The Matchcover Storyteller

I can easily name 3 really famous Canadian boxers  —  George Chuvalo, Lennox Lewis, and Tommy “Hit Man” Burns.  You can maybe name a slew of others, and there are loads more in the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame (now Boxing Canada’s Hall of Fame. 

The fame of Canadian boxers goes back to 1890 and ’91 when George Dixon became the first Canadian to win the bantamweight and then the featherweight world championship; he’s also considered to be the first black world champion.   I’m more familiar with Tommy Burns of Hanover, Ontario, because I live nearby  —  he was the 1906 world heavyweight champ, the first Canadian at that weight and interestingly, it is noted for his time period that he would fight anyone of any race or ethnicity!  .  And Chuvalo was surely a figure in my younger adult life (as I recall, in 93 professional fights, he was never knocked down)..

Then, coming across this matchcover, there was Tony Unitas.  A Torontonian, he was also a distant cousin of famed Baltimore Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas.

Tony first entered the ring at age 10 in the 1930s; he was an Army boxer in World War II and Pacific Fleet champ for a couple of war years.   To me, his greatest claim to fame would be a 1952 6-round exhibition match against Rocky Marciano  (my own personal boxing favourite and one that most computer models suggest remains the greatest heavyweight ever  –  I know, I know…..).  The match was a draw.

Tony Unital retired in 1955 but stayed involved through management and promotion.   Then in the late ‘60s, he founded the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame (the matchcover you see here) and in 1968 became one of its first inductees.  His “Unitas Boxing Weekly” was at one time Canada’s leading boxing publication.   Tony died in 1991, aged 66.  No one makes a connection, but his death was related to an earlier brain hemorrhage, and one jus thas to wonder….

The matchcover itself is a 20-strike, rear strike from Eddy match in Toronto.  The original address on Queen St. W. in Toronto The Good is today a community events hall,. And Canada’s Boxing Hall of Fame is now at 11 Bloor St. W.

There’s not a lot of clean online information about it or the museum there.

We might have to go on our own.