By John Murphy

Short span scribes

 

Michael Katsidis is NOT, as was reported in today's papers, the first Greek world boxing champion.

Anton Christoforidis was born in Messina, Greece and started his pro fight career there (unlike Michael Katsidis who started in Australia).

Christoforidis went to the USA and and on January 13, 1941 he beat Melio Bettina to win the vacant National Boxing Association world light-heavyweight title (the NBA crown was a big thing in those years, considerably bigger than a WBO Interim).

Four months later, Anton lost the crown to Gus Lesnevich in New York.

Nine years before, Greek-Amercian George Nicholls (Nicholas) had won that same NBA light-heavyweight title beating Dave Maier. Lightweight thriller of the 1920s, Phil McGraw (Phillip Karmonis) of Detroit never won a world title but fought several world champs.

I hope I have beaten the old Greek fight fans to it with this!

Furthermore, the daily newspaper I read said Anton was the first Greek to win a world title "of any kind".

Wrestling fans of the great Jim Londos, world champ in the 1930s when the grappling game was dinkum and 35,000 fans at Yankee Stadium sat on the edge of their seats for thirty minutes cheering for a gasping grappler to break a strangle hold or call quits, would bridle at that.

Christoforidis arrived in the United States in 1940 as holder of the European middleweight title. The crowd cheered when he beat Melio Bettina, an Italian-American. They saw it as a crack at Mussolini’s army invading Greece.

Christoforidis then joined the United States Army and was still boxing till 1947.