Foreigners (8 page)

In the late summer of 1950, Turpin fought a tough
opponent, named Eli Elandon, and defeated him in under
two rounds, and therefore the relative isolation of the castle
as a training base seemed to have worked. Once the world
title bout with Robinson was announced, Turpin decided
to move back to Wales in order that he might prepare for
the biggest fight of his career. This time, rather than have
Turpin training up on the hillside, the opportunistic Salts
moved Turpin's camp to the more spacious east lawn and
put up a huge sign: COME AND MEET A BRITISH
CHAMPION AT SUNNY GWRYCH CASTLE.

Come they did, and they paid two shillings to see Turpin
jogging lightly towards the ring like a gladiator in his white
robe, flanked on one side by his smaller brother Jackie,
who carried his gloves, and on the other side by a sparring
partner who would soon be given a thorough goingover.
Salts was making good money not only out of
admission fees, but from selling autographed souvenirs.
The constant flow of sparring partners, including Turpin's
brother Jackie, all felt underpaid and underappreciated,
often having to go down into the town in order that they
might find a decent meal. However, Salts had managed to
work his way into the full confidence of Turpin, and the
fighter's mind remained fixed on the discipline of training.
In fact, Turpin was content to leave all business and financial
arrangements to Middleton and Salts.

Britain in the early fifties was a desolate place whose
urban landscape remained largely pockmarked with bomb
sites. Derelict buildings and wasteland spoke eloquently to
the pummelling that the country had taken in the recent
war, but the government lacked the resources to do anything
about this bleak terrain. Victory against Germany had been
achieved, but at a price that some now considered simply
too high. While Allied money flowed into Germany to
help rebuild the defeated nation, six years after the war
Britain appeared to have stagnated economically, its confidence
shot, and its people suffering. Thousands of
servicemen had returned after the war only to discover that
there was no industrial machine for them to rejoin, and
that jobs were scarce on the ground. The women who had
manned the factories during the war found it difficult to
readjust to their old roles as housewives and mothers, and
those for whom privilege had been an accepted part of
their pre-war life soon discovered that the introduction of
a welfare state, with free health and education for the
working classes, heralded a challenge to their assumptions
of class superiority. Britain was depressed and good times
seemed a long way off. The average Briton still utilised
his ration book and had to remember to count each penny,
and day trips to glamorous locations like Gwrych Castle
were to be savoured. The opportunity of seeing boxers in
action, particularly champion boxers like young Randolph
Turpin, brightened up everybody's lives. When it was
announced that Sugar Ray Robinson would be visiting
Britain, and that a British lad would be given the chance
to enter the ring and go a few rounds with him, this was
a shot in the arm to the blighted confidence of the British
people. Everybody was excited that the Sugarman, pink
Cadillac and all the rest of it, would soon be in town.

After Turpin and Robinson shook hands and posed
briefly for photographs, Turpin stripped off his shabby
dressing gown and mounted the scales. At 5'11'' and with
unusually broad shoulders, he tipped the scales at 159 lb.
His opponent, on the other hand, was 5½ lb inside the
160 lb limit. Robinson looked at the Englishman and found
it hard to believe that this heavily muscled coloured lad
was not at least a light heavyweight. The strapping lad was
clearly as strong as an ox and in his autobiography Robinson
was to describe his feelings at this moment. 'Right there,
Turpin impressed me. His torso was like an oak tree. If
he could box even a little bit I was going to be in trouble.'
Of course, the British knew that their man could fight a
bit. After all, he was the British and European middleweight
champion, and he never seemed to worry unduly about
who he was going to fight. In fact, this was his greatest
asset, his ability to approach every bout as though it was
no more or no less difficult than the one before. However,
those pressmen who had bothered to visit his camp at
Gwrych Castle would have seen how, on this occasion, his
training had been geared specifically to cope with
Robinson's fast combinations and the most devastating left
hook in the business. One training partner in particular
had been detailed to throw nothing but Sugar Ray-style
left hooks, hard, fast, and non-stop. However, despite
Robinson's private ruminations on seeing Turpin stripped
to the waist, Sugar Ray knew that he was the champion,
he was the draw, and tomorrow his European sojourn
would be at an end and he would be counting his money
and readying himself to depart back across the Atlantic
Ocean in the direction of New York City.

The weigh-in ended with the British Boxing Board of
Control doctor verifying that both the champion and the
challenger were in a fit state to fight this evening over
fifteen rounds for the middleweight championship of the
world. For most of the proceedings, Robinson had effortlessly
played to the crowd, who clearly adored him. Turpin,
by contrast, had stayed quietly in the background enjoying
the 'show' as much as anyone else. As the weigh-in
concluded, and the Robinson entourage left noisily for a
West End hotel, Turpin, his brothers Dick and Jackie, and
George Middleton realised that they had a whole afternoon
to kill and they were momentarily stumped as to
what to do. It was Randolph Turpin who decided that the
most important thing would be to get away from the hordes
of people, and so he suggested that they all go and watch
a film. After all, it would be dark inside the cinema, and
nobody would recognise them so they would be able to
sit down and unwind in peace.

George Middleton bought four entrance tickets and they
all trooped into a West End picture house and took their
seats. Within minutes of the feature beginning, Turpin
was pushing Jackie and rousing him from his sleep. 'Wake
up, Jack. This is a bloody good film!' Jackie tried to stay
awake, but the warmth and comfort of the cinema won
the battle and soon he was once again fast asleep. Randolph
Turpin, however, paid rapt attention and he followed the
whole story right down to the film's conclusion. As they
stepped out of the cinema and into the light of a beautiful
late afternoon in July, George Middleton looked nervously
at his watch. It was time. They found their way to
the nearest Tube station where George bought four single
fares to Earls Court and handed the brothers their tickets.
Fight fans who were travelling from work directly to the
Exhibition Hall at Earls Court could scarcely believe their
eyes when they saw Randolph Turpin, his fight gear in a
used carrier bag that was tucked neatly under his arm,
riding to the biggest night in British sporting history on
the same Tube as them. Whatever the outcome of tonight's
fight, this man of the people was already a hero. Should
he manage to survive even one or two rounds and put up
a decent showing, this would be enough to get the celebratory
pints flowing later on in the evening. Few could
ever have imagined it, but on this particular night it was
a coloured fighter on whom all British hopes were pinned.

British people have always held their prizefighters in
high esteem, for their toughness and rugged durability
represents, in their eyes, the very best of the British bulldog
spirit. Boxing is also a sport which brings together those
at either end of the social spectrum, with the bouts generally
fought by working-class toughs under the supervision
and patronage of blue bloods and aristocrats. For the upper
classes, being able to box is a social skill which one often
acquires as part of one's education, but actual prizefighting
is considered best left to the lower orders. In the early
nineteenth century, both the blue bloods and the lower
classes came together when an outsider, a black American
named Tom Molineaux, was scheduled to fight the British
hero Tom Cribb for what would have been regarded the
undisputed heavyweight championship of the world. The
fight took place in December 1810 at Copthall Common
just south of London, and thousands of people poured
out of the city and gathered in a field to witness the
battle
royal
. The black American was clearly getting the better of
the Englishman, but unable to tolerate the notion of the
championship being in the hands of either an American,
or a black man, the crowd stormed the ring injuring
Molineaux's hands. The fight was eventually restarted, but
the 'ebony imposter', as the English had dubbed him, was
incapable of defending himself and was eventually defeated.
The championship title remained in English hands and
the foreign threat was vanquished.

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century bare-knuckle fighting
eventually gave way to 'boxing' in 1867, when twelve rules
for the sport were drafted and published under the patronage
of John Douglas, the ninth Marquess of Queensberry.
Fights were now to be 'a fair stand-up boxing match' in a
twenty-four-foot ring, with rounds of three minutes duration
and one minute of rest between each round. Padded
gloves were to be worn, and there was to be no 'butting or
wrestling', and should a man be knocked down he would
be allowed ten seconds to get up. The first world title bout
under these rules saw the heavyweight 'Gentleman Jim'
Corbett defeat John L. Sullivan in 1892 in New Orleans.
By the end of the nineteenth century, and on into the twentieth,
the odd stout-hearted English fighter aside, American
boxers ruled the roost at most weights. Wave after wave of
new American immigrant – Italian, Irish, and Jewish –
attempted to establish a place in American life by earning
some respect in the ring. However, when it came to title
shots black boxers were often deliberately left at the back
of the line. The charismatic black boxer Jack Johnson, who
held the world heavyweight title from 1908 until 1915, did
much to stir up hostility and antipathy towards coloured
fighters by the outlandish nature of his behaviour. Boastful,
arrogant even, with a twinkling eye, a broad grin, and a
succession of white women on his arm, Johnson was everything
that 'white America' hated. When 'white America'
finally won back 'their' heavyweight championship in 1915,
they were reluctant to let any other uppity negroes take it
away again. In the future their champions would be white,
or black and humble, like Joe Louis. Sugar Ray Robinson
fell into the category of the humble for, despite all his flash
and his panache, he was a charmer who possessed impeccable
manners. He was, in short, an acceptable negro, a
person who most white Americans were proud and comfortable
to see representing them.

In Britain things had been, until two years earlier, somewhat
different. A clear colour bar had been in effect so
that black boxers were prohibited from fighting for or
holding the British title. They were allowed to fight for
the British Empire title, but at all weights black boxers,
even if they were, like Randolph Turpin, born and bred
in Britain, were treated as foreigners and excluded from
fighting for their own national championship. After the
Second World War there was increasingly vocal opposition
to the policy, and in 1947 the racist restriction was
lifted. Fittingly, it was Turpin's eldest brother, Dick, who,
in June 1948, became Britain's first black boxing champion,
lifting the middleweight crown. He lost the title in April
1950, but a few months later, in October 1950, his brother
Randy won back the title. However, a national title was
not nearly enough to guarantee a lucrative payday. Fight
fans tended to rally behind local heroes, and to some extent
box offices depended upon a fighter bringing his loyal
followers to a bout. Although many people in the Midlands
did recognise Randolph Turpin as one of their own, there
was no serious box-office support for a coloured fighter
no matter how skilled or game he might be. There was no
doubt that Turpin was popular and regarded as a man of
the people, but the interest of the general public in the
Robinson versus Turpin bout was generated by Robinson's
presence, and by the David versus Goliath aspect of the
clash. The British Boxing Board of Control may have
relaxed their rules to accommodate coloured boxers, but
the general public had still not fully warmed to the idea
of black boxers being also British.

On the warm summer's evening of 10 July, 1951, 18,000
people were packed into the Earls Court Exhibition Hall,
with many hundreds more milling about in the car park
outside. In homes throughout the length and breadth of
the country, over twenty million people were tuned into
the BBC Home Service to listen to Raymond Glendenning's
live radio commentary, including King George VI who was
sitting next to the wireless in Buckingham Palace. Inside
Turpin's dressing room, the young boxer sat calmly on a
bench immersed in a comic book, which was often his
preferred reading matter. Never one to panic or become
overly agitated before a bout, there was something almost
resigned about Turpin's demeanour which worried his
Manchester-based Irish trainer, Mick Gavin, his brothers
Dick and Jackie, and his manager, George Middleton.
Eventually Turpin was encouraged to put down his comic
book so that his seconds could slip on his gloves and fasten
them tightly into place, and then his threadbare dressing
gown was slipped around his broad shoulders and everybody
was ready. In keeping with tradition, the challenger
would enter the arena first. Shortly before 9:30 p.m., George
Middleton opened the door to the dressing room allowing
the clamour and noise to greet them for the first time. As
Turpin shuffled past Robinson's dressing room, he could
hear noise and laughter from within. The American was
clearly upbeat and confident of an easy payday and a swift
return trip home.