BOXING S I M P L I F I E D BY J O H N J. W A L S H BOXING COACH UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF OTIS J. DYPWICK N E W Y O R K P B E N T I C E - HALL, I N C . 1951 PRENTICE-HALL BOOKS ON HEALTH AND SPORTS ELMER D. MITCHELL, EDITOR COPYRIGHT, 1951, BY PRENTICE-HALL, INC. 70 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM, BY MIMEOGRAPH OR ANY OTHER MEANS, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHERS. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Dedication To Leo Ryan and Joey Thomas, my first boxing trainers in Minneapolis; to George Barton, a great boxing writer and one of the grand men of sports who taught me the values of boxing; to Vern Woodward, my valued boxing associate; to all the superb boxing athletes against whom I have participated; to the fine young men I have coached at St. Thomas college, at the University of Wisconsin, on the 1948 United States Olympic team, and in the Marine Corps. To the many thousands of loyal, enthusiastic collegiate boxing fans of Wisconsin, and to our sportswriters who all shared in and made possible a successful boxing pro- gram at the University of Wisconsin. This book is dedicated to each of you for your all-important assistance. It is my sincere hope that this book will help make it possible for other coaches and boxers to enjoy the great sport of boxing and to benefit from it as fully and richly as I have. V The Author It was March 21, 1933, and the University of Wisconsin was engaging in its first intercollegiate boxing match. Its opponent was St. Thomas of St. Paul, and the coach of the St. Thomas team was a spindly kid with the face of a choir boy, who was a student there. The spindly kid who was handling St. Thomas was John J. Walsh, and the way he handled that team con- vinced the late George Downer that he was just the man Wisconsin needed. Downer, a former Milwaukee sports editor who had taken over as director of athletic publicity at Wisconsin, had a deep interest in boxing, and he had much to do with promoting the sport. Walsh came to Wisconsin as head boxing coach in 1934, and some of the boys he coached were older than he was. But Walsh was one of those natural teachers, a genial, friendly fellow who still could command the respect of his pupils. Not only could he command their respect, he had the knack of keeping them interested, and he had the ability to impart his knowledge to them. The result has been a happy one for Walsh and for the University of Wisconsin. He received his law degree from the university and is a successful and respected practicing attorney. Furthermore, he is the most successful boxing coach in college history. vii THE AUTHOR Successful? Take a look at a few of his accomplishments: There have been 13 National Collegiate Athletic Associ- ation (N. C. A. A.) tournaments, and Wisconsin has won the team championship in five of the 10 meets it entered. Wisconsin has won 24 individual championships, eight more than the next closest school. Walsh's 1943 team won five of the eight N. C. A. A. individual championships in 1943 and won four out of eight in 1939 and 1942; no other school has ever won more than three in any one tournament. Of the 17 teams he has coached at Wisconsin—he was with the Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater for a time in World War II—nine have gone through a dual meet season undefeated and untied, and three others had records marred only by a tie. His 1938-39-40 teams ran up a string of 18 straight vic- tories; following a defeat in 1940, Walsh's Badger teams of 1940-41-42-43-44 ran up a string of 24 straight triumphs. That was bettered when his 1946-47-48-49 teams chalked up 26 straight victories. Bespeaking the popularity of Walsh's Wisconsin boxing teams is the fact that they have drawn as high as 70,200 for five matches at home, that Wisconsin has broken all attendance records upon the four occasions that it has been host to the N. C. A. A. tournament, the all-time mark of 59,800 being set in 1948. He was co-coach of the 1948 United States Olympic boxing team. He has been identified with many of the safety factors that have been introduced into intercollegiate boxing. viii THE AUTHOR That's a capsule history of the fellow who first saw the University of Wisconsin as the undergraduate coach of a team that met the Badgers in their first intercollegiate match. The association of Wisconsin and Walsh has been mutually happy. HENRY J. MCCORMICK, State Journal Sports Editor. ix Foreword Devoted as I am to popularizing amateur boxing and to improving the caliber of this particularly desirable competitive sport, I am highly enthusiastic over John Walsh's boxing instruction book. No one in the United States today can equal John's record as an amateur boxer and a coach. He is highly regarded as a sportsman. Before turning to coaching and the practice of law John was one of the most successful college and Golden Gloves boxers the sport has ever known. The soundness of his instruction is impressively at- tested to by the feats of his University of Wisconsin boxing team in going nine years without loss to a collegiate rival in a dual meet. In this book John sets forth clearly and concisely the principles of successful boxing just as he has imparted them for years to boxing classes, members of his fabulously successful Wisconsin team, and United States Olympic Team boxers whom he has coached. These pages are commendably free of unproven theory. Everything ex- pounded by John is based on long-proven fact. This book will prove a tremendous aid to boxers and coaches alike. I am particularly enthusiastic about the manner in which John dispels quaint and absurd miscon- ceptions about amateur boxing. This book is not only xi