Word: molineaux
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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First U.S. prizefighter to compete for the world's heavyweight championship was a Negro named Tom Molineaux. A Virginia slave whose master freed him for knocking out the bully of a neighboring plantation, Molineaux went to England in 1810, fought famed Tom Cribb, gave him a severe thrashing for 30 rounds. In the 31st round, Molineaux fractured his skull against a ring post, lost the fight. Cribb beat him again before a crowd of 40,000 in 1811. The black fisticuffer was found dead in an Irish army barracks...
Last week the business of avenging the sad affair of Tom Molineaux fell to his great-great-grandnephew, John Henry Lewis, a coffee-colored 21-year-old from Phoenix, Ariz., who is currently light-heavyweight champion of the world. Lewis' opponent in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden was the first Englishman in the past decade deemed worthy of a chance to win such an important title, a tubby-looking, determined young Lancashireman named Jock McAvoy, billed as middleweight and light-heavyweight champion of the British Empire...
Great-Great-Granduncle Tom Molineaux, a brother of John Henry Lewis' great-great-grandfather, was by no means the only fighter in his descendants' lineage. John Henry Lewis inherited his profession more directly from a grandfather, who was a heavyweight, his father, who was a featherweight. Two brothers are also prizefighters. Practicing his profession, Lewis' father migrated from Ohio to Los Angeles, trekked back to Phoenix, Ariz., where he opened a gymnasium and taught boxing. John Henry Lewis was ready to enter his father's business at 16. He did so without the preface, customary...