1 The Boxing Biographies Newsletter Volume 7 – No 15 18th Dec , 2011 www.boxingbiographies.com If you wish to sign up for the newsletters ( which includes the images ) please email the message “NEWS LETTER” [email protected] 2 Name: Young Stribling Career Record: click Alias: King of the Canebrakes Birth Name: William Lawrence Stribling Jr. Nationality: US American Birthplace: Bainbridge, GA, USA Hometown: Macon, GA Born: 1904-12-26 Died: 1933-10-03 Age at Death: 28 Stance: Orthodox Height: 6′ 1″ Reach: 188 Trainer: Ma Stribling Manager: William L. (Pa) Stribling, Sr. Elder brother of fellow boxer Herbert (Baby) Stribling According to the Nov. 7, 1927 Spokane Spokesman Review newspaper, just prior to Stribling's visit to nearby Dishman, WA: This was not Stribling's first visit to the Spokane area. In 1911, he, Ma, Pa, and brother Graham had come to Spokane on the Sullivan and Considine Vaudeville Circuit with an acrobatic act called the "Four Novelty Grahams." They spent one week at the Empress Theater, then called the Washington Theater. As part of the show, the Stribling brothers boxed exhibitions. Stribling was one of the best high school basketball players in the United States. He was known as a "dead shot" (a very accurate shooter). His team went to the national interscholastic tournament at Chicago, but he was ruled ineligible to play because of his professional boxing. He was also quite talented at golf, hunting, fishing, speedboat racing and tennis. Stribling was also an avid and accomplished aviator who loved to fly. He died October 3, 1933, after a motorcycle/automobile accident when he was just 28. The accident occurred October 1 outside of Macon, Georgia. Traveling 35 miles per hour on a motorcycle, "Strib" was en route to a hospital to visit his convalescing wife and their brand-new baby (his third child), born two weeks previously. He waved a greeting to a friend passing in an automobile. But he failed to see another car behind that of his friend, Roy Barrow. The veteran of roughly 300 bouts, who never received a permanent scar due to his great defensive skills, attempted to dodge the second car but was too late. The fender of the car struck Stribling, crushing and virtually ripping off his left foot, and sending him to the pavement, fracturing his pelvis. Stribling was taken to the hospital, where, coincidentally, his wife and baby were. His mother rushed to the hospital from the Stribling plantation in South Georgia; his father from Texas. At one point he awoke, saw his wife, and asked, "How's the baby?" Almost to the end he remained 3 conscious, "carrying on in the same spirit that he showed when they picked him up from the roadside on Sunday," reported papers of the day. "Well, kid," he said to his friend (Barrow), who was the first to reach him as he lay beside his wrecked motorcycle with one foot dangling by a single tendon, "I guess this means more roadwork." At first the doctors held out hope, after they had amputated his left foot. But his vitality began to wane. Physicians were amazed at his ability to cling to life when his temperature hit 107 1/2 degrees and his pulse 175. His wife was wheeled into his room. He recognized his wife. "W.L.?" "Sugar," was his barely audible reply. "Hello, baby," were his last words to her, the papers reported. His father walked grimly from the room and tearfully said, "He's gone. Death occurred at 6:00 Tuesday morning, October 3. The next day, his body was placed in the Municipal Auditorium of Macon, to lie in state from 10 in the morning until 6 that evening. Jefferson City Post – Tribune 16 February 1929 Here is the first chapter of the story of Young Stribling's life, written exclusively for the Post- Tribune and NBA Service, Inc., by Milton K. Wallace of Macon, Ga., a life-long friend of the Striblings. This series on Stribling's colorful life brings out interesting chapters never before revealed. Daily chapters will follow in this newspaper until the completion of the series BY MILTON K. WALLACE Regardless of whether W. L. ''Young" Stribling defeats Jack Sharkey in their Miami Beach bout on Feb. 27, and then goes on to win the heavyweight championship of the world, the young southern fighter will go down in pugilistic history as "The Hardest Working Heavyweight.". Few men have fought as often as Stribling. Two years ago, the sports writers said he was washed out too much work and not enough play. But. today he stands on the threshold of the heavyweight championship. William Lawrence Stribling was born in the little south Georgia town of Bainbridge Dec. 20. 1904. Contrary to popular opinion, he was not brought up under the "big tops" of a circus. His early life was much the same as that of the average American boy. He had a good home, respectable parents, went to school and attended church services regularly. "Ma" Stribling saw that her boys, Billy and Herbert, kept good company, and she applied the hair brush vigorously whenever either of them got into mischief. 4 Before the boys were born, Pa and Ma were vaudeville entertainers, doing an acrobatic stunt. Traveling around the country with two babies were no easy job. so they settled down for a few years until the boys were large enough to accompany them on the road. When but a few months old. Young Stribling was doing handsprings and flips, balancing himself in his father's hands, and countless other things kids three times his age could not do. Ma Raps Pa's Plans "I'm going to make a heavyweight champion out of Billy," Pa said just after the youngster was born. Ma objected! She didn’t want her son to become a bruiser she versioned him a doctor or lawyer who would settle down in Bainbridge or some other Georgia town where he would command the respect of the community in which he resided. Then Herbert came along two years later. He was a frail little chap, in no way resembling his larger brother, but he, too, learned to do stunts on the trapeze, turn flips and balance himself in his father's hands. Then it was that Pa Stribling decided to return to the stage. This time there were four Stribling’s and they organized the "Four Novelty Grahams" touring this country and eventually Japan. The "Grahams" traveled a great deal, but always found time for the boys to spend a few months in school somewhere. Whenever the lads -were not in school, Ma tutored them. The lure of the footlights is a hard thing to resist, actors tell, you, but Pa saw in Billy the making of a champion and knew that the hard life of the vaudeville trouper was not the proper one for a boxer. So the stage was deserted again after Ma had reluctantly Given her permission for Billy to take up boxing as a profession. Pa a good boxer, started in at once to instruct his progeny in the science of right crosses and uppercuts. Pa Stribling saw in his son the fulfillment of his own cherished ambitions. Many years ago. He had dreamed of winning fame in the ring, but his short stature handicapped him. When Stribling became 16, his father decided that his boy was old enough to enter the prize ring as a professional. He and his brother Herbert had done a boxing act together on the stage for several years and all this time Pa had been instructing them. ―My boy is going to be a world’s champion someday‖ Pa wrote a promoter in Atlanta, ―but I 5 am willing for him to fight for you on your card next Wednesday night for nothing. This is his first professional match and I am anxious to get him started. I want the chance‖. Of course the promoter took him up on his proposition. Even preliminary boys do not box for nothing, and the novel request resulted in Young Stribling's first real fight, a four-rounder. His opponent was Kid Domb, an Atlanta bantamweight, and Stribling won the decision. It is a coincidence that Tiger Flowers who without doubt was one of the Greatest colored fighters the world has ever knew, began his career in the same ring about three years previous to Stribling’s first battle. The Atlants promoter, well pleased with the showing of Stribling in his first bout, offered Pa Stribling $10 for another four-round preliminary. Pa, anxious to get Billy before the public, and incidentally wanting him to have all the experience possible, agreed for his son to meet Kid Nappie, a very tough young man, who had been spreading terror among the prelim boys in Atlanta. Nappie's chief weapon was a wild right swing that sent his opponents into dreamland whenever it lands and usually it landed. Stribling. however, knew too much for the bad boy and easily outpointed him. After that his services were in demand all over the south, not as a preliminary boy, but as a star attraction. The records show that he fought 21 bouts during the year 1921, which year marked his advent into the boxing business. He won eight of these fights by knockouts and outpointed in the others. Chapter two William Lawrence Stribling entered Lanier High School, at Macon, Ga., after touring in vaudeville with his parents and took up the game of basketball. Ma put her foot down, though, when he suggested that he believed he had in him the makings of a great football player.