“Terrible Terry” The Brooklyn Terror: The Life And Battles Of Terry McGovern

By Nat Fleischer

Veteran and expert boxing writer Nat Fleischer recounts the career of Terrible Terry McGovern, who dominated the Bantam and Featherweight classes at the turn of the 20th Century. Still regarded as one of the most destructive and effective Bantamweights of all time, a stocky, fast body puncher who won 45 of his fights via knock-out in an age of iron men.

Historian Barry Deskins wrote, “Short blows to the body followed by a viscous straight right is McGovern’s strongest asset, particularly his work to the body.” Old time fight announcer Joe Humphreys said, Sept 1936 Ring Magazine, “McGovern was a lightning fast feinter and a terrible hitter. He was a great body puncher, an art that seems to be lost to the present generation.”

“Unconquered and unconquerable Terry McGovern, the Brooklyn whirlwind fighter, stands today without a peer in the pugilistic world”-National Police Gazette after McGovern’s win over Erne.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Braunfell Books
• Release date: Nov 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839749377

Nat Fleischer

Nathaniel Stanley Fleischer (1887-1972) was a noted American boxing writer and collector. Born November 3, 1887, New York City, he graduated from City College of New York in 1908. He then worked for the New York Press while studying at New York University. He served as the sports editor of the Press and the Sun Press until 1929. Encouraged by Tex Rickard, he inaugurated The Ring magazine in 1922. In 1929 Fleischer acquired sole ownership of the magazine, which he led as editor in chief for fifty years, until his death in 1972. In 1942, Fleischer began to publish the magazine’s annual record book and boxing encyclopedia, which was published until 1987. In addition, Fleischer wrote several other books about the lives of some world champions and about boxing history. Fleischer contributed to the founding of the Boxing Writers Association of America (BWAA) and was twice presented with its James J. Walker Award. After Fleischer’s death, the BWAA named an award after him. Fleischer was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. He died on June 25, 1972, aged 84.

Book preview

CHAPTER I—His Boyhood

A BRIGHT and dazzling light of the roped arena was the great little champion, Joseph Terrence McGovern, the pride of Brooklyn. Terrible Terry, they called him, and truly terrible he was to the majority of the opponents he encountered during his fistic career.

No bantamweight or featherweight ever packed a more dangerous punch than did Terry. No fighter of his weight piled up such a consistent record for tearing pell-mell into his adversaries and smothering them with wicked jolts, hooks, uppercuts and vicious swings. In every sense of the phrase, he was a pugilistic marvel.

Where else in American ring history has a boxer so satisfactorily filled the role of real fighter as this miniature slugging tornado? Echo answers—where? There was only one McGovern!

The squared circle has had many heroes—Mace and Sayers of the remote past; John L. Sullivan, outstanding member of the fistic fraternity during the late eighties and early nineties; Charlie Mitchell, one of the most superb masters of scientific sparring ever turned out in England; Jim Corbett, listed as Mitchell’s clever contemporary on this side of the Atlantic; George Dixon, the little colored wonder, with hundreds of thrilling battles and hard-won victories to his credit.

Each of those notable gladiators had his day, and proved his right to a niche in the fighter’s Hall of Fame. But even the brilliant accomplishments of such prominent knights of the arena are overshadowed by the deeds of Terry McGovern during his meteoric rise and fall.

Terry came up the hard way, for competition was savagely keen in his chosen field of action when he began earning a livelihood with the gloves. Great fighters abounded, handled by intelligent showmen who knew all there was to know about publicity.

There was no royal road to stardom, no room among the fistic elect for a scrapper of mediocre or even average ability. Yet McGovern crashed through the serried ranks of opposing battlers with amazing speed. Almost overnight he gained and held the admiration and affection of the sporting public. His rapid ascent to the giddy heights was nothing short of phenomenal.

Before Terry’s advent, George Dixon, dubbed Little Chocolate by the fans, was listed as the acme of pugilistic excellence among the members of the bantam and feather brigade. For many years the clever, hard hitting Negro took on all comers at, or near his weight, and defeated them easily.

But Dixon’s star paled on the horizon beside the blinding radiance of the McGovern planet. For Terry not only equalled, but surpassed George’s exploits. The former virtually stood alone as a peerless performer, a conqueror of sterling bantams, feathers, and lightweights. One of McGovern’s greatest distinctions was the fact that in a period embracing only two years, he defeated the champions of three divisions.

In 1899 he knocked out Pedlar Palmer, British bantam champion and claimant of the world’s title. The year following, Terry stopped George Dixon in winning the featherweight crown. In the same year he put down the then lightweight champion, Frank Erne. He did not gain the lightweight title because the weight for the battle was set at 128 pounds, the articles of agreement calling for the lightweight king to scale under the limit of the class Erne headed.

During McGovern’s brief, but startlingly spectacular reign of two years, he rolled up a bigger knockout record than was amassed by John L. Sullivan in the latter’s entire career. Considering that there never has been a time when the ring was so rich in first-class talent among the smaller divisions, it must be acknowledged that Terry well earned his right to the proud designation of the Brooklyn Terror!

Born in Jamestown, Pa., on March 9, 1880, Terry’s parents brought him to the City of Churches when he was six months old, and it remained his home during his whole fighting career. He lived at the foot of Court Street in South Brooklyn. He was a mere boy when his father died and the poor financial status of the family rendered it necessary for him to go to work when still in his ‘teens. It was a neighborhood where the Irish laboring class predominated and the boys with whom Terry ran around were plenty tough. Street battles were numerous, battles in which flying bricks were the chief ammunition, and all things considered, it wasn’t a locality where a lad was likely to absorb peaceful tendencies. You had to be able to fight in order to get by, but as Terry came of Celtic stock on both sides of the house and was imbued with a high degree of the pugnacity which seems to come naturally to that race, conditions were just suited to him.

His fellows were used to scrapping in a style beside which that favored by the Marquis of Queensberry Rules was gentle in comparison, and Terry, often giving away odds in weight, height and age, licked the best of them in rough-and-tumble brawls. It was his love of and success in this kind of fighting that led to his companions disregarding his first name—Joe. Somehow, Terry sounded more appropriate, it being easily transformed into Terrible, and Terror, and it is curious to note that the bestowal of such significant monikers was made during his schooldays, long before they became familiar to the readers of the sport pages in connection with a world’s champion.

Some professional boxers are gymnasium-made, others revert naturally to pugilism, and fighting was certainly second nature with Terry McGovern. He fought, not because he was bad-tempered and quarrelled frequently, but because he loved fighting and the records of the game will prove to you that the natural fighter is the one most likely to make his mark in the ring.

His first job was as a truck driver for the Litchfield Lumber Co. of Williamsburgh. His wages were small but they helped greatly toward tiding his family over the hard times following his father’s untimely death. He was fourteen when their fortunes took a turn for the better through his widowed mother’s marriage to Joe (Pop) Kenny, saloonkeeper and ward politician.

Years ago, when I was Sports Editor of the New York Press, a great sports paper, I interviewed Terry. The general story that went the rounds had McGovern beginning his career by fighting a bully who had attacked Terry’s foreman at the Litchfield Lumber Yard, Charley Mayhood. Terry laughed at that version of his start. He remarked that it was a good story, a sensational fight yam, but untrue. Here is the correct story:

Close play in a ball game started McGovern, the greatest little fighter in the world, upon his career.

He was a boy who loved to fight just for the sake of it. He had the fighting instinct; he never stopped until nature stopped him.

He was a terrible bug on baseball, and there were more amateur teams at that time in Brooklyn than there are politicians in New York today. At that time Charley Mallay had a team that was the cake. He made the other amateur teams in his neighborhood appear as slow as Rockefeller paying a fine, and had the Indian sign on them for fair.

Terry’s team, of which several members were employees of the lumber firm where the Brooklyn Terror was employed, was some pumpkins now, too, and they arranged to play for the championship and a side bet of $2.50.

In the eighth inning the score stood 5 to 5, and one of Terry’s players jabbed the ball to left, just reaching second as the ball was slammed against his leg. No men out and a man on second was a tough thing, and Mallay declared the umpire was wrong when he called the runner safe.

Players from both sides surrounded the umpire and fought with their tongues like