Bert Gilroy

In Gilroy's next fight he was stopped by Freddie Mills, so if he'd just been named #1 contender, it seems like he didn't keep it for long.

 

He was rated no.1 at middleweight (Jock McAvoy still held the middleweight title at that time).
Losing to Freddie Mills at light-heavyweight probably wouldn't have changed that.

 

It seems the Bert Gilroy Facebook page has quite a few clippings of ratings lists. Which ones are of importance I don't know.

 

Id go by what Miles said. That guy is an encyclopedia for stuff like this. I dont know about in Britain but Ive seen numerous newspaper articles for fights written here in the states were fighter A was listed as being rated number 7 by the NBA but when you check the NBA's rankings he wasnt. Thats probably happened to me at least half a dozen times. Miles may have been drawing the distinction that despite Glen claiming Gilroy was rated number one for years and years in fact he wasnt. Which is true. Gilroys grandson was always making ridiculous claims like this. Hed say Fighter X was so great, a top fighter, top rated, etc and then you go and check that fighters record (because youve never heard of the guy) and youd find hed lost four of his last 5 five fights and drawn the other. He once went on a rant complaining that his grandfather wasnt allowed to come in as a heavyweight against Marcel Cerdan. He was mad that his grandad ONLY got to weigh 12 pounds more than a guy who spent the majority of his career as a welterweight. Had he been allowed to weigh in as a heavyweight he surely would have won.

 

It might have been Jock Taylor who said it, but I'm not sure. It seems like the full interview is no longer online anyhow.
When an old fighter who was actually there at the time, (and fought in the same division aiming for the same title), - and with a good memory for detail of those days of his boxing career - remembers in passing that Bert Gilroy was no.1 year after year but never got a shot, I take notice.

If someone can show definitively and completely which fighters the BBBoC ranked/nominated/'acknowledged' as the "no.1 challenger" (at MW and LHW) from, say, 1938 to 1950 ..... we'll have the answer to that question anyway.

 

I thought the claim was that he was #1 at middle and light-heavy?

McAvoy, for his part, didn't fight at all in 1943 and 1944, then made a brief comeback in 1945 before retiring for good, so it's not like he was freezing Gilroy out.

 

https://scontent.flhr2-2.fna.fbcdn....=b78c5f4b29f63da04b879d43c9033d05&oe=5F136CF8

This was lifted from that Gilroy Facebook page. Far from being #1 contender continuously from 1938-49, Gilroy was #1 contender in five different years. In other years he was #2, #3 or #4, and in a couple of years he was unrated (it's fair to say the author took exception to this...). Two years there were no ratings at all because of the war.

Reading through some of those Facebook posts, there are also lots of insinuations about corruption and being frozen out, and "questionable circumstances" surrounding his losses, without any evidence being put forward. No agenda there.

 

"They" didn't want him.

 

Yes, I think the claim is that he was #1 at middle and/or light-heavy for ten straight years. Which I'm not buying into, but I think it there might be some truth in him being rated #1 for several years, rather than just a year.

 

Yes, I find the Facebook page a bit confusing. There are so many different ratings. "NBA", "The Ring", British and world, "Boxing News annual", etc. Not so much of who the British Boxing Board of Control nominated as their leading contender for their titles though.

Absolutely, there are conspiracy theories galore (I think thistle1 is pretty much a big time conspiracy theorist anyway, on topics outside of boxing, for context).

But it is fair to say Gilroy was recognized as being one of the top British fighters in his weight classes before, during and after the war.

 

Miles was going to former boxer dinners from when he was a teenager in the 70s. He was spoken to countless British pros (who were old even back then) and has been record keeping since those days as well.

As Steve said, he doesn't make mistakes, and will check out any loose end just in case he has yet to find it.

He has his own 'British boxrec' essentially, which I've seen in person: it has more fights for pre-war British boxers than boxrec has, by some distance. He has complete records for fighters that are like.....1-0-5 on boxrec, that become 25-10-5 fighters by the time you've seen what he has.

He knows more about Bert Gilroy's career--and the careers of Gilroy's opponents--than his grandson does, and that is a fact.

The newspaper clippings are interesting though. It's also telling that when Miles has asked Jim to provide these sources, he goes silent. Probably because he knows Miles will tear those sources apart.

One other thing: Miles provided Jim with multiple sources for that book he wrote. So he did have some legit info, whether he used it or not. My assumption (and it's just an assumption) is that he didn't, because it didn't paint his grandfather in the light he wanted.

 

Well, if Miles Templeton (who may or may not know everything, but knows far more than us currently) can address the issue of official BBBoC rankings or nominated "no 1 challengers" during those years 1938 to 1950, in the divisions in question, we'd have an answer.

Both in his post you linked, and on the "boxinghistory.org.uk", there seems to be a lack of reference to the BBBoC's nominating or recognizing "number one" contenders for their British titles.
Maybe the practice came along later, but I think the clipping from 1944 is genuine in the sense that the board did recognize/acknowledge the top contender (although perhaps klompton is right to say the article is mistaken).

I wish I could find that inteview with the old boxer who similarly remembered Gilroy as being number one for several years.

As for Jim Glen's prefered rankings, they are reproduced on Facebook as photo, and if Miles Templeton can recognize those clippings and what publications they came from and the significance of them, if any, that will answer a lot too.
If he can't recognize them, it means either : Jim Glen has done a good job of forgery ! ...... or Templeton has gaps in his knowledge of Gilroy.

 

I remember, I was there, also the mutual back-slapping and bestowing of the 'historian' title to the inner circle.

The Lipton meltdowns were amusing though, especially when he would create a fake account to back up his side as if nobody would see through it.

 

I think that's fair. However, it does take an enormous leap of faith to equate being #1 contender for a domestic British title for a few years with being some Charley Burley-esque uncrowned champion.

Something also of note is that after winning his eliminator to face McAvoy, Gilroy was taken ill, which led to the fight being cancelled and him not fighting at all for the next 15 months. By the time he returned he would have lost his ranking and then shortly afterwards McAvoy got injured against Freddie Mills and didn't fight again for a couple of years. Seems more plausible than some massive conspiracy to keep Gilroy away from McAvoy. Or maybe the BBBofC were behind all that too...

 

I have just signed up to this forum, largely because of this topic, so it’s great to join you all and I look forward to being an active contributor.

I have posted within the BoxRec forum for quite a few years now but tend to find that some of the posts I put up do not attract that much interest. I have no interest in debating the relevant merits of Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather endlessly and so I feel a bit out of place there. Hopefully there may be some more knowledgeable people on this forum who take an interest in real British boxing history, some of the more obscure stuff.

Regarding Bert Gilroy, I have nothing against him at all. He was a very good fighter in his day, and I have nothing but respect for him and his career. Where I take issue is with the fact that his achievements have been wildly exaggerated and rather than being seen as the very good fighter that he was, he and his career are starting to become some sort of parody, and that is sad. Some of the claims that have been made about him are quite simply ludicrous and the fact that he is in the Boxing Hall of Fame is a scandal. He in no way deserves to be.

That said, the Boxing Hall of Fame that he has been elected to appears to me to be a bit of a joke in itself and perhaps we shouldn’t be taking that organisation seriously at all. If you google the name Bert Gilroy you will find all sorts of posts on there which continue this myth that he was some sort of world-beater and one of Scotland’s most outstanding boxers. He wasn’t.

Following the debate on here over the last few days it is probably a good place for me to start with the issues regarding his rating, and his supposed ten year stint at the top of the British ratings, at whatever weight that that was supposed to be.

I am in the middle of preparing a very detailed assessment of his actual ratings within Britain at both middleweight and at light-heavyweight and I will put this material up tomorrow so that you can draw your own conclusions as to the accuracy and the validity of the claim that has been made that he "Britain's number one ranked fighter for ten years". In short, I will demolish that claim once and for all.