During the cataloging of my collection, I recently came across a series of press photos of Benny Lynch training for various competitions in the behind schedule 1930s. Benny Lynch is one of the tiny group of British boxers for whom public opinion has a special fascination. It will probably be caused by his early, tragic death, if it is because of his boxing career, which was both meteoric and sensational, as well as controversial. He is a legend among Scottish fans and he will have few competitors if someone had to choose the best Scottish warrior of the 20th century. Ken Buchanan is, I think, an obvious other candidate.

Benny favored Kempys, a range of hills 12 miles north of Glasgow, to training camps. Before this he was used to training at Cathkin Braes, but when Benny and his manager George Dingley saw Kempyy, it was such. As John Burrowes wrote in his biography of Lynch in 1982, Dingley said: “What a wonderful, really wonderful place for a training camp. He has all this. Benny could take hills, take all this pristine air, and is a host to look after him. Nothing can be more perfect.”

Benny loved to escape from the feverish pace of Glasgow to train in the countryside, and also regularly crashed the camp in Stirlingshire. Photos this week show him in two different camps. You can see him how he attracts the water from his caravan during training in Dungoyne for a competition with Jimmy Warnock from June 1937. His trainer Alec Lambert can be seen in the background. Alec himself was a good warrior, boxing Ted Kid Lewis in 1913 for the free title of British featherweight and won the ABA championship in 1910 of the same weight. Benny’s father stayed with him in caravan and cooked for Benny.

He can also be paired with this great little Flyight, little Bostock from Leek, for his fight with Pat Palmer in 1936. Benny looks at the camera and I can’t find out how the photographer succeeded so high so close to the ring, but this is a gourmet shot. Willie McCamley, another decent professional, can be seen in the corner, waiting for his turn to enter with Benny. This camp was in drmen and was a brief walk from Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond. It is not surprising that Benny was doing so well against Palmer, who sent in eight rounds to preserve his British, European and global Flyight titles.

When “boys” went from Glasgow at Kemps to watch how he trained, in 1937, when he trained at his epic competition against the undefeated Peter Kane, over 4,000 appeared to watch him. There is a eminent photo of Benny hitting Punchball in the ring, with his name on a shirt, and this photo was taken before this vast crowd.

It is depressed to refer to that when Benny’s brief career ended, and he toured the boxing cabins and lived with his name that he once again went to tiny towns and villages in rural Scotland, where he once trained. This time, however, it was as washed and disgusted, the champion he visited, and he scrapped the nobles, for peanuts, in shabby venerable stands that day.

Let’s remember the great Benny Lynch. I think his biggest fight was the one with Kane and how Bn Informed at the time: “From probably the greatest show of fighting with boxes that has ever served British Master, Benny Lynch kept all three titles. Lynch was brilliant and magnetic in victory, Kane Wonderful in failure. The master showed his most classic show and turned out to be the best scale in the world.”

In 2019, I wrote about the unwilling end of Jacek Bodell’s career, the British heavyweight master in 1969–1970, and again in 1971–1972. Unfortunately, Jack will be remembered for the last three competitions of his career, very speedy lost over the space at the hands of Jerry Quarry, Jose Urtain and Danny Mcalinden. Time to fix the image we have.

Jack took part in 71 professional competitions, from which he won 58. He won the title of ABA ABA Delicate-Heveight Veight against Johnny Evans Hammersmith, and six weeks later he managed to win a silver medal at the European Championships, which took place this year in Belgrade. He had to pull out of the semi -finals with cut eyebrows when he had every chance to pass. Jack was also a miner of coal and did very well in the miners championships, and then such an integral part of the amateur season.

Bodell became a professional in 1962 and won 36 of the first 42 competitions with several excellent victories over Dave Ould, Ron Gray, Ron Redrup, Johnny Halaphi, Freddie Mack and Billy Daniels. His shortcomings were obvious from the very beginning because he was inclined to lose in relation to hefty Hitters. Despite this, he was considered good enough to fight the highest rated American, Thad Spencer in the Belle Vue competition in 1966 in Manchester. Once again he appeared briefly, being stuck in two rounds.

He rose again with six uncomplicated victories before Henry Cooper repeated a feat with a two -level victory of the British title in Molineaux, the house of Wolverhampton Wanderers, in 1967. Jack could forgive the game at that moment because he seemed to have reached his limit.

However, the next year he won another five in trotters, with four wins in the space, one of which was victory with nine rounds over Brian London in the eliminator of the British heavyweight title, and at the end of the year he was again a claimant for Cooper’s title.

Four subsequent wins in 1969 brought him the title competition with Carl Gizzi. They both questioned the free title, recently abandoned by “our” enerery “, and this time Jack issued a much better program, ahead of the Welsh in fifteen rounds. In this way he became the first Southpaw to win the title of British heavyweight. As you might expect, he lost to Cooper in his first defense. Once again, Jack could forgive that he withdrew from the game, but got stuck on her, and in 1971 he was adapted to Joe Bugner, the novel champion. The Bugner was then the rising British Boxing star, taking the Cooper lid in a controversial competition, which I think, won the fair and square.

Few gave him a chance with the teenage master, but Jack proved that his many doubts were wrong. BN informed that “Bodell, slandered the clumsiness of Southpaw, took the titles of Bugner, European and the community of nations with a firm fight. He took control from the first round and made a huge margin. Bugner faced some defeat, unless he stopped Bodella, and it never looked like Edinburg Judge George Smith shot Bodella.

Bodell won the title of ABA, was twice as high as the British heavyweight master, and also won both European titles and the community of nations. Jack died in 2016 at the age of 76, after a long fight against dementia. He has achieved much more than much hefty weight earlier or since then, and despite his obvious shortcomings, he does not deserve to remember the losses themselves.

He is not one of our better masters, admittedly, but as a man who never gave up, neither inside or outside the ring, he won his place in the British history of boxing.

It seems that this is currently the accepted part of the game for two boxers, in a great competition, to get involved in oral and sometimes physical, quarrels during weighing or during a press conference. This is often condemned by traditionalists who remember the so -called antique days when two players usually exchanged courtesy during the spinning of their hands. There is no doubt that things have deteriorated, but were things always brought up so well?

The first huge dispute that I clearly remember, and to this day I think that the most noteworthy in Great Britain took place in 1985, when Mark Kaylor and Errol Christie got involved in their notorious street fight after a press conference before the fight for their epic battle in the last eliminator for the last eliminator for The for the British Wweight. And who can forget about Shenanigans that took place when David Haye and Dereck Chisora ​​met at a press conference in Munich in 2012?

In 1930, Ernie Rice from Hounslow and Harry Mason from Leeds met in a routine 15-year-old in the ring, Blackfriars. Both men were ex-British masters of lightweight and did not like each other. A few days before the competition, together with their managers and promoter, they met at the Savoy Grill, a prestigious restaurant in Centrum London to agree who should referee the competition. After about 10 minutes, the situation became nasty, and the three tables were overturned, wine, food and cutlery were scattered over the floor, and the waiters and colleagues had to enter to separate them.

The benefit of this event was the wife of the Treasury Chancellor. It took 20 minutes to return the order, when you can see that Mason’s mouth was bleeding and Rice’s clothes were in the shreds. The Control Council met three days later, and after the fight could go on. The place was full of rafters and rice, London, was cheered in the ring. He was booed from it within a minute. After the Mason’s hit at the beginning of the fight and the postpone of his man, he ignored the instructions of judge Matt Wells to stop the box and fired at Mason when he was on the floor, completely losing control. The rice was disqualified after about thirty seconds of boxing.

Another incident, which I was not aware of recently, took place in 1921 between two very well -known boxers. Joe Beckett of Southampton was the prevailing British heavyweight champion at the time. Two years earlier, he suffered a shameful defeat at the hands of Georges Carpentier when he was knocked out in the first round. In 1923, he would suffer from the same fate later, this time in just 15 seconds, and for this he is largely remembered. However, he was not a bad master with a murderous left hook. In 1920 he gained his most significant victory, defeating the older former world champion in hefty weight in Tommy Burns, a Canadian who was notable for Jacek Johnson in 1908. Beckett coped with relative ease, stopping him in seven rounds in the Royal Albert Hall.

In the next competition against the American Frank Moran, Beckett was sensational flattened in just two rounds. The following year, Burns publicly stated that Beckett seemed scared of Moran and his notable blow, and that he remained on the floor.

Beckett and Burns, together with Carpentier and Jimmy Wilde, were honorary guests during the rugby league match with Bradford Northern, and with the admission at the Leeds hotel after the match Beckett fired at his former rival, and two men came to the blows in what was a fierce fight than in Kensington a year.

Fortunately, when words and blows were mentioned, two men put their differences behind them and moved on because I am ecstatic to say that Kaylor and Christie in 2010.