Prosecutor Had Fighting Career

Last week, longtime resident Roger St. Martin of suburban Lake Worth asked a two-part question about early theaters and boxing venues. Here’s Part Two:

Early in the 20th century, the West Palm Beach area was popular for small-club boxing, fueled by interest among winter visitors, including financier E.F. Hutton and others who sponsored “stables” of fighters. The
local American Legion held fights in an indoor arena built in the late 1920s on the north side of Clematis Street, near the Florida East Coast Railway crossing. Bleachers held as many as 2,000. Palm Beachers bought private boxes that framed the ring. Boxing on TV in the late 1940s killed local boxing everywhere, including in the West Palm Beach area.

One of the early club fighters was a strapping University of Florida student who won 59 straight fights there and elsewhere and who, in 1931, just three months from finishing law school, was tempted by a $685 purse to enter the ring at New York’s Madison Square Garden. His 60th opponent broke his jaw
in the first round, but he struggled through all 10. Later that year, he was elected a municipal judge in West Palm Beach, and Phil O’Connell would spend a quarter-century as Palm Beach County State Attorney. He died in 1987.