Jack Sharkey and Lawrence

Jack Sharkey never lived in Lawrence but thanks to his friendship with Buckley stablemate Andy Callahan, he spent time drinking in the Queen City. I don't have any documentation (yet) but have heard it from enough sources to believe it to be true.

In 1932, a crowd of Lithuanians stood outside a Lawrence shop listening to the Sharkey vs. Schmeling fight on a radio. There was whooping and hollering in the streets when Lithuanian-American Sharkey (aka Joseph Paul Zukauskas) won, becoming the World Heavyweight Champ.

I came to see another side of Sharkey via his friendship with Callahan. In the second post on this blog I spoke of Sharkey's letter to Callahan's mother after his death in WWII. Before seeing that letter, the Sharkey I'd heard about was a man who alienated everyone with his verbal buckshot. Fans and the media had a hard time celebrating Sharkey's success. In 1927, Sharkey beat fellow Boston heavyweight Jim Maloney, thereby earning a match with Jack Dempsey. The victorious Sharkey was greeted at his Chestnut Hill home by 50 friends and fans.  At the same time back in Boston, 5,000 cheering fans welcomed loser Jim Maloney at South Station.

After Andy Callahan lost to Vince Dundee in a ridiculously mismatched World Middleweight title fight (Callahan gave up about 24 pounds and many felt he won) a Lowell Sun reporter observed Sharkey gently place the worn-out, cramping Callahan onto the rubbing slab when he couldn't hoist himself up.

Jack Sharkey fascinates many boxing-history types. Writer Mike Casey explains why this is with his article on Sharkey and I often find myself coming back to these two sentences:

(read full article here)

It is a cruel and somewhat unfair fact of life that flawed fighters of an erratic nature and unfulfilled talent frequently fire the imagination of writers and broadcasters far more than the dedicated professionals who do everything right. Ask a character actor whether he would rather play a perfect hero or a tortured soul and he won’t need too long to give you an answer.