BRITAIN’S greatest champions were born and raised on the mean streets of our major cities and had to fight their way out of hardship and poverty.
It was that kind of background that put the steel in their souls.
Their education was a million miles from the playing fields of Eton.
That’s why it’s fascinating that both the winners who pick up their trophies at the 70th Boxing Writers’ Club awards dinner at The Savoy on Monday night are university graduates.
Johnny Fisher, 24, winner of all his ten heavyweight pro fights including nine KOs, has been voted 2023’s Best Young Boxer of the Year.
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Fisher earned a 2:1 in history from Exeter University. His dissertation was on the aerial bombing of Germany in 1944-45 — he is known as the Romford Bull but perhaps he should be known as the Romford Bomber.
Delicious Orie, 26, first featured in this column before the Commonwealth Games in 2022, was unopposed to be 2023’s Best Amateur of the Year.
With an economics degree from Aston University, Orie was Commonwealth super-heavyweight champion and this summer won European gold — and is one of the favourites to be Olympic champion in Paris next year.
DT, as he likes to be called, has a Russian mother and a Nigerian father and could not speak English when he arrived in this country at seven, as his parents fled Moscow having suffered extreme racism. If our boxing writers live up to their past record, both these men will have very successful careers.
Of the 69 previous Best Young Boxer winners, 28 have gone on to be world champions and only three of the other 41 failed to win a British, Commonwealth or European title.
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The first young man to receive the honour was Randy Turpin in 1951 and he was immortalised when he took the world middleweight title from Sugar Ray Robinson at London’s Earls Court.
Others include Ken Buchanan, John Conteh, Joe Calzaghe, Naseem Hamed, Barry McGuigan, Nigel Benn and Frank Bruno.
Liverpool’s former world light-heavyweight champion Conteh, the 1973 winner, told me: “It was 50 years ago but I’ll never forget the feeling of elation when I was told I’d won the Best Young Boxer accolade — it still has pride of place in my trophy cabinet.”
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But the biggest cheer at The Savoy will surely be for former British middleweight champion Johnny Pritchett, who at 80 is the oldest living Best Young Boxer of the Year.
Pritchett, who lost just one of his 34 fights, retired at 25 to become a successful businessman.
When he won in 1965, a three- bedroom house was £3,364, petrol cost 35p a gallon and a pint was just 22p.
