Was Cavill the oldest old-timer to punch for pay?
By Alex Daley
It never ceases to surprise me what a trawl through the newspaper archives will unearth. One such search through the brittle yellowed pages of an 81-year-old issue of Boxing (forerunner to the trade paper Boxing News) recently threw up details of a fight that compelled me to hastily reread the entire column to ensure that I had caught it correctly. A second read-through confirmed that I had. What I'd read was quite astounding - the sort of fight report you don't read every day.
The site for this unlikely event was the Poplar Hippodrome on East India Road. The date: 18 August 1929. The combatants were a 24-year-old called Sam Shears and a black Australian (this detail in itself was highly unusual to '20s British rings) by the name of Sam Cavill. In one respect the fight was of a classic, tried and tested formula: it pitted Shears's youth and vitality against Cavill's ring experience and know-how. But similarities to other youth versus age ring battles end there. This fight was that extra bit special.
Cavill, it seems, was on the first leg of what, by any standards, was an extraordinary comeback. His former foes included one-time English champion Arthur Valentine, plus top Welshman Dave Peters, with whom he once drew over 57 rounds. This last fact reveals that Sam, even in 1929, was something of an old-timer. In fact, at 74 years of age, he was a living, breathing relic of the bare-knuckle age and a man who, given his trade and the lower life expectancy of the time, was lucky to be alive let alone in a paid fight.
Despite his advancing years, Cavill gamely went in with a man 50 years his junior, and according to Boxing he turned back the clock and put on 'a remarkable display'. What's more, the old-timer actually won the fight. This, however, was due to the disqualification of Shears in the third round, by which point it was obvious the younger man could have won any time he chose.
So Shears was unlucky that day and was no doubt 'carrying' his veteran opponent. But all the same, the result still stands as a win for the ancient Cavill; and the likes of Evander Holyfield, George Foreman and Bernard Hopkins would need to box on for many years to even come close to this feat.
The fight, however, occurred the same year that the British Boxing Board of Control was formed, and it's highly unlikely any sanctioning body would allow such a mismatch to take place today. So Sam's age-defying stunt will almost certainly never be surpassed in modern boxing, which of course is no bad thing.
Was Cavill the oldest boxer in British ring history? Quite possibly.
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