AFTER a few years effort including contests between 1900 and 1904, I’ve now accomplished my data to incorporate each contest to have taken place on British soil since 1900. This has enabled me to calculate precisely what number of UK-based skilled boxers have had 100 or extra skilled contests and, by my reckoning, the determine is 1,017.
I can bear in mind studying BN again in 1975 when Ray Fallone of Battersea had his 100th bout and the sensation then was that he would in all probability be the final. By the flip of this century, nevertheless, with the growing regularity of the ‘journeyman’ and the vital half that they play throughout the sport, eight extra had come alongside, together with Winston Burnett, Seamus Casey, Dean Bramhald, Des Gargano and Peter Buckley. One other 41 have joined the lists since then and Liam Griffiths of Bognor Regis, at the moment on 99 contests, appears like being the following.
Winston Burnett
What every centurion since Fallone’s day has in widespread is a really low successful ratio, as all of them have been journeymen. It is a large change to what went earlier than. Solely 16 boxers who turned skilled between 1940 and 1979 went on to develop into centurions, however 10 of those had successful data and, from the six that didn’t, two of them, Tommy Tiger and Jack Johnson Cofie, had been immigrants, a class of fighter that always appeared on the right-hand facet of the invoice.
As is to be anticipated, nearly all of the centurions, 678 in all, turned skilled throughout the Nineteen Twenties (444), or the Nineteen Thirties (234), and 366 of those lads received greater than half of their contests.
Three fighters, Nipper Shaylor of Birmingham, Herbie Fraser (Westbourne Park) and Alf Barrett (Coatbridge) managed to suit their whole careers right into a four-year interval. Herbie Fraser was the most effective of them. His 123 contests spanned the years 1931 to 1935 and he had completed with the sport by the point he was 22 years previous. Nipper Shaylor had 110 contests and fewer than 40 of those had been reported throughout the pages of BN, demonstrating simply how tough it’s immediately to piece these data collectively.
Seaman Tommy Watson of Newcastle, who was the British featherweight champion between 1932 and 1934, and who fought the nice Child Chocolate for the World title at Madison Sq. Backyard in 1933, had the best successful ratio of all of the centurions, successful 113 of his 124 contests in a 10-year profession. Instantly behind him are Hal Bagwell, Jock McAvoy, Jimmy Wilde, Peter Kane, Tom Smith (Sunderland) and the nice Len Harvey.
There are 78 fighters who had 2 hundred or extra contests, with 10 of those managing 300 or extra. Inevitably, Len Wickwar of Leicester with 470, tops the record. Len fought extra instances than some other boxer, in any period, wherever internationally and he’s in a league of his personal. Len died in 1980 on precisely the identical day as his stablemate, George Marsden of Nottingham who’s second on my record with 375 contests. The latest fighter to high 300 is, after all, Kristian Laight, from Nuneaton.
Earlier than 1925 it was fairly reliable, and fairly regular, for servicemen to pursue energetic boxing careers and there have been many effective fighters from each the Navy and the Military, with 14 centurions amongst them. If I may single out simply certainly one of these as consultant of his sort then it will be Corporal Zimmer of the Hampshire Regiment, energetic between 1909 and 1922 and the winner of 75 of his 151 contests. He boxed far and wide. One other occupation that spawned centurions was coal mining.
There have been so a lot of them popping out of the South Wales, the Midlands and the North-East, and so they didn’t make a lot cash from the sport, regardless of their lengthy data, and I met a lot of them myself again within the Seventies. They had been pleased with their careers, and so they nonetheless sit proudly immediately on my record of the centurions.
