I have made a thread here where I state that Calzaghe is the greatest European of all time. I still stand by that. Several names came up to contest my claim. One of them was Fitzsimmons. Now Fitzsimmons was clearly a greater fighter than Calzaghe. However he was not European. He was in fact Australian. I can't help but think that each of the posters who mentioned his name was a soap dodging pom! Do the British actually have a legitimate claim to his being one of their own?
He was born in England, his mother was English and his father was Irish. Then He started boxing in New Zealand and then in Australia, before finally fighting in the US. He was born in Cornwall so he is British.
Even though he grew up in New Zealand on a technically I don't think we can claim him even though we do. At that stage everyone in New Zealand held British passports and were British citizens. It was not until 1948 that a New Zealand passport and citizenship was introduced. I am not sure there is much claim to being Australian at all. Being a kiwi I like to think of him as a New Zealander as I think the lifestyle and the formative years he spent here helped shape him. There is the fact he technically couldn't have been a New Zealander even if he wanted. So I won't argue with anyone saying he was British. He was born there.
Agreed. It seems bizarre that the TS refers to him being "in fact Australian", when the criteria for being such wasn't strictly defined at that point (how can it be a 'fact' if there was no definition of what the term was at the time?!?) Not to mention that his parents were from the UK (though his father was Irish rather than British), he was raised in New Zealand, and was an American citizen by the height of his career, where he stayed until his death. I don't think any country can definitively claim him as soley being theirs, but all four have a partial claim. Anyway, Fitz himself doesn't seem too bothered about what nationality he was, so it's a bit pointless having too strong an opinion about it either way.
