Lonsdale's Belt: Boxing's Most Coveted Prize by John Harding

Author:John Harding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2016-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

No syndicate could be blamed for the fact that, whereas in 1947 there had been some 760 promotions in Great Britain, by 1967 this figure had shrunk to 164. Mr ‘X’ was not responsible for the fact that in 1947 paying customers might visit any one of 150 venues large and small in the UK to watch boxing, yet by 1967 ten private sporting clubs were responsible for almost half the promotions in the country.

Boxing was not the only sport to suffer a massive decline in paying customers. Football, too, found itself in a similar crisis during the 1960s and 70s. The reason was a changing society: people with more money and more choice as to leisure opportunities, and altered social arrangements as slum clearance projects swept away established communities that had once fostered ‘traditional’ sports.

Few football clubs, though, went out of business. They could put in more seats, employ a commercial manager, sell players to one another, borrow money from the local bank manager. For boxing, without a similar physical base, the decline was more serious. As small halls closed their doors to the sport, preferring bingo and even wrestling, there were fewer openings for aspiring boxers, thus fewer boxers. There were fewer gyms and fewer old-timers to pass on the secrets of the trade. Boxing was truly a contracting industry.

Those caught up in the decline found it hard to grasp exactly what was happening. During the early 1950s the blame for smaller promoters ceasing to operate was placed on the crippling Entertainment Tax. When the tax was lifted in 1957 and the decline continued, there was much bewilderment, which only helped to foster the increasingly hysterical claims that boxing was being slowly destroyed by sinister forces in the early 60s.

However, the principal response by promoters to declining attendances during the Sixties was to turn away from commercial public tournaments and to open private membership clubs along the lines of the National Sporting Club at the Cafe Royal – during this decade operating extremely successfully. In 1964 the Anglo-American Club was opened at the Hilton Hotel, followed by the Clarendon at Hammersmith, the Wyvern in Manchester and the Midland in Birmingham, while in 1965 – a sure sign of the times – Jack Solomons opened the World Sporting Club at the Grosvenor Hotel, Park Lane. Meanwhile the NSC had sufficiently improved its status that in 1962 it successfully bid for a British title fight.

Thus in February of that year Chic Calderwood fought Stan Cullis for the light-heavyweight title at the NSC’s Cafe Royal headquarters in Piccadilly. Such high-profile venues, involving sponsorship and possible links with slot and close-circuit television (not to mention live relays) appeared to be the future of the sport, certainly the immediate future. By 1967 private clubs were promoting 50 per cent of all tournaments in the UK, the NSC more than anyone else.

The principal worry concerning the clubs was that the average working man might be excluded – clubs were not cheap. These fears were

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