All TIME GREAT (Posthumous)
World, British & Empire Flyweight Champion, British, European & Empire Bantamweight Champion
92 contests, won: 64, drew: 3, lost: 25
In a 1988 interview, legendary Scottish trainer Joe Aitchison told me quite simply, Jackie Patterson was definitely the hardest hitter, pound for pound, that Scotland has ever produced…” and there were many other leading boxers and boxing figures willing to testify to the awesome hitting power of this Springside, Ayrshire born, but Anderson raised southpaw who turned pro in 1938 after winning a Scottish A.B.A Title. Joe Aitchison explained the man managed by Pat Collins from Scottish to a World Title holder status’s phenomenal hitting power thus! …As a young man, Jackie had worked as a butcher, developing the digital tendons, the most vital part of a boxer’s body when he throws a left hook – and how Patterson could hook!…” Dundee’s Freddie Tennant, speaking of his 1939 Scottish title loss to Patterson by referee’s intervention told me. “…I fought Lynch three times – he decked me, but Patterson’s punches were murder – like being flailed by an iron bar…” Similarly, Finsbury Park’s former British bantamweight champion Danny O’Sullivan said his 1948 7h round stoppage loss to Patterson “…It was like walking into a strange room and then someone turning out all the lights I didn’t feel anything…” When I asked Danny O’Sullivan – At a boxing writers dinner in 1990 in London – to compare Patterson’s hitting power with that of his fellow Scot Peter Keenan (who took O’Sullivan’s British Bantamweight title in Glasgow in May 1951), Danny said “…Peter Keenan decked me six times in six rounds, but if Patterson had caught me six times full on with his right hook he would have killed me – Keenan was a better boxer but Patterson’s punch? – The hardest I ever took in ring…” In June 19th 1943 Patterson Kayoed Kane in 61 seconds to take the Lancashire man’s World Flyweight title, at Hampden Park, Glasgow. Â Patterson’s knockout of Kane incidentally was the third fastest World Title fight finish of all time for over thirty years. Again, although southpaw socker Jackie had to share an Albert Hall bill in 1941 with the likes of Rochdales Jock McAvoy, Freddie Mills and British Heavyweight Titleist Jack London big boys in build, reputation and boxing ability – it was wee Jackie Patterson who upstaged them all with a newspaper headline “Patterson wins in 70 seconds…” This paper went on to say.
“…It took Jackie Patterson, Glasgow, the British and Empire Flyweight Champion, only 70 seconds to beat Dunley Lewis of Wales, there were a few preliminary feints by both men, and then Patterson landed a perfect right hook to the jaw which ended the bout.” Of course such spectacular punching power brought its own rewards beyond victory. Jackie Patterson remains the Scot with the longest ever reign as British Flyweight Champion holding that crown for nine years between 1939 and 1948.
The wee man with the massive punch also held the Empire title longest (eight years) and the World Flyweight crown (five years) a longer tenure than any other Scottish Flyweight to date. Again Jackie Patterson holds lesser-known records – one he most definitely didn’t want.
When he won the British Flyweight Title in September 1939 in his 19th pro bout and only three weeks before his 19th birthday (by cutting, decking and stopping Manchester’s Paddy Ryan) he became the only Scot winning this title to receive a purse of zero for his ring efforts. The reason? – the Second World War was only a month old and wartime crowd restrictions meant that his title clash fought beneath barrage balloons left promoter George Dinley without enough money to pay a purse! Nevertheless, that Ryan’s title triumph gave Jackie Patterson another Scottish record that he holds to this day – at only eighteen years 340 days old Jackie Patterson remains the youngest Scot ever to capture a British Flyweight Title! But Jackie won the big one – the World Flyweight Title defence at Hampden Park in July 1946 when Anderston’s Patterson out-pointed the Liverpudlian over fifteen rounds. Patterson lost his first attempt to lift Dundonian Jim Brady’s British Empire Bantamweight crown in Glasgow in 1941 but four years later used his previous loss to inspire his 1945 victory over Brady for the same Empire title. Yet Patterson holds another negative record – of all Scotlands Flyweight title- holders his career record shows the greatest number of defeats – 25 in all. However this can be explained in one word – weight. Jackie suffered terrible problems in making weight.
Certainly weight led Jackie’s proposed title defence against Hawaii’s Dado Marino being scuppered. Weight problems explained his lethargic performance in March 1948 when he lost his world title to Ireland’s Rinty Monaghan in Belfast. In this Jackie Patterson had something in common with his fellow Glaswegian World Flyweight champion Lynch because Benny lost his title by forfeit due to weight problems in 1938 just as Jackie was stripped of his title in July 1947 for failing the scales against Dado Marino. Yet he was an immensely likeable human being as Peter Keenan has testified, said Peter “Patterson was a tremendous wee guy, a Gentleman outside the ring”
Jackie was murdered aged 46 in South Africa in 1966. “Despite the violence that surrounded his life, Jackie Patterson was the quietest and most unassuming of men” He was also a terrific ring performer, you have to be to win a British Title before your 19th birthday and hold records for length of title tenure that remain unbroken by any other Scot in the Flyweight division even today.
