The BBC's greatest British fighters of all time and my response.

Around the time of the Calzaghe Jones fight the BBC produced a list of the greatest British fighters of all time. Every one of them had been active in the past 30 years and they drew a lot of criticism for it.

In response they created a list of "greatest old time British fighters". I dont know if it was in any particular order:

1. Randy Turpin
2. Ken Buchanan
3. Jimmy Wilde
4. Ted Kid Lewis
5. Daniel Mendoza
6. Benny Lynch

I posted the following response:

British boxing has a history that goes back to 1719. While boxing has been mainly an American dominated sport since 1882 it was a British dominated sport from 1719 to 1882 and it is in this period that we would expect to find most of the historicaly important British fighters.

Between 1853 and 1882 there were ten recognised American boxing Champions but only one of them was born in America. The rest were all British and Irish fighters who had emigrated across the Atlantic due to the more liberal boxing laws in America.

While it is nice to see more old time fighters reflected in your list of great British fighters you have still overlooked the two most deserving names.
Jem Mace became the first recognised world champion when he defeated Tom Allen to unify the British and American titles. He also probably did more than any other fighter in history to promote the adoption of the Queensbury rules.

Bob Fitzsimmons was the first fighter ever to win world titles in three weight classes becoming champion at middleweight, heavyweight and light heavyweight. He is also the only middleweight in the history of the sport to become the undisputed heavyweight champion. Although Fitzsimmons lived and trained in Australia mmost of his life he was born a Cornishman.

Regards

Ben

 

Cheers.

In the top 10 British fighters thread I have produced a list of the "ten most historicaly important British fighters of all time".

That is in effect what I would have chosen if I had been in their shoes.