"Aurelio Herrera generally is rated as the hardest hitting of all lightweights. He was a tawny, cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking Mexican from Bakersfield, Calif., and he reached the top flight among the lightweights of the era on his heart and his punch, because he had little else. He wasn't much of a boxer and he never was in condition, but he could punch like a middleweight. Bat Nelson told me once that Herrera hit him on top of the head so hard he thought his skull was split right down to the chin." - Grantland Rice, The Milwaukee Journal, March 30, 1940
Splitting George Lawler with that famous right-hand punch wasn't what Aurelio Herrera had in mind for the Milwaukee boxer. He intended to do it with a knife.
A famous name in boxing in the early 1900s when no sport was bigger in Milwaukee, Herrera had five fights here. Four of the five were draws, and he got knocked out in the other one; but unlike other places nobody here busted a chair over his head in the ring, and though local newspapers mistakenly referred to the California native as "the Mexican," at least they didn't call him a "greaser" or other racist epithets commonly used elsewhere.
"I like Milwaukee and I feel indebted to the boxing clubs of Milwaukee for the kind treatment I received while here," Herrera said in 1904 after boxing a draw with local idol Charley Neary. "Therefore I would like to return and box for them."
Herrera especially liked the local promoter who gave him and every other boxer with whom he dealt an honest shake: a square-shooting man whose quiet manner and innate decency earned him the nickname "Parson Tom."
When he died in 1941, Thomas S. Andrews was eulogized as "one of the most legendary characters of fistiana" and "a world renowned ambassador of boxing." Milwaukee Journal sports editor R.G. Lynch wrote, "(Andrews') word was his bond. No man needed a contract. His old-fashioned manners, his courtesy of act and word marked him in any group. He was a gentleman of the old school."
Lamented one-time bantamweight champion of the world Johnny Coulan, "There are too few in the boxing game like Tom Andrews."
Which is why Herrera wanted to kill George Lawler in 1905.
Herrera had been a prizefighter for 10 years by then, starting out in Bakersfield, where his father, a native of Mexico and naturalized American, peddled tamales on the streets.
A recent online biography hailed Herrera as "Boxing's First Latino Superstar," but 100-plus years ago when lily-white was America's favorite color his Mexican heritage disqualified the 130-pound clouter from considerations afforded lighter-skinned fighters.
"Herrera, the Mexican greaser, wants to be champion of the world. Not on your life," sneered the Pittsburgh Gazette.
As that big right hand left a lengthening trail of victims, the anti-Herrera crowd resorted to extreme measures to counteract it. In Butte, Mont., after Herrera stretched out a fighter called Kid Fredericks in the third round of their fight on May 8, 1903, Fredericks' backers rushed the ring.
One of them smashed a chair over Herrera's head, whereupon the referee counted Herrera out and proclaimed Fredericks the winner. That was too much for the local sheriff, who reinstated the original result.
So his treatment in Milwaukee, when Herrera came here seven months later to fight Charley Neary, was a revelation. Though technically illegal in Wisconsin then, boxing was allowed at the discretion of local authorities so long as everything was above-board.
That was the only way Andrews operated. Born in Canada, he moved to Milwaukee with his parents when he was a year old. As a boy Andrews was a Western Union messenger, and all the time he spent in local city rooms delivering or fetching messages gave him the newspaper bug. By the turn of the century he was sports editor of The Evening Milwaukee, one of Milwaukee's five dailies.
Andrews also became the city's first professional boxing promoter. No journalistic code of ethics existed then to keep him from wearing both hats simultaneously.
The Herrera-Neary fight was held Jan. 8, 1904 at the Panorama on West Wells Street between North 6th and North 7th Streets. Neary – a sawed-off slugger, too – was leery of Herrera's right hand and "was fortunate to get a draw," declared The Evening Wisconsin.
Andrews wrote that Herrera "made many friends during his short stay in Milwaukee, proving that the boxer can be a gentleman when he so desires. Herrera is a clever little fellow and is not the braggart that many of them are."
No wonder he was anxious to come back. Just two weeks later, Herrera and Neary fought to another draw at the Panorama.
Then Herrera went back west, and in a famous 20-rounder with future champion Battling Nelson, Nelson came back from a head-splitting knockdown in the fifth round to win the decision. Later Nelson would recollect, "When that fight was over, my head weighed like a ton. I had a big bump and a terrible headache which lasted for days."
According to The Ring magazine, for the Nelson fight Herrera "trained on black cigars and whiskey and stayed up all night dancing." His manager once said that when doing roadwork – sometimes with a stogie in his mouth – Herrera stopped periodically to drink from whiskey bottles he had stashed along the route.
Another great thing about Milwaukee, from Herrera's standpoint, was that a fellow didn't have to go around stashing his own booze. Before he became a sports reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel, George Phair attended Marquette University and was on the track team.
When Herrera was in town they ran together daily from the lakefront up Clybourn Avenue to North 35th Street. At a tavern there Herrera would throw down three whiskeys, then they'd run back to the lakefront.
Just before Christmas 1904, Herrera returned to his favorite town to fight another local man, Maurice Sayers, who proved he was a better fighter than most guys named Maurice by battling Herrera to a draw. A rematch was set for Jan. 20, 1905. That one ended up a draw, too, but Herrera's focus may have been off on account of what happened on Jan. 5 to the man he considered his best friend and benefactor.
Andrews was walking out of the Broadway Armory that evening when up loomed the 6' 3", 200-pound form of George Lawler, a local heavyweight boxer who'd been knocking around the fight game (and mostly getting knocked around) for a decade.
But in 1904 Lawler won a series of bouts in northern Wisconsin. That's because his opponent was Lawler's brother Charley, using a variety of phony names. The "fights" raised money to pay George's tuition at the Milwaukee Medical College. He enrolled there in the fall of that year, and quit boxing.
On Jan. 3, 1905, Lawler was unhappy to see himself referred to on the sports page of The Evening Wisconsin as "the husky weight who has been bush fighting around the copper country for a year in order to get the money necessary to carry him through a course of medical study."
Instead of writing a letter to the editor, Lawler ambushed Andrews at the Broadway Armory two days later, belting the seven-inch shorter, 70-pound lighter man unconscious and kicking him in the face.
The assault on Parson Tom outraged the community. The Milwaukee Press Club met in special session to pass a resolution demanding that Lawler be "punished for such an unexampled exhibition of cowardice and brutality, and that notice may be given to all persons that lawless thugs cannot, by the use of fists and heels, in any way restrain proper editorial opinion or criticism."
Outraged too, Herrera resolved to take more direct action. He went the jailhouse to see George Lawler. Maybe he was drunk, or maybe it was just the look on that well-known face that prompted the turnkeys to take him aside and pat him down. When they found what he was packing, Herrera didn't bob and weave.
"Now you find the knife, I tell you," he said. "I was going to stick it into that fellow."
After pleading guilty to assault and battery, Lawler got a light sentence and went back to medical school.
"Powerful influences have been at work for the prizefighter ever since his arrest," noted the Free Press.
Some strings were pulled on Herrera's behalf, too, because he was never charged and the incident was kept under wraps until Andrews mentioned it to R.G. Lynch 35 years later.
Herrera was already long gone. After a long, boozy fall from fame and fortune, he died in 1927. He was mostly forgotten by then, which wouldn't have been the case if Parson Tom's would-be avenger had pulled it off in 1905.
