“Outstanding Service”
You just know there is something unique about a boxer who, 23 years after throwing his last competitive punch, is the subject of a 30-minute documentary on Russian Soviet television. Particularly when that boxer is Scottish and the only Briton to be so honoured in the entire 73-year history of communist Russia. This singular honour, bestowed only in 1988 in recognition of the fact that he was in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) with a Scottish boxing team was but another accolade in the glorious ring career of Dick McTaggart M.B.E., arguably Scotland and Great Britain’s greatest ever vested warrior. Unfortunately Dick himself was fast asleep in his Leningrad hotel room unaware that his ring exploits were being praised nationwide from Tashkent to Tomsk. Despite frantic efforts to rouse him by a colleague the 1956 Olympic champion rose from bed only in time to see the credits rolling over a montage sequence of his contests as the programme ended.
Yet in the late 1950′s and 1960′s when those slim McTaggart legs encased in ever present white boxing boots appeared on TV, eyes wearied by a hard days toil in the factory or office would focus sharply with anticipation at the prospect of a feast of fistic skills which the blonde crew-cutted southpaw rarely failed to provide once the bell rang. Further proof that the name of this quiet son of the Dundee tenements had become, thanks to his peerless ring skills, the Esperanto word for boxing excellence, was furnished during a 1988 interview at his then home on the Southside of Glasgow. Then Dick showed me a large article from a Jersey, Channel Islands, newspaper that had appeared in the l970′s. McTaggart and his Kent born wife Doreen had taken their four daughters for an intended quiet holiday in this Channel Island but within hours of Dick landing he was besieged by local journalists who only left them in peace when he granted them an interview.
On examining this great Dundonian southpaw boxer’s record one can perhaps fully understand why throughout Europe, the Commonwealth and the Americas this incredibly talented Scottish light and light welterweight ace is universally regarded as being the essence of boxing brilliance. In 634 bouts Dick was only beaten 24 times.
In the 1956 Melbourne Olympics he not only won Lightweight gold for Great Britain but the Val Barker trophy for boxing excellence. A bronze medal was gained at light welter in the 1960 Rome Olympics. Empire games gold had been won previously at Cardiff in 1958. In 1961 Dick was European champion. In addition, Supermac was British ABA champion in 1956, 1961, 1963 and 1965, and Scottish champion between 1957 and 1965. Strangely enough Dick McTaggart was Olympic champion BEFORE he became a Scottish champion for the first time! Again in the year that he won European gold (in Belgrade in 1961) Dick was not even Scottish champion, having quit boxing earlier that year! Although Dick, surprisingly, puts his 1961 European Championship Gold medal win down as his greatest ring achievement – even above that Melbourne triumph in 1956, Europe ironically provided Dick with some spectacular setbacks such as being knocked out in one round by Aberdonian Johnny Kidd in Prague in 1957 and a points loss to Russian fellow southpaw Karoskin that prompted one Scottish newspaper to call for Dick’s retiral!
Such rare losses were mere glitches on a boxing career that was otherwise a glorious catalogue of triumph.
Again, as Dick McTaggart himself will acknowledge his service in the Royal Air Force was a vital ingredient in his successful ring career. From the inspiration in his comer during bouts from “Chiefy” Roy, his RAF boxing coach, to providing him with a unique claim to fame, Dick is the only NATO soldier to be honoured by the Communist Soviet Union who put him on Soviet TV in 1988. Again, if one looks at the quality of the opponents who Dick McTaggart fought and beat at domestic and international level one can see just why he is rightly praised as Scotland’s greatest amateur boxer ever. ” Supermac” beat guys like Jim Lynch (Glasgow Transport), Jimmy Gibson (Woodside), Malcolm McKenzie (Buccleuch) and Johnny Cooke (Bootle and England), all outstanding boxers in their own right. Even in earning his daily bread before retiring Dick McTaggart was associated with class. Working for the blue chip Rolls Royce Company.
Truly a Scottish great, that’s Dick McTaggart!
