In the latest JEP Sport temps passé feature, Paul Lees looks back at a night of boxing held at the Hotel de France 44 years ago
BOXING: Two people going toe-to-toe, looking to punch the living daylights out of each other just for sport, is older than civilisation itself.
In Jersey too, it has a rich and storied history which continues to this present day, whether it is the many “white-collar” events that take place through the year, or the bouts that Leonis host such as when amateur boxers from Liverpool came to test themselves against some of the best of the Island last month.
Jersey has provided a home for many too. Former Jersey Reds lock and resident Nick Campbell quit rugby in 2017 to pursue a career in pugilism, turning professional four years later and last year becoming the first Scottish heavyweight champion since 1951. Another resident, former Polish champion Lukasz Wawrzyczek, had 26 professional fights, winning 20 of them, and has the rare distinction of being one of just a few people to defeat current world heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk from his amateur days.
Former world super-middleweight rivals Nigel Benn and Steve Collins were both based here during some of their peak years too. The latter trained in the South Hill gym on Mont Bingham before they met each other, twice, in 1996 for the WBO Super Middleweight title, which the Irishman won on both occasions by TKO. To walk through the 160-year-old gym’s hallowed doors, which Leonis calls home, is a sensory experience of sight, sound and smell, and continues to produce talented young boxers.
Jersey’s first-ever Commonwealth Games medal came through the fists of Bert Turmel in Perth in 1962. Four years before, Turmel’s brother, George, also competed for the Island at the Games in Cardiff. In 1986, Liverpudlian and Pisces boxer John Sillitoe followed in Bert Turmel’s footsteps to win bronze as a bantamweight at the 1986 Edinburgh Games before moving back home and turning professional. Lee Meager, originally from Salford, also competed for Jersey as a featherweight at the 1998 Games in Kuala Lumpur before also turning professional and becoming British lightweight champion in 2006.
Jersey has also hosted a number of high-profile amateur and professional fights. One of the first recorded professional fights in the Island occurred on 22 May 1896 when Albert Kempster knocked out local favourite Charles ‘Ginger’ Le Breton at Springfield Hall. Kempster is a story in himself. A sergeant in the Northampton Regiment, he moved to Jersey a few years before the bout and would go on to win two bronze medals in team pistol shooting competitions at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. A one-time honorary secretary of the Jersey Rifles Association, he was also proficient at gymnastics, fencing and athletics, but he was best known on the Island as a celebrated opera and operetta singer.
Nearly 113 years later, former world light-heavyweight champion Clinton Woods fought and won an IBF world title eliminator against Elvir Muriqi at the Hotel de France, which also had future world champion Jamie McDonnell on the bill, and this week in 1979 the same venue hosted an eight-bout Young England trial. No one from Jersey competed in the trials but it still drew a dine-out crowd of 280 watching some of the best young talented boxers in the country who, as Dennis Mannion reported in the JEP, “turned in magnificent performances … not one bout which could be said was not to have been first class,” with a mangled use of the double negative.
“The diners had all the skills, plus some very hard punching paraded for them,” he continued. “There can be no doubt that with amateur boxing in the capable hands of young men like these, England would look to have a very bright future ahead.”
Of the 16 young boxers taking part, between them they held 25 national titles. Meanwhile, the ‘Fenland Tiger’ Dave ‘Boy’ Green, a world welterweight contender who fought and lost against Hall of Fame legends Carlos Palomino and Sugar Ray Leonard, watched on as special guest.
The first bout was a light-flyweight contest between Darlington’s Neil Petterson and southpaw Terry Barker from the famous Repton ABC gym from Bethnal Green that has produced over 500 champions including the likes of John H Stracey and Audley Harrison.
“Barker went straight on to the attack but Petterson was boxing skilfully on the defensive,” wrote Mannion. “Petterson … snapped Barker’s head back with accurate left and right crosses” but Barker took a unanimous decision from the judges, 60-57, 60-57, 60-57.
Barker would go on to win a number of ABA titles but resisted overtures to turn professional, unlike his son Darren who went on to become a world middleweight champion when he beat Daniel Geale in Atlantic City in 2013 and is now a pundit on Sky Sports.
The second contest on show was between flyweights John Hyland from Liverpool’s Golden Gloves ABC and Robert Chalmers of St Aldenhem with “very little between them, both boxers were applauded by the audience”. Hyland, who would go to represent Great Britain at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, won a split decision 60-57, 60-57, 58-59.
Pat Lindsay of Vauxhall Motors ABC, also got a split decision over Gerard Daley of St Patrick’s ABC in a light-heavyweight contest. “Lindsay, coming on strong, edged the decision [57-50, 57-59, 60-57], although there were many who thought that Daley had probably done just enough.”
Next up was the hard punching middleweight duel between Brighton’s Ricky Jordan and Steve Roberts. At the end of the fight that saw “claret coming from [the] nose” of Roberts, Jordan won by split decision 59-58, 59-58, 58-60.
Joey Joynson and Fred Potter both “landed some jarring punches to the head” in their light-welterweight clash. Joynson won unanimously 60-57, 60-57, 60-55, before welterweights Dudley McKenzie and Robert W Smith, the son of Green’s manager Andy Smith who was also, by coincidence, a guest of the show, put on “everything one could wish for in an amateur bout – skill and aggression, and a never-say-die attitude.
“In the second round, McKenzie really found the range and threw in every punch in the book, including hooks, jabs and uppercuts.
“The game Smith still [went] on the attack but McKenzie was well in command and took a close but unanimous decision 60-57, 60-58, 59-58.”
Such was his talent, McKenzie was tipped for great things but, despite winning a record eight back-to-back ABA National finals, he never fulfilled his huge potential professionally and his life ended in tragedy when he committed suicide in 1995. It was his younger, less-talented brother, Duke, who became the star, a three-weight world champion between 1988 and 1993.
The “no nonsense” Smith, meanwhile, would go on to oversee professional boxing in Britain as the general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control in 2008, a position he retains today.
Back at the Hotel de France, east Londoner Steve Murphy bloodied the nose of his opponent Gary O’Mara, who was also given a warning for holding in their bantamweight contest. Murphy won unanimously 60-58, 59-57, 60-57.
The final bout of the evening was also a unanimous decision [60-57, 60-57, 59-58] in favour of Gerard Lavelle against Nigel Potter, with both Murphy and Lavelle being selected for England for a forthcoming international against West Germany as a result of their wins. Despite the defeat, Potter would eventually go on to captain a Young England side that included a certain Frank Bruno.
Aside from the trials, those ringside also enjoyed two fights involving boxers from Jersey’s Pisces gym. In a junior contest, Steve Faulkner put in a “gutsy performance” in his loss to John Knight from Sydenham, 56-60, 56-60, 58-59, followed by a senior contest involving Lawrence Banks, who lost 56-60, 57-60, 57-60 to another Sydenham boxer, Arthur Meek, who wasn’t so mild in a “hard-hitting bout”.
“Judging by the applause,” Mannion concluded, everyone thought they had seen an “absolutely fabulous” night of boxing. Jersey has seen many since too and will have many more to come.
