Joe Boxer

Joe Boxer

Famous Amateur Boxers and second person

Among British amateur boxers, only those who won Olympic gold medals tend to get recognition beyond the boundaries of boxing fans. They included Harry Mallin (Middleweight), 1920 and 1924), Terry Spinks (Flyweight, 1956), Dick McTaggart (Lightweight, 1956) and Chris Finnegan (Middleweight, 1968). In 1908, during the Olympic Games in London, five weight divisions were contested, Bantamweight, Featherweight, lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight. British boxers won them all, and the final four were all British!

It is the professional side of boxing, but the celebrities whose activities for the public generally followed produced. In the period between bare-knuckle pugilism and post-Queensberry boxing, Jem Mace was important. He contributed many of the traditions the old London Prize-Ring, but promoted the use of gloves and helped the sport in the United States and Australia to popularize. In the post-Queensberry era, the first British fighter to achieve superstar status, was Bob Fitzsimmons. He weighed less than 12 stone but won world titles at middleweight (1892), Light-heavyweight (1903) and heavyweight (1897) and fought his last fight at age fifty-two.

Successful fighters have provoked fierce local pride. The best example was Jimmy Wilde, a Welsh flyweight who won the world flyweight championship in 1916 and held it until 1923. He once had a succession eighty-eight fights without defeat. Between 1911 and 1923, he won seventy-five one of his fights by knockout. He was idolized in Wales, where they often believed was the best boxer, pound-for-pound, ever living. He was described as the "Mighty Atom" and "the ghost with a hammer in his hand." Freddy Welsh (Freddy Thomas Hall), from Pontypridd, won the Lightweight title in 1912.

The Scots had a similar pride in Benny Lynch, a flyweight from Glasgow, who held the world flyweight title in 1935 and again in 1937. Over the years, many Scots successful with this weight, Jackie Paterson won the title in 1943 and Walter McGowan in 1966. Ken Buchanan won the Lightweight title in 1971 and Jim Watt in 1980. In Northern Ireland, held Rinty Monahan the flyweight title from 1947 to 1950 and Barry McGuigan won the WBA featherweight title in 1985.

England, also had his successes in the lighter weights. Among the flyweight, Jackie Brown won the title in 1932, Peter Kane in 1938 and Terry Allen in 1950 and Naseem Hamed in the year 1990.

The Welsh had their own featherweight legend Jim Driscoll. His nickname was "Peerless Jim", was born in the Irish single "slum" of Newtown. Jim was the first winner of the Lord Lonsdale Belt. Jim had won the productive British Empire and European titles. Jim is considered by many as the best pound for pound fighter of all time.

Britain has other popular world champions. In the 1930s, Jackie Berg won the Light-welterweight title in 1940, Freddie Mills won the Light Heavyweight title, in the years 1950 and 1960, Randolph Turpin and Terry Downes won Middleweight titles, and in the 1970s, John Conteh and John Stracey won the Light-heavyweight and welterweight titles respectively. With so many title-awarding bodies in the years 1980 and 1990, the public uncertain about who was really the champion.

Nevertheless, the successes of Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank and Joe Calzaghe was extensive media coverage to boxing and walked one to bring large public following.

The most popular boxers, howevers do not always have the world title holders. Just fighting for the world title in the heavyweight division can bestow celebrity status, as demonstrated by Henry Cooper, who twice unsuccessfully fought Muhammad Ali in the year 1960.

Britain had to wait 100 years his first heavyweight champion since Bob Fitzsimmons lost his title in 1899 are. Lennox Lewis became undisputed champion in 1999, having first got the WBC title in 1993. Frank Bruno held the WBC world heavyweight title between 1995 and 1996 shortly after defeating the man who beat Lewis, Oliver McCall. He lost to Mike Tyson in a rematch of their 1989 title fight.

Sue Atkins (alias Sue kittens) helped to pioneer women's boxing in Britain in the 1980s, but without official recognition. The first British woman which a license was Jane Couch from Fleetwood, who won the Women's International Boxing Federation (WIBF) welterweight title in 1996. Most experts would agree, however, that was the Christy Martin-Deirdre Gogarty world championship bout also, in 1996, which helped women's boxing popularity grow internationally. Weeks after defeating Gogarty by a six round Martin decision was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Outside the UK, of course, boxing has many celebrities on a global basis. Muhammad Ali of Louisville, Kentucky, United States, often identified himself and appointed as The Greatest, is probably the best example. Puerto Rico has three boxers in general are regarded as national heroes in a cast of more than 50 world champions from that country, being Felix Trinidad, Wilfredo Gomez and Wilfred Benitez. Nicaragua Alexis Arguello, Mexico, from the more than 100 world champions, Ruben Olivares, Salvador Sanchez and Julio Cesar Chavez, Cuba, Jose Napoles and amateur legend Teofilo Stevenson, Argentina Carlos Monzon, Roberto Duran and Eusebio Pedroza of Panama, Australia Jeff Fenech, Japan Jiro Watanabe, Ghana Azumah Nelson, South Korea Jung Koo Chang and so on. These are boxers whose fame transcended boxing and became household names limits under ordinary people.

In Mississippi City, on February 7, 1882 was the last heavyweight boxing championship fight bareknuckle occurred.

In 2004, female boxer Ann Wolfe surpassed Henry Armstrong (until then the only man to hold world titles in three divisions at a time), by becoming the only boxer ever to hold four different world titles categories at the same time. A rule preventing women from holding titles in more than one weight class at the same time, in place since shortly after Armstrong kept his three titles.

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Joe Boxer