Auckland toa hero's welcome, resplendent in top hat, frock coat, and with the diamond belt draped across his shoulders.

Billy found, however, that during his absence practically all opposition had dried up, so he decided on a return visit to Australia before setting off again for the U.S., and this was a decision that was to prove disastrous. There, in Sydney on September 2, 1890, he put his title on the line against one Albert Griffiths for a stake of£200 put up by the Sydney Athletic Club. At least, Billy though the was placing his .title at stake, but the wily Americans, it seems, in those· times every bit a difficult to prise loose from their, world titles as they are today, no sooner had waved good-bye to Murphy from San Francisco than they had installed their own "world champion" in his stead, first Johnny Griffin, whom Murphy had routed in his first 'sensational appearance there, and then George Dixon; world bantamweight champion; laying claim to the title, Murphy, in their eyes, could not be the world champion any longer, for had he not quit the "world", as they knew it?

Nonetheless, the Sydney A.C. fight between Murphy and Young Griffo, as Albert Griffiths was better known, was a genuine title fight; a 20-rounder, it was, to be, under the new rules laid down by the Marquess of Queensberry, The only, reason Murphy staked his title for £200-a trifling figure even in an era of modest purses-'-was because the thought never entered his proud head that he was in the slightest danger at the hands of Griffo, a mere youth of nineteen at the time. What Billy may not have realised, however, was that the Australian was 'anything but a fistic babe in arms, for he had been fighting grown men in professional rings since he was only fifteen, and in forty-nine fights had not tasted defeat. What was more, his victims, even at such an early age, included English-born Abe Willis, the Australian bantamweight champion who soon was to fight Dixon for the world title.

Griffo, of course, later gained recognition-from posterity ~s one of the most brilliant defensive boxers of all time, a quick-thinking, fast-moving wraith of a fellow soon to show his class to the world at large by knocking out Ike Weir in three rounds and drawing with such immortals as George "Kid" Lavigne, George Dixon and Joe Gans, world champions all.

But all this was still to come, and for the Murphy fight, Griffo was a ,2-1 underdog with ringside bookmakers. The champion, what is more, sailed into the pale-skinned Griffo as though the £200 already was in his pocket. Griffo was down two or three times early on and the bookies were gleeful. But they reckoned without this precocious Sydney lad, who successfully contrived to weather this trans-Tasman storm by, shrewd Claiming. Holding and back-pedalling until finally it blew itself out.

With Murphy slowing down, Griffo began to peck away with an unerring left hand and evade the' champion's rushes so skilfully that sometimes a whole round would go by without· Murphy landing a scoring blow.

Eventually, Murphy became so exasperated at his failure to pin down the clever Sydneysider that, at the end of the fifteenth round, he doffed his gloves, hurled, them into the centre, of the ring, and quit in disgust. Later he declared that the gloves had been tampered with, but examination revealed that only horse-hair and not horseshoes had filled them. The gloves used were the regulation 4oz. mitts of the day.

From the Griffo defeat to ,the close of his long career, Billy Murphy accepted bouts against opponents ranging from the size of fox terriers his own breed, to that of bull elephants, by now having discarded any weight distinction and declared himself ready to fight any man in the game. But Billy lever again was serious threat to the crowned heads. He drew with Nipper Peakes at Melbourne, defeated Dummy Mace and Pat Carroll, who weighed I0st.3lb. and 10st.6lb respectively to Murphy's 8st.5lb., but in turn was outlasted and then knocked out in thirty rounds at Broken Hill by the punch-soaking Briton, "Ironbark" Jim Burge. Although Murphy had won practically every round up to the twenty fifth, fatigue, rather than any punishment Burge doled out, caused him to strike his flag. There was a sensational interlude in this bout when, during the course of the fifteenth round, an excited onlooker who objected to the way the referee Was running things, dashed into the ring and dropped the official!

A return bout with Burge lasted almost as long as the first one, and when police intervened during the twenty ninth punishing round, the referee declared for a draw. 

Murphy met Griffo a second time, but although on this occasion he kept a tighter rein on his feelings and did not allow frustration to send him stalking' from .the ring, once again the Australian won the fight. Before leaving Australia, Billy knocked out Bill Jennings, a middleweight, and Chris Cunningham, but himself fell in three rounds to Jim Barron perhaps the outstanding Australian lightweight of any generation.

In April of 1892 Murphy was back in the United States to find that although he still retained much of his old popularity, George Dillon, the clever Nova Scotian Negro also known as "Little Chocolate", had stepped up from the premiership of the world's bantamweights and was firmly ensconced as the champion feather-weight.

Murphy fought Johnny Murphy, boxing instructor at Harvard University, over forty gruelling rounds, after which the bout was stopped and declared drawn. Murphy, It transpired, had fought the last twenty five rounds, with another fractured bone in his right hand I Then there were thirty two more rounds with Tommy White, although this must have been chickenfeed 'to the American, who only two years before had gone a fantastic ninety one rounds with Dan Daly at Omaha. For the White fight, another in which no decision was rendered, 'Murphy received precisely nothing. It was a winner take-all arrangement; but as Murphy had undertaken to stop White, and failed, the local fighter got all of the 200-dollar stake. Although Ike Weir no longer held any claim to the title, Murphy jumped at. the' chance of a return, with the former Ulsterman at Boston on November 2, 1893, hut, in manoeuvring' for a position from which to launch his killing right, hook in the sixth round, he missed his mark, fell off the staging and returned to the ring to find that he'd been counted out.

This defeat, plus others by world champion George Dixon and Johnny Griffin; finally wrote Murphy off as a drawcard. Billy was now well into his thirties and it seemed that, the years of hard fights over long distances, so often against bigger men had taken their toll of the little man. The Auckland tailor unlike the boastful fellow in the Grimms’ tale, never quite got rid of seven with a single blow, but there - was one night in Cincinnati on which he dispatched three – Mike Crotty, Harry Dally and Joe Flink-straight off the reel.

Murphy's last fight in the States was in 1903-he had made two short-lived retirements before' 'that-and he left behind him a record of twenty-eight victories, seventeen defeats and eleven split bouts in his campaigns  there.

His final homecoming Was attended with nothing like the fanfare of trumpets that had greeted the conquering hero some thirteen years before; Though still claiming, at 40.plus; that he was the "best fist fighter in the world", Billy Murphy found it necessary to go on the road with a travelling troupe in order' to restore his fortunes. At the beginning he had twp Australians, Burroughs and Holloway, with him, but one night in Waitara he linked up with Charlie Cameron, a fellow  barnstormer  Murphy and Cameron became fast friends, experts,  indeed, at the old pastime of turning the "fast buck". They would hire halls and booths in various parts of the North Island and put on fistic exhibitions wherein Murphy would offer a few pounds out of the "take" to any local who could survive a stipulated time with either himself or his sparring partner. They popped up in various parts of Taranaki, the Waikato, over in the goldfields at Waihi, Coromandel and, Thames, from Waiapu to Whangarei, Kawakawa to Hikurangi in the far north.

Cameron, still a hale and hearty near-octogenarian living in retirement at Tauranga, told of his association with the old world champion when interviewed 'several years ago -by Allan Maxwell, who, as, "Punch", preceded the writer as boxing columnist with N.Z. Free Lance.   "I would not say,", Cameron told Maxwell, that if I had if I had my time over again I would link up with a fiery little fighting machine like Murphy, and travel the country lanes giving boxing sideshows. With the passing of time the glamour has considerably decreased and one could. never recapture the spirit of those days on .the trail that led through hush camps, mining villages' and gum fields, where pioneers of t4pse industries 'were still very much in the raw. Billy and I fought the toughest fellows among the miners and big footballers, the latter being very fit in the season. Though it fell to my lot to test the new chums, Murphy always stipulated that anyone beating me was in duty bound to have a bout with him.

"Though Billy and, I rarely had much money to boast about, we' generally had packed houses in the outbacks. The morning after a show we could usually jingle some silver but then we met such a bunch of grand fellows that we never left the town until necessity gave us no option but to walk to the next. "Fortunately, we never had much luggage. The main items were two sets of gloves, a punch bag-and Billy's gramophone. The old general was passionately fond of music, even if his ears didn't give one that impression.

At last, however, the New Zealand Boxing association interested itself in our doings, and asked the police why they were allowing two 'prize-fighters' to travel the country staging real fights and charging admission to see the brawls. We were summoned to Inglewood and the worst showing we bad ever put up happened in the courthouse before a magistrate. 'His Worship' was very fair, but neither Billy nor I got the decision. We were fined £1 or twenty-four hours in gaol. Billy, being' riled at the whole thing, frankly said he wouldn't pay the quid. As a matter of fact, I don't think we had one. Murphy said that he would take his gruel and 'do the time', but a chap in the body of the, court passed a hat round and the amount of the fine ,was forthcoming with enough over for a few drinks  - "It was then that my, days on the road with, 'Torpedo Billy' Murphy came to 'an end. The court case naturally put us out of 'business, and it was around 1908 that I took a job boxing butter in a factory, while Billy went into the clothes pressing and Cleaning business, with boxing classes as a sideline. When he opened shop, he, wrote and told me that he was 'taking, the wrinkles out of the blokes' clothing during the day and putting them in the blokes at night'. His sense of humour never deserted him. "Bill and I remained firm friends throughout the years. He neither drank nor smoked, attended church regularly and was, never known to swear ... a little man with a tremendous wallop but, best of all, an even bigger heart. "

Murphy's last recorded fight had peen at New Plymouth on August 8, 1907, when he knocked out Tom Toohey of Australia, whom he had brought over from Australia while on a brief visit there-some months previously; in the first, round. Murphy at the time was forty-seven years of age, Toohey only a little more than half that age. , As he grew older, Billy did not think much of the fighting men who followed in his wake. "Half of these present-day fighters," he once said, "haven't got their hearts in the game. All they are after is money, money, money! Money today is the king of the fighters. I fought because I wanted to fight and could not fight often enough. If you are in it for the money only, your heart is in your mouth always as you're scared of being hurt. In our day, the sport meant more to us…the love of the ring, the 'resin and the romantic figures. We don't get fighters today like them…the great Bob Fitzsimmons, John L. Sullivan, Peter Jackson and Jim Corbett, God bless their souls.

"The likes of that bunch don't appear any more. They belonged to my era, the era of great fighters and thrilling fights. Now, they merely cuddle and hug each other all night. Why don't they punch decently? And try to get them to fight the number of rounds we did for the kind of purses that were offered. Our money, if we made any at all, was from side-bets and if we lost we got nothing for our trouble. The biggest purse I. ever received was 2,200 dollars for winning the title from Weir."

Murphy always rated Tommy White and Terry McGovern as the greatest of all the lighter men, and Griffo the cleverest. "Griffo was the hardest man to beat I ever met'' he said "He had a perfect defence and was always dancing up to you, blocking your blows, and dancing away again after a punch or two of his own. "He had rare judgment and instinct, which are the two greatest assets a boxer can possess. You, can train a man for years and teach him all you know, but if he does not possess the natural judgment of timil1g and when to hit, he is only a second-rater:

" Like the great American humorist, Samuel Clemens ("Mark Twain") who While touring abroad once read reports from America of his death and promptly cabled the newspapers that such reports were "somewhat, exaggerated", Murphy had 'the unusual experience of reading his own obituary. This occurred in 1935, when Billy was in the hospital at Auckland recuperating from the effects of having been knocked down by a motorcycle.

Another patient whose name also was Murphy died about that time, and local newspapers prematurely announced, that the old world champion had passed on. The little tailor finally did hear the last gong in his Auckland hometown on July 26, 1939, during the last years of his life, he had lived in a little cottage outside which hung a sign boldly  stating: "Billy Murphy - Champion fighter of the, world . . . Champion clothes cleaner and presser of the world".

And who knows that, somewhere in the darkened little rooms, there did not lie a belt on which were inscribed the words, "Seven at one blow"?