Former IBF light middleweight champion and Philly Boxing legend, Buster Drayton, has passed away aged 70. Buster was the quintessence of the underdog made good, a man who bucked the odds and made it to the mountain top. British fight fans of the 1980s will never forget the year he announced himself on these shores by virtue of wrecking Jimmy Cable and Mark Kaylor in consecutive fights or his appearance at York Hall the following year where he dropped a decision to James Kinchen.
Learning his trade the hard way, Buster become a world champion 16 months later, decisioning Carlos Santos over 15 rounds in New Jersey. An unlikely Kingpin, he made 2 successful defences of said crown before coming second in a classic slugfest with Matthew Hilton at the Montreal Forum. “When Drayton got dropped in the early part of the fight, everyone went ‘There it is, it’s over..!” recalled Russ Anber. “But when he survived the first round, that’s when they got a look. People who didn’t know Buster Drayton, that’s when they got a look at just how tough this guy was, and what it was going to take to beat him.”
The diametric opposite of some of today’s more entitled breed, Moses Buster Drayton was the dictionary definition of a FIGHTER…..
May he Rest In Peace…x
