Categories: People

Hranoush Bey – Founder of Boxing Shows in the US

The book “Madame Bey’s: Home to Boxing Legends” tells about America’s most famous boxing club in the 1940s and its founder, Armenian emigrant Hranoush Bey, writes NewJerseyHills.

“This book is dedicated to one of the most popular boxing clubs of the last century, where, for the first time in America, spectacular fights between professionals have first taken place. The club was located in the small town of Chatham Township in New Jersey, and its guests were American boxing legends of the time – Jack Johnson, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jack Dempsey, and many others,” NewJerseyHills notes.

NewJerseyHills writes that the founder of the club, the premises of which was also used as a first-class training campus for athletes, was Hranoush Bey, a woman of Armenian descent.

“Hranoush Bey was a Christian of Armenian descent. Fleeing from the Turks during the years of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, she and her family moved to America and settled in Chatham Township. Hranoush ended up in boxing completely accidentally, helping one of her neighbors organize the operation of a local health club.”

The book “Madame Bey’s: Home to Boxing Legends” contains numerous archival materials and newspaper publications, as well as photographs of the most spectacular battles of the time and materials from the personal archive of Hranoush. Hranoush Bey is considered to be the founder of boxing shows in America.

Vigen Avetisyan

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  • You are not telling the whole story about Hranoush, who was married to the Ottoman (yes, Turkish) ambassador to the US at the time, and sang at the inauguration of President McKinley. She spoke 7 languages, and was educated at a French school in Constantiople, aka, Istanbul.

    • Thanks for the addition. Tell me please from which source can add the story of Hranush?

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