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Norman Giller is an esteemed author of 114 books, he worked as Muhammad Ali’s European publicist, he was a scriptwriter on This Is Your Life and he was a chief sports writer at The Express. But some of his fondest memories originated from his spell as a Boxing News reporter. He spoke to Alex Daley
Hygiene-obsessed Joe Bloom maintained pristine standards at his famous West End gym
WHEN you think of an old-time gym what do you imagine? Floors, walls and windows thick with grime, dilapidated equipment and a rickety, blood-stained ring? Go back 60 years or more and that’s probably a fair portrayal of a typical British boxing gym. But there was one notable exception.
The Cambridge gym at 9 Earlham Street, off Cambridge Circus, in London’s West End was a bastion of neatness and cleanliness thanks to its eccentric owner, Joe Bloom. “You’d be skipping and he’d be going round sprinkling disinfectant on the floor,” Teddy Lewis, a talented feather and lightweight of the 1940s and ‘50s, once told me. “Woe betide anyone who dropped even a small piece of paper on the floor of Joe’s beloved gym,” recalled Boxing News ‘Old Timers’ doyen Ron Olver.
Henry Cooper was England’s most beloved fighter. Looking back on a meeting with a man whose name was synonymous with decency and courage. By Thomas Hauser
ON November 10, 1970, Henry Cooper knocked out Jose Manuel Urtain at Wembley Stadium in London to reclaim the European Boxing Union heavyweight crown. Cooper, as was often the case when he fought, was cut above his left eye and below the right one. But he won every round en route to a ninth-round stoppage. It was gratifying victory and also the last triumph in a long ring career that saw Cooper become arguably the most beloved fighter in the history of British boxing.
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‘He still holds all those records and he’s done so many things in his life. Now he’s 80, he’s had a stroke and they do something about it.
‘To me, it feels like they have the attitude that they’ve got to give him something so let’s give him that, because it will stop people going on about it. So I’m not too happy about it, but that’s how I feel.’
Greaves scored 357 goals in the top-flight of English football for Chelsea, Tottenham and West Ham, which stands as a record almost 50 years after his final game.