Wild Buck Fleming

In the 1920’s my paternal grandfather, John Wisloski (later Americanized to Weleski) was a boxer known as “Wild Buck Fleming”. 

Born and raised in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia, he was the third and youngest son of Lukas and Eva Wisloski. 

As a boxer he was very popular in the working-class neighborhoods of Manayunk, and Roxborough. He had the ability of drawing massive, passionate crowds of neighborhood supporters. The crowds nicknamed him “Wild” because of his high intensity, aggressive and crowd pleasing fighting style. He fought with heart, passion and forward pressure as oppose to strict defensive moves. While researching my grandfather’s history, I came across this exact quote, “he was an absolute warrior and a genuine local legend during the peak of the Golden Age of Philadelphia boxing”.

In 1926, he fought a highly feared middleweight contender from Conshohocken named Francis “Bunny” Blake. The match took place on a very hot and humid evening in July at the Rudolph’s Open Air Ring in Manayunk that was located along the Schuylkill  River. Rudolph’s ring was a boxing venue situated by the old railroad tracks used by Pencoyd Iron Works and next to the stone pillars of the Manayunk Bridge. It sat in front of a group of row houses built by Rudolph for his paper mill (Ashland) employees. The crowd favored “Fleming” and “Fleming” came out fighting in his usual wild aggressive nature. “Bunny” made several sharp defensive movements and in the fifth round threw a hard punch that cut a deep bloody gash above “Fleming”’s eye. But despite the deep gash that covered his face and the blood in his eyes, “Fleming” never gave up and continued to fight. 

Other places he fought at were the Olympia Athletic Club at Broad and Bainbridge against Johnny Dundee, but it was at the Auditorium Athletic Association venue in North Philadelphia that gave him the reputation of being an aggressive, relentless, crowd pleaser. 

I never knew him because he died four years before my birth of a cerebral hemorrhage. He is interred at Laurel Hill (East) cemetery in the East Falls section of Philadelphia.