Tacoma Golden Gloves

In this 78th anniversary year of Tacoma Golden Gloves, a look back is warranted to revisit the early days when our city’s Golden Gloves was an idea that soon became one of the finest boxing events on the West Coast. The best place to start is in Chicago all the way back to the early 1920s when amateur boxing was practically non-existent in the United States. Arch Ward, editor of the Chicago Tribune, was well aware of this and he was inspired by the belief that amateur boxing could do much for the youth of the nation. It was Ward who conceived the idea of a strictly amateur boxing tournament in which the sole award was a Golden Glove for the champion in each weight class. The first Golden Gloves boxing tournament was held in 1923 in Chicago with the Chicago Tribune as sponsor. Over the following years, boxing teams from Chicago and New York competed and as word of the event spread to other states, more young boxers expressed an interest in getting in on the action. The Tournament of Champions was born and by the time World War II arrived, 23 states were holding boxing events and sending their winners to the Tournament of Champions in Chicago. 

In Tacoma, amidst efforts across the city to help in the war effort, the Tacoma War Athletic Commission formed in 1943 (later shortening its name to the Tacoma Athletic Commission). Al Whitman, a local banker, sports enthusiast, and former amateur and professional boxer, was chairman of the Tacoma War Athletic Commission at that time. The Commission’s board of directors was striving to improve the organization’s activities for public benefit so boxing became the subject of discussion. The idea for the Commission to stage an annual Golden Gloves event came about between Whitman and Will Maylon, a widely known real estate dealer and boxing promoter. Their idea was presented to the Commission board and was approved. 

The very first Tacoma Golden Gloves was held in 1949, and the ticket prices reflect the times: $1.85 ringside, $1.50 reserved seats, $1.25 general admission and 75 cents for students. It didn’t take long for Tacoma Golden Gloves to became one of the city’s major entertainment and sports attractions held at several key Tacoma venues including the National Guard Armory, the University of Puget Sound Fieldhouse, and the Tacoma Dome Exhibition Hall.

In the 1958 Tacoma Golden Gloves program, TAC President Clay Huntington spoke of how Tacoma Golden Gloves flourished as it did: “Without support of the fans…without superb help from the many civic-minded men who work on the committee, it would be impossible. Most of all, however, as the committee will agree, most of all…thanks to you, the fans. You have been the strength behind us.”

It was in that same year when Tacoma’s pride and joy, national heavyweight “Irish Pat” McMurtry, stepped into the ring at Madison Square Garden. McMurtry had won a championship robe at the first Golden Gloves nine years earlier, and he won that electrifying Madison Square Garden fight against Canadian champion George Chuvalo. 

While tournaments nationwide yielded world champions like Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Leonard, Thomas “The Hitman” Hearns and “The Golden Boy” Oscar De La Hoya, Tacoma has its own hall of fame boxing athletes including Ray Seales, Leo Randolph, Mylon Watkins, Les Fabri, Tom Sullivan, Davey Armstrong, Johnny Bumpus, Frank Vassar, and David Jackson who all went on to claim National Golden Gloves championships after winning a title in Tacoma. Local champions also won Olympic Gold Medals during their amateur careers: Pete Rademacher (1956), Seales (1972), and Randolph (1976).

Tacoma Golden Gloves continued to grow in its fanbase and competitors over the coming decades. In 1984, the event was opened to U.S. Army boxers from Fort Lewis and in 1995, women boxers were admitted into the ring to fight in bouts for the first time. 

As America’s oldest amateur boxing tournament west of the Mississippi River, Tacoma Golden Gloves has been around longer than the NBA. In fact, Tacoma Golden Gloves stands as the second oldest Golden Gloves in the country behind New York City. As Elliott Metcalf, former sports editor of The Tacoma Times, wrote of Golden Gloves in 1961: “Its importance to the field of local entertainment came about only through skill of direction and planning. Nothing has ever been left to chance. Sound, hard organization and all-out consideration of the public and competing clubs have brought this recognized success.”