A North Woods lumber camp boxing contest

by Pat Leonard

Maine had had some unusual boxing bouts. Ripley’s Believe It or Not has a cartoon featuring Al Couture of Lewiston knocking out Ralph Walton in 10 ½ seconds of the first round on September 24, 1946. This is still regarded as the quickest knockout in all pugilistic history.

By a coincidence, another brief battle which received international attention if not approbation also took place in Lewiston, this time on May 25, 1965 when Muhammad Ali scored a questionable one-minute knockout defending his world title against former title holder Sonny Liston.

Few people have ever heard of the weirdest of all such boxing contests which took place one winter evening in a lumber camp in the Moosehead Lake area in 1913. Neither contestant was a Maine man. One was a highly experienced Boston pugilist who was born in Italy. The other was a Canadian professional weightlifter who weighed two hundred pounds more than his opponent.

At the turn of this century, weightlifting was a popular sport all over the world. The lifters of those pre-TV days were almost invariably ponderous men weighing over 300 pounds. They hoisted up a great variety of objects other than their dumbbells; horses, platforms holding men, anchors, barrels, and even huge rocks, for example.

Every country boasted of it famous lifters. America, Henry Holtgrewe and Warren Lincoln Travis. France, the enormous Apollon. Prussia, Eugene Sandow. Luxembourg, John Marx. Germany, Arthur Saxon and his brothers. Austria, Josef Steinbach, and Karl Swoboda, still a national hero. Ireland, John Peter Gill, the ‘Kilronan Hercules’ and Canada, Louis Cyr, and Horace Barre.

Cyr, (1863-1912) was the most famous of all. At 5’8”, weighing well over 300 pounds, he was called “The (cont. on page 46)

(cont. from page 45)

Canadian Samson” and billed as the strongest man in the world.

Fantastically popular in Canada, Cyr fostered a host of imitators; squat, rotund, powerful youths who trained daily to emulate their hero, the famous Louis Cyr. One such man was Leo Meunier, son of an innkeeper, and a superb chef when not tugging away at rocks, picking up horses, or winning bets carrying pianos around ball rooms. Leo was indeed a stalwart man, 5’7”, weighing between 350 and 375 pounds in his best weightlifting condition.

When Cyr died in Montreal on November 10, 1912, the sport nearly expired with him. Leo was forced to take a job as a lumber camp cook in the woods of Maine the next winter. Fate decreed he was to be one of the combatants in the Moosehead Lake contest.

His opponent was Gus Raimo, born near Naples, Italy, on October 12, 1886. His parents immigrated to Amer- ica when Gus was only three years old. Gus was the same height as Meunier but weighed a muscular 146 pounds. Gus became a professional fighter when only 16. He paid 25 cents to see the fights at McDonalds in Roslindale Square, Boston. Halfway through the evening’s program the promoter announced from the ring that the expected adversary of hard-faced Kid Crowell had not showed up; and the generous promoter sportingly stated he would pay five dollars to anyone in the audience who could stay at least three of the scheduled six rounds with flat-nosed Crowell. Five dollars was a week’s pay to Gus in those days, so he volunteered, surprised everyone by lasting the full six rounds, but lost the decision. This did not bother Gus. Despite a few bruises, he decided that fighting was an easy way to make money.

Over the next sixteen years, in addition to his six-day-a-week job deliv- ering coal and ice, Gus fought an estimated 350-400 preliminary matches in the Boston area. His meticulously kept records were destroyed in a house fire many years ago. In the week before he married Mary McDonald on April 18, 1915, Gus battled six nights in a row in clubs around Boston to get ample funds to start their married life.

Mary finally persuaded Gus to retire in 1918 when Gus arrived home with a freshly broken nose and a couple of mean gashes after fighting a ten-round welterweight (147 pound) draw with the colorful and unorthodox Belgian Brown. The referee that night was Jake Kilrain, who had fought John L. Sullivan for the title back in 1889. Gus took a year off, then began a new career as a middleweight wrestler and had “fifty or sixty scraps in the next three years but my heart was not in it, so I retired for good.”

Although Gus never held a title, he does have the distinction of being the oldest known ex-boxer, as he did not die until just after his 103rd birthday in 1989.

Before his marriage, adventuresome Gus spent five winters as a lumberjack in Maine, augmenting his regular earnings by boxing wild swinging lumberjacks at the regular Saturday night festivities. As Gus explains in a 1983 article when he was over 97 years of age: “All of the guys I fought in the camps were bigger than me; but none of them knew anything about scientific boxing; so I never got hurt. I had my strangest experience in the ring at a lumber camp in the Moosehead Lake area in 1913. The most famous French-Canadian strong man in the old days was Louis Cyr, a butterball of a man weighing 360 pounds but not very tall, and the best lifter in the world. The Canadians admired strength, and lots of them were weightlifters.”

“That season, one of our crew, the cook, Leo Meunier, was a real good, amiable guy, popular with everyone although he did not have a word of English. Leo was from Quebec, only as tall as me, 5’7”; but weighing over 350 pounds and as solid as a rock. And about as quick moving as a rock. In between cooking, which he was good at, he trained lifting sets of wagon wheels, logs, and great big stones.”

“Somehow, Leo and I, although we were good friends, got matched up for a winner take all ten rounder one Saturday night. Of course, all the Frenchmen in the camp bet on Leo, as did some of the fellows from Maine who knew how strong Leo was; but a lot of the men bet on me. There was quite a crowd that night as another crew came from nearly eighteen miles away to see the fight.”

“The referee was the camp boss, a fellow about fifty, very tall and grouchy looking. Never a smile. He was the most hated crank in Maine. Although I was not experienced with an axe, I was good at handling horses, so he tolerated me. After my first couple of fights, he made a lot of money betting on me.”

“When the bell rang, Leo’s strategy became obvious. Hold me with one hand and hit me with the other. Although he weighed a couple of hundred pounds more than me, at least we were the same height. I knew that once he hit me or grabbed me, I was a goner, so I kept away from him, sliding in and out now and then and belting him before he could retaliate. He could not hit met. He was aiming all his shots at my head.”

After the first round, there was a lot of French shouting in his corner; his friends were giving him advice. His tactics changed in the second round. He was trying to hit me anywhere in the body, with the hope that although he was not a speedy puncher, the sheer weight of one good sweep of that thick arm would send me flying through the ropes. I kept out boxing him.”

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“In the third round, Leo’s plan worked. But not on me. He took a wild pivoting swing. I had no trouble backing up out of the way, but the referee was not so quick, and Leo caught the camp boss squarely in the stomach, doubled him up completely, and the momentum caused him to fly out between the ropes, rear end first, his hands and feet outstretched in the ring. He landed on his keister at the feet of the men in the front row and was finished for the night. No referee from then on. The fight had to be stopped as everyone wanted to jeer at and curse the camp boss who had more than his pride hurt.”

“Leo just about stood up in his corner for the fourth round. He was out of breath and having trouble just staying on his feet. I kept out of his way, fearing some trick. He backed up against the ropes in his corner. Occasionally

I would pop in, feint, and then let him have one in the gut but this did not seem to hurt him or help me.”

“When the bell ended the fourth round, everyone could see Leo was done. So, I helped him sit down and then suggested to one of his handlers who could speak English that we call the fight a draw and call all bets off. This was OK with Leo once his friends explained it to him.”

“It took Leo a half an hour at least to get up enough strength and breath to walk back to the cook house where he had a cot in one corner. I walked back with him, one hand on his shoulder. The next day, Sunday, Leo stayed in bed all day and the camp boss was taken to a doctor many miles away. Leo was all right Monday.