In the 1980s, there was a very popular advertisement on British television for yellow BT pages, in which the elderly gentleman finally follows his beloved book “Fly Fishing by Jr Hartley”. Well, boxing has its own bibliophile named Hartley and was a special man.

I communicated sporadically with Ra Hartley many years ago, because he bought and sold books and magazines, but he is best known for his work, The Life’s Work, The the History and bibliography of boxing books. Bob tried to write a full compendium of every boxing book ever published, both in Great Britain and abroad, and he managed to find and detail, over 2,100 of them. For anyone who is seriously interested in building a collection of boxing books, and there are many of you, Bob’s book is an indispensable source of reference.

Bob has always turned out to be quite a scholar and scientific gentleman, and many were a complete surprise to say that he had a broad career as a professional boxer in the 1930s. I did it something like a personal mission to follow as many Bob duels as possible, and with it in boxing in one of the boxing backwaters at that time, Lincolnshire and East England, it did not turn out to be an straightforward task. A glance at his record shows how extensive professional it was at the moment, with many diminutive towns and villages that had not had a PRO program for over 80 years.

Bob was born in Billingborough in the southern Lincolnshire and was the best of a diminutive group of about eight other boxers who came from the village, and even today his population is only about 1000. He defeated as an average weight and could hit. His plate is decorated with pure knockout against a lot of men who, like him, boxed above all to put food on the family table.

With attendance in some rooms, in which he regularly entertained, carrying only two or three hundred, no one will ever get luxurious in boxing. The first competition, which I can trace for Bob, took place in Forester’s Hall in his own village, six -handed against a boy from nearby Bourne, on the bill promoted by the Boston boxing syndicat, and Bob threw his man in two rounds. Then a week later with a boy from Kirton from one round in Grantham.

Most of Bob’s early duels took place in Boston, Grantham, Spalding and Billingborough, where he was a naturally great favorite, and won his first 14 in a row. His first defeat occurred in March 1934, when he was knocked out from the ring in Grantham in the fight against Arthur “Knocker” Freestone. Despite the brave test, Bob could not return to the ring on time. After this Bob continued to connect mainly eight and 10-rounds throughout Lincs and East England, boxing in Holbeach, Bourne, Skegness, Lincoln, Melton Mowbray and Woodhall SPA.

In 1936 he conducted a campaign in Suffolk and Essex, and then, in October 1937, he showed in the Empress cinema, Chatteris in the act crowned by the local hero Eric Boon, whose meteor’s career was just beginning to achieve. This brought Bob the first and only competition in London. He pulled over eight rounds with George Thurcel in Canning Town Marina, and the BN report for the fight tells us about the style of Bob’s fight “Real Sizzler and Slam finger to the fingers with Hartley fighting.”

In his last competition, Bob kept the great Dick Turpin at the next draw of eight rounds in rugby. After a 56 career, with only 11 losses, Bob left the ring for the convenience of his research to create a final boxing bibliography. What a man.

On October 14, 1980, it will be remembered as a black day in a British professional boxing, and a particularly low point between the editor and the employee Boxing news and leading British promoters at that time, Mickey Duff and Mike Barrett.

This sport has already turned out to be a complex situation of Johnny Owen, who lay in a coma after his competition with a Lupe pin (and who was to die just a few weeks later), the terrifying spectacle of the last Muhammad Ali competition Ali against Larry Holmes and the shameful scenes that occurred after the defeat of Alan Minter with Marvin Hagler. Then we had a show at Royal Albert Hall in the above -mentioned dates.

. Bn The headline said everything: “Oh, what a garbage load”, and the editor Harry Mullan added further criticism with the initial words of his column: “There is no excuse, no justification for this pair of the tournament.”

Four Mexican imports fell into leading British fighters in just seven rounds, and during a program consisting of seven competitions, this meant that fans saw little actual boxing and virtually no quality. On Undercard, the upcoming Mark Kaylor stuck a one-time pretender into a welterweight, Peter Morris from Bridgnorth in five unilateral rounds, Joe Jackson from Coventry upset Davey Armstrong in “Undlid-Bout, who drew Boos and a tardy slap of the crowd,” and Gary Nickels paid Billy Straub in the Eight luminaires, at least, as at least as a competition.

Then a defeat appeared. Jimmy Flint, a gigantic blow to Wapping, detained Cordobes Lopez in two rounds, and BN comments that “Bob Galloway’s intervention would be justified far earlier.” Then Cornelius Boza-Edwards stopped Roberto Torres on the cut eyebrow in the second round of the fight, which “from the first minute of the opening round, it turned out that the fight had no chance of distance”, this was the difference in the class between them.

Dave Boy Green returned from his last defeat from Sugar Ray Leonard, and therefore it could be justified the fact that he was released, but his opponent, Mario Mendez, assured “little to defeat. He produced a strange flash of a talented, clever warrior who could have been years ago, but his determination against Green was not made of iron. “

Finally, we came to the Headliner between Charlie Magri and Enrique Castro. This lasted only one round and “there was not a boxing match between two evenly matched players as one -sided beating.” Castro was brave, but completely outclassed.

Duff and Barrett claimed that their American match, Don Chagrin, provided them with details suggesting that all four Mexicans were worthy opponents of British boys. For example, Castro reportedly took part in the eight previous competitions this year, and they all won. With a benefit in retrospect, especially boxing, we can now see the truth; Castro fought only once this year, victory over Raul Bacheco for the Flyight weight title in Baja California and suffered two knockout losses in 1979. In 1979 in just three rounds. He apparently did not fit Magri.

Similarly, Mendez lost all his previous five duels at a distance and did not fight for two years, Lopez lost four out of the previous six, and Torres won only one of the last seven. Of course, Duff and Barret were flowed down the river by American advisers and had to criticize the chin, just like the board that approved opponents.

Fortunately, during the next concert in this iconic place, Duff and Barrett pulled out all the stops, the victory of Tony Sibson over Matteo Salvemini for the European average title, which is Humdinger, and Charlie Magri overtook Santosa Laciar in a much harder competition against the world Argentine.

Just three weeks ago I wrote an obituary for Bn on Ron Cooper, Olympian at the 1948 Games. Ron was one of the two survivors from this band and, I am very sorry that the second, Tommy Proffitt from Manchester, survived Ron only a few days.

He died on March 23, at the age of 97. It is difficult to believe that two boxers, from only eight teams, live so long, and because there are no survivors from the band from 1952, a real link to the history of boxing went forever.

Alex Daley wrote a great tribute to Tommy for this column in 2015 and I do not want to duplicate it, but as a tribute to Tommy and Ron and the whole team I would like to take a closer look at the 1948 Olympic Games.

The previous Olympic Games took place in Berlin in 1936 and they were extremely broken by the politicization of the event by the Nazi party, with the American sprinter Jesse Owens and some of his teammates, had to bear racial exploit at all times. In 1940, the Games were originally planned for Tokyo, but when Japan attacked China to initiate a brutal war, they were postponed to Helsinki. The outbreak of World War II stopped.

The Games in 1944 were temporarily planned in London, so when the room returned to the world in 1945, the capital was elected a hurried event only three years later. At that time, Great Britain suffered a lot because of the effects of war, the economy was broken, the population had to endure food, and London himself tried to recover from Blitz. Games became known as a hell game because they were conducted on a string.

Eight boxers decided to represent Great Britain Ron and Tommy (in lightweight and Bantam), Henry Carpenter (Fly), Peter Brander (Feather) and Max Shacklady, Johnny Wright, Don Scott and Jack Gardner from Welter to hefty. At first glance it looked like a pretty good team, and two silver medals were returned.

All eight were won by the ABA championship at Wembley on May 5, 1948, so there was no controversy about choosing the team. Tommy remembered that the shorts in which he competed were made by his sisters from the material that they recovered from their family curtains. Ron said the same and part of his set was purchased with clothing coupons.

Boxing took place at Empire Pool, Wembley, a week after swimming and diving parties, when the pool covers, so that the box took place over it. This place is still nearby, currently known as the Ovo Arena, and its boxing history is legendary, especially in the 1960s and 1970s.

Carpenter was eliminated for the first time with a request from the hands of Belgian Alex Bollaert, and the event was finally won by the Great Pascual Perez. Proffitt and Brander also lost the opening competitions, and Proffitt lost to Mexico in the category, which included Vic Toweel and Jimmy Carruthers. Brander’s defeat was a great nervousness, and the boxer was released very similar to the medal.

Cooper was eliminated in his second competition, just like Shackklady and Gardner, but Johnny Wright and Don Scott did extremely well to reach their finals. Wright won the title of GB Sea Cadet only a year earlier, and in the age of 19 he came out of nowhere. Scott was more experienced and as a military police officer his silver medal was a fantastic achievement. Neither Brander nor Shacklada changed their professionalism, and among others only Gardner won the British title as a professional, but they were a great team.