“Like a flash, the hemped enclosure was dotted with humanity,” wrote The Milwaukee Journal’s Sam Levy in the next day’s edition. “True blue loyalists of the Mitchell boys leaped into the ring… The Miller faction did likewise. Policemen with swinging clubs followed. But this did not serve to halt the free for all… A half-hour passed and still the battling factions remained in the ring.”
Many of the society matrons fainted, and so must’ve officials of the West Side Boys Club when after the bills were paid all they got from the $25,000 in gate receipts was $25.
A May 31 Milwaukee Sentinel story reporting that thanks to the riot and controversy the Illinois boxing bill was dead alluded to rumors “that somebody cleaned up big on the Leonard-Mitchell bout. Thousands of dollars were bet that Mitchell would not last 10 rounds.”
Pinkey maintained that referee Miller was in on the deal.
“We were in a clinch. Miller grabbed my left arm and broke me loose. He started to turn me away and as he did he permitted Leonard to step around behind and hit me on the chin. I did not have a chance to protect myself, my chin being wide open for the right hand punch that put me down.”
One of the many mysteries about the fight is why Davy Miller was referee in the first place. Davy and his brothers Hershie and Max were well-known Chicago gangsters, and on top of that Davy had a grudge against the Mitchells going back to August 9, 1919, when Richie fought Sailor Friedman in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Miller was Friedman’s manager then, and when the Sailor was knocked down at the end of the sixth round Miller tackled Mitchell in the ring and a riot commenced.
Friedman was disqualified and he and Miller were barred from state rings for a year.
The death of boxing in Illinois was the biggest repercussion of the Pinkey-Benny fight, but maybe not the only one.
On October 11, 1923, Sailor Friedman was supposed to fight Pinkey for the junior welterweight championship at the Milwaukee Auditorium. But the night before, as the Sailor took a late stroll on a deserted downtown street, he was forced into a car at gunpoint and then punched, kicked and pistol-whipped and his unconscious body dumped in a gutter. No one was ever arrested.
“It is said that other Chicago boxers have been fighting shy of Milwaukee since,” noted the Associated Press on January 22, 1924. That was the day after Davy Miller was gut shot outside a Chicago theater. According to authorities, “the shooting was traceable to the Leonard-Mitchell fight.”
“Leave this one to me,” the critically wounded Davy told the cops when they asked who did it. The would-be assassin was rival gangster Dion O’Bannion, who was himself gunned down on November 10. The Millers all had alibis.
Pinkey Mitchell continued to be recognized as 140-pound champion despite his KO by Leonard because at the official weigh-in on the day of the fight Benny refused to get on the scale. Newspaper accounts say he went at least 145.
What Leonard thought about Mitchell’s championship was evinced at his victory party when a boy under the impression that Benny was now a double champion asked him, “What are you going to do with the junior welterweight title?”
With a smile and a bow Benny told the youngster, “I hereby present it to you.” "
(By Pete Ehrmann)
