Hillman is remembered as a small hall favourite in long-forgotten boxing cockpits such as Manor Place Baths, Seymour Hall and Hove Town Hall but made it to top of the bill at the Royal Albert Hall in February 1977 when he took on Jimmy Batten for the vacant British light-middleweight title, made vacant by the world class Maurice Hope.
Hillman was coming off his biggest win over Northampton's Tony Poole and was given a 50-50 chance against Batten, a man trained by Terry Lawless, but he failed to sparkle and was halted in seven one-sided rounds, which was a shame because there was more to Albert Hillman than that.
The slim Farnborough man went unbeaten in is first 13 fights before he dropped a decision to Mickey Ryce, whom he outscored in a 10-rounder three months later for the inaugural Southern Area light-middleweight title. He had three great scraps with Ryce in the days when local rivals sorted out their rivalry in the ring and not on Twitter. Hillman featured in other cracking Southern Area title encounters with Poole and Tony Hudson and registered solid wins over Kevin White, Johnny Pincham and Joe Oke but was never really the same after the Batten defeat and his career petered out in 1980 when he was still only 25.
You know, Hillman really looked the part for a while. When you consider that Batten went on to fight for the European title and give Roberto Duran a really difficult 10-rounder in Miami in 1982 you realize just what a 'crossroads' affair their meeting had been. Such is boxing, such is life.
.....inaugural Southern Area title, nice little bit of history there too. Yes, 59 is pretty young really.