This Is The Longest Boxing Match In Recorded History

Not too much is known about the two boxers. On This Day describes Bowen as a veteran from New Orleans and Burke as a newcomer from Galveston, Texas. Cyberboxing Zone, which seems to have set itself as a repository for turn of the century boxing, has a profile for Bowen: "Bowen was a short, stocky fighter who was scrappy and tough; He could dish it out and take it too; He was strong and relied upon his natural stamina and durability rather than finesse and boxing skills; Bowen was known for his 'marathon' fights of long duration." This tracks. However, Burke's missing from their site.

We find Burke in a 1904 article in The Tacoma Times announcing his retirement from boxing. In the same article, we also discover what happened to Bowen post record. He was killed in a match against "Kid" Lavine from a fractured skull. On This Day insists that he died due to injuries received in a car crash in 1942, though there's no clear evidence for or against this date. We do get a sense of Burke's character in the reason given for his retirement however: "[Bowen and Burke's match] was the last of the vicious, real prize fights, and Burke says the boxing game today is child's play to what it was fifteen or twenty years ago." He wouldn't approve our boxing then. In 1982, matches were limited to 12 rounds. Bowen and Burke's record is unlikely to ever be beaten.

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