Not Sure What To Call This Thread

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Originally Posted by Waltercito

Just wanted to say that I found a Walter Wazal Jr. (1945-2018) on Find a Grave. He was from San Diego, CA, though. I did NOT find any match for the name "Wazel".


So I tend to think Wazal is the correct spelling.

Agree, Finished going through 1936 amateur career and things in the summaries I'll post next I feel Wazal is correct as BoxRec has it. Just for whatever reasons, the papers were interchanging using also the Wazel spelling.

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Stream lining these posts removing all the bio info I end up putting in the fighters file. shorten the length of his thread that I felt was getting TO LONG for anyone to delve through!

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Instead of scrambling through tons of papers at one time to unearth several fights, I though it might be entertaining to look at Wazal's pro career one fight at a time. See what I can unearth and at the same time look a bit at his opponent. See what I can find relatively quick without spending a whole lot of time on the opponent's full career, especially if it's lengthy like Dom Labbe's is So I looked up quick what general bio I could find on Labbe, which I was happy to find a fair amount which I'll share with you here also along with a quick rating file for him and a couple photos found. The rating I did a fairly quick play testing of, but it will I'm sure need refinement.

So here is Walter Wazal's first pro fight results from several sources found..
Fri, Jan 01, 1937, Portland Press Herald, Maine - Fight card where Dom Labbe, Lewiston is to battle Henry Johnson, Lawrence, Mass in 6 rounds. Result articles on Jan 02 note Labbe fought Walter Wazal an apparent last minute replacement.

Fri, Jan 01, 1937 Evening Press, Portland, Maine - Prefight article notes boxing card talking place at the Exposition Building, Portland with Labbe meeting Johnson for six rounds.

Sat, Jan 02, 1937, Fitchburg Sentinel, Mass. - Short paragraph account of Walter Wazal of Fitchburg defeating Don Labbe of Lewiston in 22 seconds in Portland, Maine Friday night. Says it was a scheduled 8 round fight but all other accounts say 6 rounds.

Sat, Jan 02, 1937, Evening Express, Portland, Maine notes that Walter Wazil, southpaw from the Boston area knocked out Dom Labbe of Lewiston in 22 seconds with Labbe getting thrown off guard by the the southpaw deliveries.

Sat, Jan 02, 1937 Lewiston Daily Sun, Maine and the Sun-Journal, Lewiston, Maine, listed their fight weights at Labbe, 161 and Wazil 163. It says the fight was scheduled for 6 rounds which is what BoxRec notes under the Walter Watzel file.

Sat, Jan 02, 1937, Portland Press Herald, Maine - Headline: "Labbe Wants Wazil Again", Note some use of the spelling Wazil. Had to search Labbe to find these records. Article notes in that that Wazil's manager, Jimmy Harvey claimed Wazil had 75 knockouts as an amateur with 14 in a row at one time. Said, the Labbe fight was Wazil's first professional fight.
Wazal Career Record: W1(KO 1) / L0(KO 0) / D0

Here is a little bit on Dom Labbe - MW 1932-1939
Career Record: W43(KO 41) / L8(KO 7) / D5
With Newspaper Decisions: W74(KO 41) / L19(KO 7) / D15 / NC2

Birth Name: Dominique A. Labbe

Find a Grave Info:
Date Of Birth 10 July 1908 Lewiston, Androscoggin County, Maine
Date of Death 22 June 1985 Lewiston, Androscoggin County, Maine
Burial: Saint Peter's Cemetery, Lewiston, Androscoggin County, Main
Spouse: Georgette Cecilia (Turcotte) Labbe 1910-1986 (m. 1964)

Noted in BoxRec: Brother of fellow boxers Paul Junior(Paul Labbe Jr), K.O. Labbe and Baby Jack Renault (Jack Labbe)

Mon, Sep 23, 1946, Porland Press Herald, Maine - Obituary found announcing the death of Achille P. Labbe, 81. He was a former boxer and had four sons who were boxers also. He died on Sunday. He was a native of St. Frederic, Quebec and lived in Lewiston for 39 years after living in Augusta and Manchester N.H. He was a father of 19 childern! 14 were surving at his death. His childern as mentioned included four boxer, they were Achille Paul (Paul Junior), Liniere (Jack Renaud), Arthur (K.O. Labbe) and Dominique who boxed as Dom Labbe.

Third Photo is Wazal, first two are Labbe.

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Howdy on this rainy Sunday in Georgia, USA!

I'm going through fight logs on BoxRec for Hal Thomas and John Henry Johnson, Walter Wazal's 2nd professional fight (First on the current Walter Wazal BoxRec log). Both of these fight logs for Thomas and Johnson are not very long so I'm taking some time to look through both to see which may be the real name and which the alias. I thought at first Hal Thomas being the real name because right now it's fight under that name that are the earliest ones I'm finding in the papers. But some newspaper comments in the first month of 1937 are beginning to make me feel John Henry Johnson may be the "real name" maybe Henry Johnson and Hal Thomas is the alias.

Stay tuned......
Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Still working on Hal/Harry Thomas or John Henry Johnson. Getting near through all the fights I think. Haven't quit on it.

Been seeing a lot of this Arena. I was pleased to see there was a Venue file in by data base. I've filled in a bit of missing info and have included here a couple photos on wiki site on it and if you web search there's a fair amount of into on it. Has quite a boxing history to it.

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Ok, Attached is a file for one, Hal Thomas MW, Alias John Henry Johnson and possibly Harry Thomas. Found different fight records on BoxRec under all these names. When Wazal fought him he was going by John Henry Johnson. The fights I researched between these three fighter names and actually a fourth one in BoxRec, John Johnson, starts out as Hal Thomas. So that's what I'm calling him.

The Bio notes is lengthly. with different comments to show how the names appear to link to each other as being one person. You can agree or not with that. It all adds up to a not very good Middleweight.

Never found a photo of him.

Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Walter Wazal's next fight combining the Wazal / Watzel versions on BoxRec as I'm doing for Walter, is again Dom Labbe so we'll be looking at his fourth opponent, Vincenzo Troiano coming up next.

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Started looking into Troiano and his story starts back in 1934 actually. Interesting start some of what I've found. Here's some bio info on Troiano and the beginning of his career in the US with his first two fights. first fight against a Chris de Rosa, Boxrec presents de Rosa as DeRossier? Have not found where that's come from. A little look into Chris found accounts spelling it as DeRosier but also De Rosa also back in 1930 with his first fight account. All just more name spelling confusion!

Some initial Troiano info thought you'd find interesting....

Date of Death: 1992-07-08 (Age: 82) listed in BoxRec.
Find a Grave Places his Date of Birth as Dec 13, 1909
Notes his full name as: Vincenzo Nicolo "Vincent" Troiano
A picture of his Burial stone shows Vincent N. 1909-1992 and Lucri Nappy 1912-1983
There is also a photo of Vincenzo showing him full length in his boxing garb and has some gentleman in a suit standing next to him. This photo, there is the headshot posted on BoxRec, guessing came from this photo?

Will be getting Troiano done I hope soon to then post complete record.
Stream lining these posts removing all the bio info I end up putting in the fighters file. shorten the length of his thread that I felt was getting TO LONG for anyone to delve through!

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Stream lining these posts removing all the bio info I end up putting in the fighters file. shorten the length of his thread that I felt was getting TO LONG for anyone to delve through!

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Ran across this nice article in the Portland Press Herald on Mar 31, 1935 which runs a good biography of Vincenzio from his early days in Italy up to a present moving to Portland, Maine to visit family there and begin renewed training leaving New York where he'd failed pretty bad in his early career in America.

Sun, Mar 31, 1935, Portland Press Herald, Maine - Nice introductory article on Vincenze Troiano who'd come recently to visit with relatives in Portland and take up training at the Porland Athletic Club with hopes to restart his career which was going no where while he was in New York with the management there. Before he started his training at the PAC, he had a nasal operation but then started his new training after that. This article notes that Troiano was born December 13, 1909 in the town, Manfredonia, Italy. At 14 his brother died and he left school to help support his mother who was widowed along with three younger brothers and two sisters. Then living in Naples, in 1926 his mother died and now Vincenzo was head of the family! He took up working at an electrical supply and equipment manufacturer and while there began boxing training in between working at the factory and tending to his family. In 1930 at the age of 20 he won the amateur championship of Naples and later finished his amateur career as title champion of all Italy. He fought a total of 74 bouts in three years. From 1932 to 1934 he took part in 25 professional bouts loosing one decision to an Abel Arcote, ex champion of France. Vincenzo was W23 / L0 / D2 in those bouts. Money he won from these bouts he used to help him on his voyage to America.

[Rocco Del Sesto]

So I've gone through a removed a lot of posted information that ends up in the TB file for the fighter anyway. Hope to make the following of this thread cleaner both for you all and anyone looking at and Myself!

Found I was starting to loose track what I've done with these long posts stringing this out to so many pages already!

Please excuse this housecleaning. If I do see something like the last post I just did for Troiano's back ground that I found very interesting and confirm the DOB, I'll still may post something even though it still ends up in the player file Bio Notes. Just not going to post all these fight summaries. I began to feel and thinking maybe you all would find it very needless redundancy!
Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

I came across something looking at the listed fight for Vincenzo Troiano on 4/12/1935 listed in BoxRec as against a Mike McGovern. This is the only fight listed for this McGovern. All the newspaper articles I found for this fight with Troiano say Vincenzo's opponent if MIke McGowan. I as yet found no over accounts for this McGowan before earlier in 1935 and back into 1934? What I did find is this Mike McGovern who is another middleweight from out in California which BoxRec has his record listed. To add to your Middleweight fighters, i created Mike McGowan with the BoxRec ID# for the lone fight record against Troiano. BoxRec I believe should change this record to Mike McGowan.
The McGovern fighter is the one listed in BoxRec from California and I actually ran across a photo of him in a paper. So that was cool to find without a whole lot of searching.

Mike McGowan - MW - Cambridge Mass. ID# 447515
Career Record: W0(KO 0) / L1(KO 0) / L0

Mike McGovern - MW - Oakland, CA. ID# 179919
Career Record: W2(KO 0) / L5(KO 4) / D3

[Cap]

What about this Mike McGowan?

https://boxrec.com/en/box-pro/124653

Cap

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Originally Posted by Cap

What about this Mike McGowan?

https://boxrec.com/en/box-pro/124653

Cap

Seems like I came across this chap in some articles but I discounted him being the Mike McGowan who fought Troiano. Was from Canada, Nova Scotia maybe? Later articles I think noted him fighting heavyweight.

But, might be worth I double check this a little bit, see if I can find something to confirm he's not the McGowan in question.

Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Originally Posted by Cap

What about this Mike McGowan?

https://boxrec.com/en/box-pro/124653

Cap

Cap, think you do have it right that our Mike McGowan who fought Vincenzo Troiano looks to be MIke McGowan in BoxRec ID#124653.

Doing some more looking around the early 1935 dates and the April papers covering the McGowan vs Troiano meeting, I ran across one that I somehow missed before.

FRi April 19, 1935 in The News, Paterson, New Jersey - They ran a short account of the McGowan vs Troiano fight. Thi writer of the article says their paper got word from Portland, Maine, about Troiano from Portland outpointing Mike McGowan of Cambridge, Massachussetts. This short account ends with the following...."The name McGowan may not mean much to you, but perhaps you'll recall the monicker he fought under, Prince Alexander." The alias BoxRec notes with this Mike McGowan, ID 124653!

So, change the Troiano BoxRec file to show that Mike McGovern bout on 4/12 be with this Mike McGowan and then add the Troiano fight to this McGowan record. Based on that, I'm going to redo that Mike McGowan I did with the Prince Alexander fighter!
Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

The only thing seems strange with this Mike McGowan Alias Prince Alexander fighter being our Troiano opponent are the dates and current listing of fights for this McGowan.

BoxRec lists two fights for him in January and November 1934 in Bermuda then no other fights till April 1936 with two fights in 1936 and two in 1937, all in Bermuda. Would this guy have Gone to Bermuda to fight, then Back to Maine in 1935 and then back again to Bermuda?!?

I'll do some more digging into that maybe before we cast the final vote this is the correct McGowan opponent of Troiano.

Rocco

[Waltercito]

Originally Posted by Rocco Del Sesto

The only thing seems strange with this Mike McGowan Alias Prince Alexander fighter being our Troiano opponent are the dates and current listing of fights for this McGowan.

BoxRec lists two fights for him in January and November 1934 in Bermuda then no other fights till April 1936 with two fights in 1936 and two in 1937, all in Bermuda. Would this guy have Gone to Bermuda to fight, then Back to Maine in 1935 and then back again to Bermuda?!?

I'll do some more digging into that maybe before we cast the final vote this is the correct McGowan opponent of Troiano.

Rocco

In his boxrec is listed one single fight in Bermuda in 1931, though (agianst Paulie Sykes). Or this was a different guy entirely, or maybe he DID go back and forth sevral times? How plausible is this?

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Originally Posted by Waltercito

In his boxrec is listed one single fight in Bermuda in 1931, though (agianst Paulie Sykes). Or this was a different guy entirely, or maybe he DID go back and forth sevral times? How plausible is this?

I'm going through this McGowan's career as we see on Boxrec right now to look at it. I found something that points to that he had or was different times in Bermuda. I don't have a whole lot more to go through. Unfortunately I'm not finding much of anything at all on Newspapers.com of the fights in Bermuda. Don't know where BoxRec got them.

Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

This gentleman, I came across looking through Mike McGowan's career in the papers. I came across a fight between these two that BoxRec does not have on McGowan's record. Looking seen that this Dempsey was in BoxRec. Dug up some new info on him. I looked at just a small handful of his fights around when he met McGowan just to help figure out who he was. Made up a TB file for him then. Added a few Bio Notes just on what I looked at. Could do more digging later on more of his career.

Here s is a bit of his Bio I dug up and from BoxRec. There's a bit more on some of those fights I looked for in the file Notes.

Young Jack Dempsey - MW 1930-40
Career Record:: W32(KO 23) / L37(KO 24) / D2, NC1

TITLES:
USA Maine State Heavyweight 1938

Birth Name on BoxRec: Stewart Eastman McEachern
Alias Stewart McEachern

Found in Find A Grave:
Stewart Eastman McEachern
Born: 7 Apr 1913 Auburn, Androscoggin County, Maine
Death: 28 Aug 2002 Portland, Cumberland County, Maine
Tombstone shows his wife, June J. McLaughlin 1913-1980

Thu, Aug 29, 2002, Portland Press Herald, Maine- Obituary for Stewart E. "Jack" McEachern, 89. Formerly of Deering Pavilion, died Wednesday, August 28, 2002 at St. Joseph's Manor in Portland. Says he was born in Woolwich, son of Edward and Sarah (McIntire) McEachern and educated in Woolwich schools. It mentions that McEachern was State of Maine Heavyweight Boxing Champion, employed later as an electrician in the shipbuilding industry. His Wife, Laurena McEachern had passed away on August 27, 2000.
The Wife's name here contradicts what is shown on that Tombstone image on Find a Grave?

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Found Jeff West mentioned in an article in April 1933 where I found for Prince Alexander mentioned in discussion of a boxing match. So in that approximate 6 month period between the 2nd Al McCoy fight and early July when he meets Hans Mueller in Paterson, NJ, Mike McGowan apparently took up the Prince Alexander moniker.

Following is all I've looked into for Jeff West. Another interesting one to maybe dig more into his record. Another nice little nugget to add to your database.

Jeff West - WW 1930-1934
Career Record: W14(KO 3) / L4(KO 0) / D0

Unknown information has been left blank.

Mon, Mar 10, 1986, North Jersey Herald and News, Passaic, NJ - Obituary for Jeff West. Mentions he was the first trainer of Livingstone Bramble who was at this time the current lightweight champion of the WBA, Died at age 79.
Says he was born in Cochran, Georgia and resided in Passaic for the past 70 years. Does not give a Date of birth, but age of 79 gives an estimated DOB of 1907.


Wed, Apr 19, 1933, Times Union, Brooklyn, NY - At Plainfield, N.J. Armando Santiago, 145, Cuba won a five round decision over Jeff West, 150, Passaic, NJ.

Sat, Apr 22, 1933, The Herald-News, Passaic, New Jersey - First article found mentioning the fighter Prince Alexander, Chief PrApr 1933Apr 1933ince Alexander to be exact who was Mike McGowan, alias Al Nelson when fighting out of Bangor, Maine. The article mentions that Alexander was substitued in a fight on a card at Plainfield this week. Jeff West subsituted for Alexander. West lost the fight to Armando Santiago. This is noted in BoxRec being fought on April 18, 1933.

Photo is off of BoxRec. Would be nice to find an actual boxing time period one.