Miles Templeton
Boxing historian
THE UK has had a very strong tradition of producing great flyweights. Before World War I, we had a virtual monopoly of world champions, and with Jimmy Wilde, the famous Welshman, we had an all-time great. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Benny Lynch, Jackie Brown, Peter Kane, Jackie Paterson and Rinty Monaghan continued to ensure British domination at world level. After the war, some great small men started to be produced throughout Asia and South America, but we still held our own, with champions of the calibre of Walter McGowan, Terry Allen and Dai Dower.
By the 1960s this had all changed. There were fewer professionals around in those days and with living standards at an all-time high, maybe we just weren’t producing so many small men anymore. In 1962, there were eight active flyweights in Britain. Within a year that number had dwindled to two. One of them, McGowan, was a future world champion, and the other, Alex O’Neill, was a decent journeyman. By 1965, John McCluskey and Tony Barlow joined the list and they were both very capable. McCluskey went on to become British champion in 1967. Throughout his reign, which lasted until 1977, there were only active British flyweights in total. It took McCluskey seven years to win the Lonsdale Belt outright, such was the paucity of viable challengers. When he retired in late 1977, the division looked dead. In the preview for his 1974 title contest against Tony Davies, BN stated: “It looks a fair bet that this will be the last British championship at the weight and, with no other likely challengers in sight, the Board of Control may decide that the time has come to abolish the division.”