Miles Templeton Boxing historian
THE 1965 ABA lightweight champion, Al White, sadly died last week. Al was a decent professional in the mid to late 1960s, when there were much fewer active pros around than there are today. Those that did turn over from the amateur game had to be very good indeed, and the Middlesbrough man was a typical example of this. In 1963, he won the NABC Class C featherweight championship when boxing for Grangetown ABC. Later that year he moved down to London to progress his boxing career and as a carpenter he would have found work pretty easily in the capital. He joined the Stock Exchange BC where big-punching Sugar Bill Robinson was the star. Al and Bill both represented England in an international against Scotland in 1965 and I believe that this is the only time that the famous old club provided two England representatives in the same international.