It wasn’t exactly Cain vs. Abel II, but 64 years ago two Milwaukee brothers earned a footnote in boxing history by fighting each other for a Golden Gloves championship.
There’ll be no sibling rivalries on display when the Wisconsin & Upper Michigan Golden Gloves tournament starts its 85th annual run in Racine Saturday night at the John Bryant Community Center, but it’s all relative.
There’ll still be plenty of free-swinging action.
That wasn’t the case when Ellis and Leslie Fitzgerald squared off for the open division heavyweight championship in the 1951 Milwaukee Golden Gloves tournament. But that the brothers were even willing to fight each other broke a precedent in amateur boxing that had stood for decades.
In fact, before that it was national news when boxing brothers refused to fight one another.
In the Southwestern Wisconsin Golden Gloves tournament at Kenosha in 1936, local bantamweight Joe Germinaro won the division title by default when his brother Mike wouldn’t fight him for it.
A year later, brothers Hobart and John Gates refused to box each other for the heavyweight championship in a tournament at the Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, proclaimed themselves co-champions instead.
Milwaukee’s Fitzgerald brothers had no such inhibitions when they entered the ’51 Golden Gloves tournament.
"Of course we’ll box each other," they were jointly quoted in The Milwaukee Journal. "Then we’ll know which is the better of the two."
The Fitzgeralds boxed out of the Urban League gym on North 9th and W. Vine streets. Their coach, Baby Joe Gans, was properly diplomatic when asked which brother was better in the ring, saying, "They’re both pretty good."
But against each other on Feb. 9 they were both pretty bad. Theirs was the last of 30 three-round bouts held that night, and the second one fought by Ellis. In his first fight, the 6’4", 220-pound older Fitzgerald needed only 15 seconds to knock out Alex Pacheco. But the lack of fireworks between Ellis and Leslie in their city championship match had the Arena crowd of 3,869 booing.
They "were content to spar," wrote Sam Levy in the next day’s Journal, noting that in the second round referee Milt Goldstein even stopped the fight and warned the Fitzgeralds to quit acting like, well, brothers.
Ellis won the decision, but any notion that he had held nothing back against his little brother was belied a week later in the regional and state finals when he flattened two more opponents -- the last one in 17 seconds -- and was named "Outstanding Fighter" in the open division.
Both Ellis and Leslie Fitzgerald later turned professional and the bragging rights, such as they were, were equal. Each brother went 0-3.
The 2015 Wisconsin & Upper Michigan Golden Gloves Tournament starts Saturday at 7 p.m. at the John Bryant Community Center, 601 South 21st St., in Racine. The semi-finals are Apr. 18 and the finals are on Apr. 25. General admission tickets, $15; reserved seating, $18.
For more information contact Kathy Meyer at 262-308-2372 or info@wigoldengloves.com.
