Mark Kaylor v Errol Christie (November 1985)

This gets mentioned from time to time, but it deserves its own thread.
Great fight from 1985, two young British middleweights. I remember this being big news at the time, a real grudge fight.

These were the good old days when a fight like this was billed for what it was. An eliminator for the British title. And that meant something.
These days they'd put it on pay-per-view for £20 or more, and stick a world title tag on it, or call it the 'Silver belt world title' or some other crap. It didn't need that **** back in the day, and there were several good British middleweights back then, and ONE WORLD CHAMPION at the weight (the Marvelous one himself, of course).

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Aye, but that was before the internet.
Everything's "worse" now because all these words on the screen says it so ....

 

At the time Herol Graham was British champion at 160 and world ranked and in his prime. Tony Sibson was still hanging around the the world rankings. Kaylor and Christie making up a good crop of British middleweights.

 

Yes, he was. Bit shaky in the chin department but very capable boxer. He actually came back from this defeat quite well, with a very good performance about a year later against Sean Mannion, but then got beat up against Charles Boston, a southpaw who was much better than his 12-3 record suggested. Christie kind of went downhill from there.

Whoever was picking Christie's opponents in those days was coming up with some strange ones. November 1987, they have him in with Jose Quinones, who was a raw fighter with 21-8-2 record, but had sparked out iron-chinned Doug Dewitt a couple of fights earlier. I remember seeing that one on BBC as well, on a Saturday afternoon if I remember rightly. Of course, Christie was knocked out in that one too.

Boston, Quinones, those kinds of journeymen types were high-risk, low reward.

 

Good summary.
It really is a tremendous fight. Very well-matched pair of fighters, giving it their all.

 

Since he retired, Mark Kaylor has stated that it was a shame for him not to have a super-middleweight class at the time (the IBF had a title at the weight since 1984, I think, but almost everyone ignored it until the late '80s, early '90s). He was dead at 160 by the time he faced Graham in 1986 and then had to move to 175 where he did not fare so well.

 

I'm not sure.

Kaylor admits to having had a quick temper back then.

I think the bad blood was felt on Christie's side due to the blatant racism of some of Kaylor's supporters. Kaylor was from Canning Town, east London, and there were a significant section of violent racists and hooligans in Canning Town in those days .
I don't think Kaylor was of that type, and I don't think Christie ever said that he was either, but there were some nasty characters around who would make it racial.