Londsdale Championship Boxing A 60's Retrospective

[Rocco Del Sesto]

This is the launching of the Lonsdale Championship Boxing, A 60's Retrospective which is my look back to the 1960's world of Boxing. More specifically the world of British Boxing during the days of Henry Cooper, Brian London, Billy Walker, Brian Curvis, Maurice Cullen, Howard Winstone, Alan Rudkin, Walter McGowan and Terry Downes, just to name a small few of the more recognizable names of boxing in the UK from those days.

As some of you may know me, I've been around these parts for some time, helping to rate fighters for this great game of Titlebout Championship Boxing, with my special intersest being heavyweights and the fighters from Europe and the UK where I felt there was a big void of missing names that would be great additions to the game's database. A few short years back I picked up a few random copies of the Boxing News publications for the late 1960's and I got hooked on this newspaper published in Great Britain with all it's great indepth coverage of the British boxing scene in particular, but it also gives some great coverage of boxing throughout the world and articles about some of the great and interesting faces of boxing from years ago.

So over time I started collecting more issues of the Boxing News from the 1960's, always my real interest being in fighters from that era and I especially got more interested in wanting to do more fighters from the UK. During this time I got involved in helping out with setting up the official database to be used in the 2.5 edition release of TB. That for a time took me away from my own casual rating of fighters. Once with the release of 2.5, I pretty much had back out of furthur work on the database and started looking into wanting to do some kind of universe project. Had thought about that for some time without ever doing anything with my time spent rating fighters and just doing my casual random play of TB.

Then just about 2 years ago this month in fact I introduced the idea for the LCBA which was going to be a replay of sorts of British boxing during the 1960's using the Boxing News I had to help me build the history of fights that took place in the UK. I really enjoy reading these old Boxing News because they give a lot of great accounts of fights for these British fighters of that time that you just won't find anywhere elso. There's also the occasional good article about some European fighter from that time that offers good insite into that fighter, not only his career but his life itsel; same thing with a lot of the British fighters. Well I messed around for I don't know 3-5 months with the idea of the LCBA, and quite honestly I guess got unnerved with what I felt the large task to try and carry off this replay project the way I was looking at it. Plus, I just kept going back to I guess wanting more to just do what I always most liked and that was rating fighters for TB. Also, around that time to, I think I was feeling though somewhat burned out with TB and needed to step back from it for awhile.

But, in the meantime I continued to collect various copies of old 1960's Boxing News for pleasure reading and collecting them and with the thought of still using them somehow to help rate fighters. During the next year I started playing with the idea of collecting more of these newspapers to help build a career archive of UK fighters during the 1960's to help me rate them. So I decided well, there's got to be some starting point of sorts that I needed to aim for to give me a target of where to start rating guys. So, I picked the year 1959, that being the year I came into this world, so I figured it a grand time. It would also put me before the start of Ali's career and thus sort of span that time period. There's a lot of good reading about his early career in the 1960's in these Boxing News archives.

Well, 2 years later from the date I first thought to start LCBA, I've now collected most of the complete year editions of the Boxing News from 1959 through 1969. I'm also awaiting arrival of copies of 1970 and 1971 that I ordered on line from a dealer in the UK. I'm praying it's somehow making it's slow journey across the Atlantic through all the winter storm weather this year.

So now I'm starting the LCBR, as we'll call it for short. What I'm going to do with this is not really a replay, but I'm going to work my way through the years starting in 1959 and rating new fighters, mostly probably UK, but hopefully some European and other fighters from other parts of the world that may have some useful coverage on in these Boxing News papers. Now this is not going to be a speedy process. Shoot I might be 30 years to do the 1960's!! Starting with the Jan. 2 1959 issue (which actually covers the last week of 1958), I'm going through the detailed accounts of the different boxing "fight cards" that actually happened in the UK during that past week, and rate those fighters for TB who fought in those fights. What I do first though is look those fighters careers up in BoxRec to get a list of fights for each and then I research through my Boxing News papers to find the accounts for each fight the boxer had during his career to see what information if any I can find out about him. Find out maybe some information about what kind of fighter he was, something unique about his career or just his life in general. Researching through those papers like that take some time, so, your not going to see a slew of fighters spit out with this project every day or even every week. Depending on the time I have I may take a month or more to do one week! Hopefully not that slow!

Now, I'm going to set up the ratings with all the information in them like we did with the "official database" fighters, do a little playtesting of them and then present them in this thread. I'm going to give them the Scource Name TBCB3 DB Team Rocco. I added the Rocco to the first part which is the source name for an Official database fighter rating. So, maybe some of these fighters will catch the eye of other people still rating for the database, do some tweeking with them if need be and then drop the Rocco off the Scource Name and they would be all set for the "Official Database".

What I'm going to do with each weekly edition of the Boxing News presentation of fighters in that edition, I'm writing up a 1-2 page "Retrospective" edition telling you about those actual fighters that happened that week and also maybe some other interesting news that took place that week in the world of Boxing. I find the reading of the history in these papersp really enjoyable and wanted to try and pass some of the good information on to others to enjoy. Now hopefully I do this in a good rewrite fashion so no copy write police squads might feel I'm plagurizing (did I spell that right?) the print copy of the Boxing News or otherwise performing any unlawfull copywrite infringement. I did fashion the title of my "newspaper" retrospective a little bit on the front page of these old 1960's Boxing News'. Again I hope no one finds offense to that.

With all that said, attached in Word Doc form is the first copy, Jan 2, 1959 issue of the LCBR. Hope you enjoy reading. To follow in several postings are the first 25-30 fighters created from the first week's fights (The last actually of 1958!).

Rocco Del Sesto

[Rocco Del Sesto]

boxer: Phil McGrath
Global ID 31365
sex male
birth date 1937-02-21
division lightweight
country United Kingdom
residence Halifax, Yorkshire, United Kingdom
won 19 (KO 0) + lost 18 (KO 5) + drawn 1 = 3



boxer: Gil Neill
Global ID 103904
sex male
birth date 1937-04-11
division lightweight
country United Kingdom
residence Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 21 (KO 13) + lost 10 (KO 5) + drawn 0 = 31



boxer: Ray Ward
Global ID 276864
sex male
birth date 1935-05-04
division middleweight
country United Kingdom
residence Manchester, Lancashire, United Kingdom
won 4 (KO 3) + lost 12 (KO 6) + drawn 1 = 17

[Rocco Del Sesto]

boxer: Sammy Hamilton
Global ID 33433
sex male
birth date 1929-05-07
division middleweight
country United Kingdom
residence Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 20 (KO 11) + lost 14 (KO 5) + drawn 0 = 34



boxer: Pat Price
Global ID 120264
sex male
birth date 1935-05-01
division lightweight
country United Kingdom
residence Newry, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 16 (KO 12) + lost 27 (KO 14) + drawn 2 = 45



boxer: Willie Johnston
Global ID 268687
sex male
division light middleweight
country United Kingdom
residence Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 2 (KO 1) + lost 6 (KO 6) + drawn 0 = 8

[Rocco Del Sesto]

boxer: Ollie Wyllie
Global ID 20251
sex male
birth date 1935-10-25
division featherweight
country United Kingdom
residence Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom
won 4 (KO 2) + lost 13 (KO 4) + drawn 1 = 18


boxer: Bernie Feeney
Global ID 291042
sex male
birth date 1933-08-14
division lightweight
country United Kingdom
residence Banbridge, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 7 (KO 4) + lost 2 (KO 2) + drawn 0 = 9


boxer: Alex McCready
Global ID 244588
sex male
division bantamweight
country United Kingdom
residence Conlig, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 19 (KO 6) + lost 16 (KO 3) + drawn 3 = 38

[Rocco Del Sesto]

boxer: Billy Adams
Global ID 326618
sex male
birth date 1932-05-08
division bantamweight
country United Kingdom
residence Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 9 (KO 8) + lost 22 (KO 12) + drawn 0 = 31


boxer: Paddy Kelly
Global ID 76796
sex male
birth date 1939-03-15
division featherweight
alias Pat
country United Kingdom
residence Derry, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 25 (KO 15) + lost 12 (KO 10) + drawn 1 = 38


boxer: Ray Bond
Global ID 291267
sex male
birth date 1937-08-23
division welterweight
country United Kingdom
residence Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 4 (KO 3) + lost 5 (KO 4) + drawn 0 = 9

[Rocco Del Sesto]

boxer: Joe Sharpe
Global ID 31361
sex male
birth date 1937-02-13
division welterweight
country United Kingdom
residence Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 21 (KO 10) + lost 26 (KO 12) + drawn 0 = 47



boxer: Tony McCann
Global ID 268686
sex male
birth date 1938-04-01
division welterweight
country United Kingdom
residence Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 8 (KO 2) + lost 5 (KO 2) + drawn 1 = 14


boxer: Arthur Rafferty
Global ID 298940
sex male
birth date 1939-12-23
division super bantamweight
country United Kingdom
residence Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 5 (KO 0) + lost 1 (KO 0) + drawn 0 = 6

[Rocco Del Sesto]

boxer: Paddy McAuley
Global ID 265001
sex male
birth date 1932-06-26
division welterweight
country United Kingdom
residence Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 5 (KO 1) + lost 7 (KO 4) + drawn 0 = 12


boxer: Jack Willis
Global ID 109608
sex male
birth date 1936-05-01
division light heavyweight
country United Kingdom
residence Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
won 1 (KO 0) + lost 7 (KO 6) + drawn 0 = 8


boxer: Phil Edwards (Already In Data Base, added lighter wt. rating)
Global ID 13496
sex male
birth date 1936-05-12
division middleweight
alias Cilia
country United Kingdom
residence Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
won 60 (KO 20) + lost 8 (KO 3) + drawn 3 = 72

[Rocco Del Sesto]

boxer: Bob Stevens
Global ID 32300
sex male
birth date 1931-12-03
division middleweight
country Belgium
residence Gent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium
won 33 (KO 10) + lost 18 (KO 8) + drawn 4 = 56


boxer: Billy Allport
Global ID 120894
sex male
birth date 1938-02-23
division welterweight
country United Kingdom
residence Walsall, West Midlands, United Kingdom
won 12 (KO 4) + lost 28 (KO 9) + drawn 9 = 49


boxer: Gordon Blakey
Global ID 20244
sex male
birth date 1937-08-21
division featherweight
country United Kingdom
residence Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
won 22 (KO 5) + lost 8 (KO 5) + drawn 0 = 30

[Rocco Del Sesto]

boxer: Harry Carroll
Global ID 20218
sex male
birth date 1939-09-22
division featherweight
stance southpaw
country United Kingdom
residence Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
won 22 (KO 15) + lost 1 (KO 1) + drawn 2 = 25



boxer: Jimmy Fitzpatrick
Global ID 118544
sex male
birth date 1940-02-26
division featherweight
country United Kingdom
residence Sheffield, Yorkshire, United Kingdom
won 7 (KO 2) + lost 9 (KO 5) + drawn 2 = 18


boxer: Ted Batterham
Global ID 165016
sex male
birth date 1934-02-27
division welterweight
country United Kingdom
residence Walworth, London, United Kingdom
won 7 (KO 5) + lost 4 (KO 2) + drawn 0 = 11

[Rocco Del Sesto]

boxer: Ivor Evans
Global ID 31438
sex male
birth date 1937-02-21
division light heavyweight
country United Kingdom
residence Bournemouth, Dorset, United Kingdom
won 15 (KO 1) + lost 22 (KO 14) + drawn 2 = 39


boxer: Tony French
Global ID 60212
sex male
birth date 1941-11-01
division welterweight
country United Kingdom
residence Woking, Surrey, United Kingdom
won 26 (KO 6) + lost 17 (KO 5) + drawn 2 = 45


boxer: Fitzroy Lindo
Global ID 42743
sex male
birth date 1932-10-25
division light middleweight
country Trinidad And Tobago
residence Spanish Town, Jamaica
won 13 (KO 6) + lost 34 (KO 13) + drawn 2 = 49

[Rocco Del Sesto]

boxer: Terry Russell
Global ID 275451
sex male
birth date 1934-10-15
division lightweight
country United Kingdom
residence Poplar, London, United Kingdom
won 6 (KO 1) + lost 13 (KO 5) + drawn 0 = 19


boxer: Brian Jago
Global ID 30625
sex male
birth date 1936-12-06
division featherweight
country United Kingdom
residence London, United Kingdom
birth place Tottenham, London, United Kingdom
won 5 (KO 4) + lost 5 (KO 2) + drawn 0 = 10

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Well, that's the first "Week" of LCBR. Hope you all enjoy.

As I work through the papers, I'll come across a few photos of these new and maybe old fighters. I know there is the photo thread where all the photos are suppose to be put, but I'll post here the ones that go with this fighters that I'm posting here so you can easily know there here to add to your photo database. I hope you all don't mind me too much putting them here.

A bit time consuming all this, but I'm enjoying adding I hope a nice depth of new history to the TB game.

Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Not many, but hope I'll find some more along the way.

Left to Right...Gordon Blakey, Harry Carroll, Phil Edwards, And Phil McGrath.

I know there's a photo of Edwards in the Photos thread, but found this one that I thought was pretty good.

Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

My God! I just realized I stuck an extra "D" in Lonsdale!!!

My apologies for that!!!

I'll get it corrected.

Thank Goodness I got it correct in the "Newpaper" document. Don't know what I was doing typing it in the way I did on this thread title.


Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

OK forum masters....Is there a way to correct the spelling in the Thread title on the front listing of Threads?

Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Henry Cooper data.

If your interseted in this. I read an article on Henry Cooper in the Jan 9th 1959 Boxing News and it mentions his height being 6 ft 1-1/2 in and his reach as 77 inches.

Later in 1963 issue in a pre fight article on the Cooper vs Clay fight in 1963, it lists Cooper's height again at 6ft 1-1/2 inches but then puts his Reach at 75 inches. I see in the game data base Cooper's height is listed at 6-2. Maybe I'll run across something later to verify which is correct.

Here's a little pre professional boxing history of Henry...

Henry started out fighting as a cruiserweight when he and his
brother Jim were called up for National Service and both fought in
the service. Henry, who was slightly smaller than Jim, fought as a
cruiser to avoid opposing his brother. Twice Henry was Army and
Inter-Services Champion and in 1952 and 1953 he was the ABA Light
Heavyweight champion.

Henry was selected to represent Englan in the 1952 Olympic Games
at Helsinki , only to be narrowly outpointed by a Russian in the
second series.

Jim Cooper by the way it mentions in this same article was born George Cooper. When George was granted a BBB of C licence, the Board requested he adopt a different christian name because there was already another George Cooper operating in the English rings. Thus I guess George became Jim.

[Rocco Del Sesto]

In the May 1, 1959 Boxing News Preliminary on The Patterson vs Brian London cahmpionship bout, in the tail of the tape they give London's height at 5ft 11-1/2" and his reach at 73 inches. Something to add to his rating in the game if you like. The current rating has his height at 6ft even. Maybe I'll find something later to verify.

Rocco

[SAL]

FANTASTIC THREAD ROCCO!!!!

I appreciate the labor of putting this together for us to enjoy.

[Rocco Del Sesto]

Originally Posted by SAL

FANTASTIC THREAD ROCCO!!!!

I appreciate the labor of putting this together for us to enjoy.

Thank you! I'm enjoying reading all this old history and glad to be contributing to the TB community again.

Rocco

[Rocco Del Sesto]

In an account of the Davey Moore vs Hogan Bassey World Featherweight Title fight in the Boxing News March 27 1959 a tail of the tape for both fighters lists Moore's Reach as 65 inches if you'd like to add that to his rating in the data base. All of Bassey's information as they listed is what is in his rating.

Rococ