AFTER a couple of years effort adding contests between 1900 and 1904, I have now completed my records to include every contest to have taken place on British soil since 1900. This has enabled me to calculate exactly how many UK-based professional boxers have had 100 or more professional contests and, by my reckoning, the figure is 1,017.
I can remember reading BN back in 1975 when Ray Fallone of Battersea had his 100th bout and the feeling then was that he would probably be the last. By the turn of this century, however, with the increasing regularity of the ‘journeyman’ and the important part that they play within the game, eight more had come along, including Winston Burnett, Seamus Casey, Dean Bramhald, Des Gargano and Peter Buckley. Another 41 have joined the lists since then and Liam Griffiths of Bognor Regis, currently on 99 contests, looks like being the next.
Winston Burnett
What each centurion since Fallone’s day has in common is a very low winning ratio, as all of them have been journeymen. This is a big change to what went before. Only 16 boxers who turned professional between 1940 and 1979 went on to become centurions, but 10 of these had winning records and, from the six that didn’t, two of them, Tommy Tiger and Jack Johnson Cofie, were immigrants, a category of fighter that often appeared on the right-hand side of the bill.
As is to be expected, the majority of the centurions, 678 in all, turned professional during the 1920s (444), or the 1930s (234), and 366 of these lads won more than half of their contests.
Three fighters, Nipper Shaylor of Birmingham, Herbie Fraser (Westbourne Park) and Alf Barrett (Coatbridge) managed to fit their entire careers into a four-year period. Herbie Fraser was the best of them. His 123 contests spanned the years 1931 to 1935 and he had finished with the game by the time he was 22 years old. Nipper Shaylor had 110 contests and less than 40 of these were reported within the pages of BN, demonstrating just how difficult it is today to piece these records together.
Seaman Tommy Watson of Newcastle, who was the British featherweight champion between 1932 and 1934, and who fought the great Kid Chocolate for the World title at Madison Square Garden in 1933, had the highest winning ratio of all the centurions, winning 113 of his 124 contests in a 10-year career. Immediately behind him are Hal Bagwell, Jock McAvoy, Jimmy Wilde, Peter Kane, Tom Smith (Sunderland) and the great Len Harvey.
There are 78 fighters who had two hundred or more contests, with 10 of these managing three hundred or more. Inevitably, Len Wickwar of Leicester with 470, tops the list. Len fought more times than any other boxer, in any era, anywhere across the world and he is in a league of his own. Len died in 1980 on exactly the same day as his stablemate, George Marsden of Nottingham who is second on my list with 375 contests. The most recent fighter to top 300 is, of course, Kristian Laight, from Nuneaton.
Before 1925 it was quite legitimate, and quite normal, for servicemen to pursue active boxing careers and there were many fine fighters from both the Navy and the Army, with 14 centurions amongst them. If I could single out just one of these as representative of his type then it would be Corporal Zimmer of the Hampshire Regiment, active between 1909 and 1922 and the winner of 75 of his 151 contests. He boxed all over the place. Another profession that spawned centurions was coal mining.
There were so many of them coming out of the South Wales, the Midlands and the North-East, and they didn’t make much money from the game, despite their long records, and I met many of them myself back in the 1970s. They were proud of their careers, and they still sit proudly today on my list of the centurions.
