Thursday 13 October 2011

Bartley Madden - Boxing in Croke Park 1923


Croke Park was the stage for quite a few boxing matches back in the 1920's and one man to feature there on 2 occasions was heavyweight pro Bartley Madden. He was born in Caltra in Galway in 1890 but lived mostly in Roscommon and the story goes that he was quite a good footballer and played for Roscommon in Connacht Championship winning teams back then - unable so far to confirm this but Roscommon did win Connacht titles in 1912 and 1914 at which time Bartley would have been 22-24 years old so just about tallies. And it appears he may also have played for Connacht at provincial level.
At some stage he moved to New York as a base for his boxing career, at heavy weight and fought some of the top fighters of the time including world champion Gene Tunney.
But in 1930 it was tragedy. First his wife died and a few weeks later on 5 March 1930 Madden himself, aged 39 but not retired from boxing, died after a fall down some steps in Washington.
His boxing record shows he had about 70 pro fights between 1912 and 1929 (his last fight was 23 Dec 1929, winning 39, losing 25 and 6 were drawn contests(?). Looks like he had 2 fights in Croke Park - this one in 1923 , which he won on a KO, and another in 1926 against Tom Heeney (New Zealand) which he lost on points.
Some Bio on Bartley Madden - any additional info that our readers can be provided will be appreciated.

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