Articles and media mentions of Torpedo Billy Murphy

bstract from: Seven at one blow from Kiwis with gloves on: A History and Record Book of New Zealand Boxing by Brian O'Brien.

One of the best known tales told by the Brothers Grimm concerned the little tailor who; after, swatting seven flies with a single stroke, made himself a belt on which he printed the words, "Seven at one blow", then toured the world allowing all to believe that he actually had slain seven men with solitary stroke.

There is, however, another story about a true-to-life tailor who also went abroad and proclaimed to the world that he was the, greatest fighter in it. The only difference was that this Flesh and blood tailor really did annihilate men and not flies, and if he didn't wreak destruction with sword or shot, he was little less devastating with a bony little fist encased in a thinly-padded leather glove.

Our peregrinating tailor of modern times was Thomas William Murphy, a pint-sized but incredibly tough and fight mad Aucklander who, seventy years ago, by knocking out Ike Weir in the United States" became the only born and bred New Zealander to win a world professional boxing championship.

"Torpedo Billy" Murphy, or, to Americans who have always had difficulty with those 1,400 miles separating Australia from New Zealand, "Australian Billy", was a skinny little fellow of  poor physique, never more than a few pounds over 8 stone. Yet he is still looked upon as being one of the heaviest punchers for his weight whoever entered a boxing ring.

Long before Billy left New Zealand for greener pastures, his wicked right hand had earned him yet another sobriquet-"Little Dynamite", He thought nothing of giving away alarming chunks of weight in fight after fight while he possessed this great leveller, and in the twilight of his astonishing career, when long past forty years of age, he actually knocked out Walter Doman, a 15-stone heavyweight, in one round at Stratford!

Murphy was every bit as great a "character” as he was a pugilist, for besides his lightning speed, awesome punch and innate ring cunning, he had a colossal store of self confidence and never saw himself as the inferior of any man-from John L. Sullivan downward I Even when be was a white haired, grizzled (though still straight. backed) old timer of more than sixty, Murphy still used to hound officials' of the Auckland Boxing Association seeking fights he flatly refused to entertain the notion that he couldn't hold his own' against most of the young 'uns.

The record books list the year of Billy Murphy's birth as 1863, but Billy always asserted that he'd already been around for more than three years by that time.

If the old saying about the tailor being the ninth part of a man means·' anything, then it would have taken about fifteen. Billy Murphy’s to have made a full sized clothes builder, for Billy, in his youth, was a sickly lad whose pale face and slight figure inevitably' made him the target of abuse from boys better endowed physically. But the little bloke was nobody's easy mark and he fought all who jibed at his apparent frailness, eventually developing into a wiry belligerent little battler who went looking for a fight when none was readily forthcoming.

His pugnacity began to be a source of concern to his parents, more so when, after being called before his schoolmaster and severely reprimanded for thrashing an older boy, Billy also laid into the teacher with tiny but rock hard hailing fists. Expulsion followed, of course, after which the Murphys finally gave up hope of ever making a model schoolboy of little Thomas William and apprenticed him to the tailoring trade at only twelve.

By now, however, Murphy was ruled by one passion he wanted to be a fighter-and although he had never had a boxing lesson in his life, his entry into professional boxing was as certain as Monday following Sunday. Billy, thin but hard and sharp as the needle, of his trade, faced one Jack O'Meagher with bare knuckles in a paddock at Auckland in his first recorded fight. This was in 1885 and Billy torpedoed Jack in forty five minutes of a fight to the finish, no rounds.

In those pioneering days, one merely found oneself an opponent, hired a hall or paddock, had some friend stand at the gate or door with upturned, hat to receive the offerings of the fancy, and went to it. Later it became mandatory to have a police officer in attendance, although it does not seem that there was any necessity for said arm of the law to maintain a strictly impartial front. For example, when Jack Chase boxed Harry Harvey at Hokitika in the nineties, the proceedings .opened with the local sergeant of police announcing that this was to be a boxing contest-not a fight-and that he was there to see that they did box. Upon which the sergeant, leaving the ring, said, to Chase, "Now knock his bloody head off, Jack!”

The records indicate that Murphy did not lose any fight in New Zealand before proceeding abroad, but the records err in respect of the quaintly-named Isaiah Fake, who defeated Billy but, perhaps because of the unsatisfactory nature of the fight's conclusion, does not appear to have been given credit for his rare feat.

Fake, a mettlesome opponent and anything but what his unusual surname might have suggested, fought Murphy not long before "Little Dynamite" was scheduled to sail for Australia. The venue was the old Military Hall in Maginnity Street, Wellington, and Murphy was disqualified by referee George Cloake in the third round for biting Fake's shoulder!

There were no gum shields in those times, nor mouth guards of any description, and Ike, who later married my paternal grandfather's sister, for many years after the Murphy affair was a proud and frequent  exhibitor of "the teeth marks of the world's greatest fighter". It was rather like shaking the hand that hook the hand of John L. Sullivan.

Ike Fake, by the way, was to become the best-known builder in the Manawatu and will be remembered by the old brigade as a leading referee in the early years of the New Zealand Boxing Association, a foundation member of the Manawatu association, and a selector of New Zealand teams competing in the Australasian amateur championships of the time.

Billy Murphy crossed the Tasman in 1887 and secured a tailoring position with the firm of David Jones Ltd, Sydney. In his free time, he visited Larry Foley's boxing academy at the White Horse Hall, where he, pleased Foley in a tryout ,and obtained a matching against Will "Brummy" Fuller. Winning in the thirteenth round, the New Zealander then was pitted against one "Deerfoot”, whose real name has been swallowed up in the mists of time. "Deerfoot", it seems, was so named because of his habit of hopping and skipping around the ring, and his considerable speed while fighting mainly on the retreat.

Both men used the same dressing-room while preparing for the fight and, not, surprisingly, became quite friendly. The result was a mutual agreement to “go easy” on one another and share the money. But wily old Foley himself, promoter of the fight, was strolling past the "dressing-room'" merely a part of the White Horse Hall partitioned off by a canvas "wall", and overheard the two plotters arranging their "fix". He said nothing but later, while the pair were in their respective corners awaiting the commencement of the bout, Foley went to “Deerfoot’s” corner and whispered in his ear, "I just overheard Mr Murphy say that he is going to knock you flat as soon as he can.

“Deerfoot" glanced furiously across the ring at Murphy, just then also being quietly ,told by Foley that his opponent was going to knock him over in jig time. Murphy's brows contracted and his sharp features assumed a black look that boded ill for the “double-crosser”, in the opposite corner.

As one may gather, it was one whale of a contest while it lasted. At the bell, "Torpedo Billy" simply flew across the ring in, his haste to wreak vengeance on an equally Furious "Deerfoot" the latter forgetting all about his fancy defensive moves and slugging it out with the Aucklander. This, of course, amounted to, suicide and Murphy wonin round three. History does not record whether Larry Foley ever told the fighters of his little deception to avoid deception.

Murphy was a prime favourite at the White Horse, where he put paid to a string of their opponents-Sam Stewart, held to be the best bare-knuckle pugilist in all New South Wales, Frisco McCaul, Jim Mulholland, Bert Johnson and Frank King et al. He was beaten by a visiting American, John L. Herget, who boxed as Young Mitchell in order to avoid embarrassing an upper class family in San Francisco, where he later became a City father. 'Mitchell, a stone heavier than Murphy, undertook 10 knock him out in eight rounds or concede the fight. He trapped the little tailor in the fifth.

Finding it impossible now to entice men of his own weight into the same ring, Murphy decided to, show, them up by taking on a heavyweight I , Nor d}d he handpick his heavyweight, for Harry Laing, a compatriot who hailed from Wanganui, was good enough later to whip Joe Goddard for the Australian heavy weight championship. The weights were: Laing, 13st.; Murphy, 8st. 3lb. The small man absolutely astounded onlookers when he dropped, the big'un with a left rip to the solar plexus, Fitzsimmons style, in the very first round. Laing was taken by surprise and was humiliated. He clambered to his feet and set off after Billy, cutting .thin air with ponderous swings. Weight, in such quantities, finally told the tale ,and with Murphy really up against it in the third round of this unequal match, the referee intervened and, in the custom of the time with such fights against odds, declared a 'draw. '

Soon after the Laing affair, Murphy knocked out Roy Brook in one minute and, delighted with  himself, walked up to Larry Foley, hand outstretched for his sovereign.

"No you don't," said bewhiskered Larry. "You made that too easy. There's another man here for you to beat."

As Foley was a one-man monopoly in Sydney boxing at the time, the' chagrined Murphy had no recourse but to climb straight back into the ring and tackle a second opponent, Ed Parker. The wildcat from New Zealand bowled Parker over in the third round and this time Foley paid up.

Jim Ford, Harry Saxon, Fred Bruce, Charlie Allen and a string of other opponents of varying degrees of skill fell to Murphy, who then boxed a so-called exhibition with Jack Hall, an English immigrant who was regarded as Australia's first lightweight champion, A clever display of fistic science was provided until Hall, who weighed nearly 10 stone to Murphy's eight-and-a-bit, began to punish Billy with heavy blows about the head in a manner not usually associated with exhibition spars. Murphy thereupon broke free and faced the onlookers. "Gentlemen," he panted, "I don't mind having a light spar for Inn, but I strenuously object to fighting for nothing.

" It was in November, 1888, after Murphy had suffered again at the hands of a much bigger man-in this case Ben Seth, another accomplished visitor from Britain-,-that he' realised the futility of giving: away weight and height fur "peanuts" in Sydney. "I had 'fought," he said, "everyone of note in 'New Zealand and. Australia, until finally it was impossible to get opponents any where 'near' my own size;

"Why don't you go to America and have a try for the real money" a steward on' a Pacific passenger vessel advised me, and I took the hint; I was then in my twenties, full of ambition, so I arranged with the steward to work my way from Auckland to San Francisco on the Zealandia. I landed in that city and straight away went to the California' Athletic Club, where I was made welcome and arrangements put in train for me to go into training across the bay.  

'There was a big fight coming off about that time and the principal attraction was Johnny Griffin, the great Boston fighter. At the last moment, Griffin's opponent could not make an appearance and in desperation the California club officials asked me, a 'Johnny-on-the-spot', if I would take his place. Needless to say I grabbed the chance. Many successes are built oh such unexpected opportunities as these.

"But you're out of training," my trainer protested. "You've just been on the boat for three weeks."' "Just bring him on," I said, "I'll lick him." Going across on the ferry the night of the light, big George La Blanche, the 'pivot puncher' who soon afterwards was to knock out the world middleweight champion, 'Nonpareil' Jack Dempsey, said to me quite seriously: 'Murphy, you're a stranger here. This Griffin is one of the best we have and I’m telling you he'll kill you tonight.’

“Just bring him on,' I repeated to him, too. ‘I’ll 'lick him.'

"I know La Blanche and the others merely thought I was a braggart who was in for a real awakening, but they changed their minds when I knocked Griffin out in the third round. I can see him crashing now, his head hitting the canvas first. He was a great lighter but his style was easy for me."

The Griffin fight was on July 12, 1889, live weeks after Billy, had arrived in California. Eighteen days later he fought Frank Murphy of England in the slime ring and this drawn bout lasted into the twenty-seventh round, although Billy early on had broken bones in both hands and· Frank sprained a wrist. The bout was called off because Of the injuries sustained by both men and was to have been continued the day after. Although the bone in his broken right forearm protruded through the flesh, "Little Dynamite" duly appeared .on the morrow, both arms· in splints, and professed his readiness to carry' on where he had left off. Fortunately for both battlers, Frank Murphy was not so Foolhardy-he did not arrive and the pair never again came to grips.

Of necessity, Billy was out of the game for some months while his shattered bones were reknit, but on his return to the lists he found that, far from his performances against Griffin and Murphy having been forgotten, they had catapulted .him into the position of a leading contender Eor the world title, and the C.A.C, offered suitable terms to both champion and challenger for a bout at San Francisco on January 13, 1890.

Ike O'Neill Weir, the long, armed "Belfast Spider", was the holder of the crown. At twenty-two, Weir was Seven years younger than the New Zealander who sought his scalp. Born at Lurgan, near Belfast, in 1867, he had made his lighting name at Manchester while still a 'teenaged youth, and had settled in the U.S. four years before Billy Murphy began hammering on his door.

In twenty-one fights in American rings, Weir was undefeated, and just a few months before had won his world title. A delightful personality and most versatile fellow all round, Weir, besides being a remarkably clever boxer, was a good jockey and crack Irish traditional dancer. He was exceptionally quick and a fine showman to boot. Often during a contest he would enliven proceedings by indulging in a sand-jig, horn-pipe or somersault. Murphy, at 8st. 6lb. (he still could have fought as a bantam weight) and Weir, 8st. 12lb., fought for a prize of 2,250 dollars and the handsome, diamond-studded Richard K. Fox Belt.

Weir straightaway went into his unsettling act. Employing all the monkey tricks for which he was famed, the "Spider" ducked and dived about the ring, jigged, somersaulted, and even ran round behind Murphy and kneed him in the buttocks; in short, he did all he possibly could to rile the New Zealander and succeeded Billy, infuriated, hit out blindly, with Weir evading the blows as they whistled past his head and bouncing back like lightning with stinging counters to Murphy's face. Murphy did not quite know what he had struck and the harder he tried to pin down the will-o'-the-wisp Irishman the less success he had.

The champion continually "guyed" Murphy by calling him unsavoury names, but when, in an early round, after a ,particularly biting epithet had been hurled at him, Murphy rushed in with a wild, long-range right, Weir brought him to his knees with a cracking left hook. It was a one-way show as Weir continued to jig his way out of Billy's reach, laughing at him all the time but not neglecting to pick up points with his quick-handed counters.

It was in the eighth round that Murphy, hopelessly behind on points, began to find Weir a little less certain in evading his rushes, but even then Billy received a terrific crack on the jaw in that very same round which sent him reeling as the bell sounded.

The thirteenth round was the thriller of the year. Murphy came up for it apparently with no chance of winning, but he fought with a savage desperation which began to cause misgivings in the opposing camp, now long since finished with the caperings had settled down to the task of finishing off this persistent and durable little stranger from an unknown land.

Then it happened. A murderous right swing caught Weir on the side of the face and spun him like a top. Murphy, sensing that victory, for the first and perhaps the last time, was peering in his window, stayed close to the champion and clipped him with a succession of lusty blows, with both hands. Weir went down as the crowd rose up, roaring. He climbed back on to infirm legs, only to be sent tumbling four more times. Both men were nearing the end, of their tethers as they trod heavily out into the centre for the fourteenth round, but the signals were now up, the signs were in the sky. Murphy led, Weir fell short with the counter, and before he could regain balance "Torpedo Billy" Murphy had relieved him of the world featherweight champion ship with a heavyweight-sized tight flush on the chin. The referee counted off ten seconds… it might as well have been one hundred and ten.