The forgotten story of... Britain's original giant boxer
Posted: 29 Jun 2011, 05:42
Thought this might be of interest to some posters.
The forgotten story of... Britain's original giant boxer
Today boxing's heavyweight ranks are awash with gargantuan performers. At 6ft 5in and 6ft 7½in respectively stand Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko, the German-based Ukrainian brothers who have dominated the division throughout the last decade. Larger still is the ferociously nicknamed 'Beast From the East' Nikolai Valuev, who towers a whopping 7ft and weighs around 22 stone. But size in heavyweight boxing isn't everything, as Britain's 'petite' 15½ stone David Haye proved when he outboxed Valuev to take the latter's WBA crown in 2009.
Now Britain has two gigantic prospects of its own: Liverpool's David Price (6ft 8in) and Manchester's Tyson Fury (6ft 9in), who are both unbeaten at the time of writing. Go back to the pre-World War Two years, however, and men of Fury's and Price's dimensions were practically unheard of. It's true, America and Italy produced a couple of giant heavyweights – world champions no less – in Jess Willard and Primo Carnera, but such men were exceptions. The largest British boxers of the era stood little over 6ft and typically weighed under 14 stone. In those days, men like Price and Fury were more apt to be seen in a circus than a boxing ring.
You can imagine, then, the extreme excitement and media attention that greeted the emergence in 1930 of a British prospect whose bulk would have rivalled them both. Jack Pettifer, who fought out of King's Cross in London, was 6ft 7½in, weighed over 17 stone, and had an enormous 82in reach. Everything about him was highly unusual, including the manner in which he was discovered.
Continue reading here:
http://news.boxrec.com/news/2011/forgot ... iant-boxer
The forgotten story of... Britain's original giant boxer
Today boxing's heavyweight ranks are awash with gargantuan performers. At 6ft 5in and 6ft 7½in respectively stand Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko, the German-based Ukrainian brothers who have dominated the division throughout the last decade. Larger still is the ferociously nicknamed 'Beast From the East' Nikolai Valuev, who towers a whopping 7ft and weighs around 22 stone. But size in heavyweight boxing isn't everything, as Britain's 'petite' 15½ stone David Haye proved when he outboxed Valuev to take the latter's WBA crown in 2009.
Now Britain has two gigantic prospects of its own: Liverpool's David Price (6ft 8in) and Manchester's Tyson Fury (6ft 9in), who are both unbeaten at the time of writing. Go back to the pre-World War Two years, however, and men of Fury's and Price's dimensions were practically unheard of. It's true, America and Italy produced a couple of giant heavyweights – world champions no less – in Jess Willard and Primo Carnera, but such men were exceptions. The largest British boxers of the era stood little over 6ft and typically weighed under 14 stone. In those days, men like Price and Fury were more apt to be seen in a circus than a boxing ring.
You can imagine, then, the extreme excitement and media attention that greeted the emergence in 1930 of a British prospect whose bulk would have rivalled them both. Jack Pettifer, who fought out of King's Cross in London, was 6ft 7½in, weighed over 17 stone, and had an enormous 82in reach. Everything about him was highly unusual, including the manner in which he was discovered.
Continue reading here:
http://news.boxrec.com/news/2011/forgot ... iant-boxer
