Jimmy Wilde's lack of title defences

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The impression I get is he was trying to win the vacant title back against Villa although what happened between his retirement and that fight who knows?

 

he fought fairly regualrary in that period also

could i just note that America did not recognise an American chapion at the time so by default Jimmy Wilde was actually world champion in Nov 16th 1914 and made 1 defence against Sid Smith before losing to Tancy Lee. The match with Lee was for recognition as the 'true world champion' as they wewre the 2 leading claiments.

Lee lost in his first defence to Joe Symonds who in turn lost his first defence to Wilde.

Wilde then defended this 'Unofficail world title' so to speak against the Yank Jiohnny Rosener then against Tancy Lee and Johnny Hughes. Before fighting Young Zulu Kid (who had become the American Flyweight world ttile claimant AFTER Lee beat Wilde for the 'World Title')

Very confusing stuff almost as bad as todays alphabet soup.

Also can i note Wilde actually defended that 'Officail World Title' he won by beating Zulu Kid he defended it twice sucessfully as he defended it against Dick Heaseman on April 29th 1918.

As for the lack of defences between 1918 and 1923 ill get onto it as i know he retired for a while aswell. My freind whos writing a book on Wilde might have a good idea of why he didnt defend his World title

 

Wilde was a sergeant in WW1, he only fought professionally twice in 1917 and three times in 1918 due to the war.

He resumed his career again in 1919, he went to America and Canada at the end of 1919 and returned after 12 fights in North America in the summer of 1920 and effectively retired.

He had 1 fight in 1921 after been out of the ring for 8 months, and then he was out of the ring for a further 2 years and 6 months when he was lured out of retirement for the mega bucks fight in New York against Pancho Villa.



So taking into consideration the war years and Wilde's effective retirement, he was only left with 1919/20 as possible years for a defence, American champions were reluctant to take their title overseas and the same may have been true for the Brits, but that is academic anyway as Wilde won 11 out of 12 fights in America, the only loss was a newspaper decision against a featherweight, there would have been no flyweights able to compete with Wilde at that time, Wilde beat American bantamweights Memphis Pal Moore and Joe Lynch in 1919, there was not and is still not a boxing weight class small enough for Jimmy Wilde, he weighed about 95lb for most of his career, the flyweight limit is 112lb, when Jimmy did fight flyweights he was often giving them 6lb or 7lb advantage, incredibly he often fought bantemweights and even featherweights.

After having had only 1 fight in over 3 years, he had put weight on and was 109lb compared to the new young superstar Pancho Villa who was 110lb, Pancho was a natural flyweight, Jimmy was a natural 95 pounder.

 

You've clearly copied this and changed a few words around. Dick.

 

Yes, the money fights were against the Bantams.

Also as The Ring did not come about for another six years, they are using hindsight for their comments...

 

Obviously I looked some of it up, otherwise you would need to be 110 years old to remember the Mighty Atoms career :roll:, but there again you already know that dont you, you are just 'sore' as our American friends might say, because I helped see off that very rude and nasty person from the general forum.
But there is no need for you to be 'sore' as he is going to spend all his time on this forum, my advise to you is less of the 'bad' language otherwise you could suffer the same fate as your 'general forum' friend.

 

Good points

 

try me.

 

I have some old BBB of C yearbooks in storage, I might be able to find some info, because I know a few years back an early history of the Paper/Flyweight division was published, with challenges etc...

Looking at the Flyweight championship in the current book, it lists Wilde as universal champ from 1916 to the Villa defeat.

The only non British/IBU claim to the title before la Barba in 1925 was Johnny Coulon in 1910.