Leith Victoria Boxing Club

Leith Victoria Boxing Club – 1919-2010 “Outstanding Service” (91 years)

 

 

 

 

The Leith Victoria Amateur Boxing Club is Scotland’s oldest surviving amateur boxing club having been founded by shipyard workers and boxing enthusiasts at the Leith Victoria shipyard in Leith in 1919 when that seaport was still a town independent from Edinburgh.
It has occupied several premises since it opened in a hut on the Shore at Leith, merging with Leith’s older still Tolbooth club.

Right from day one, the Leith Victoria was blessed by the support of Scotland’s first ever outright Lonsdale Belt winner, James Tancy Lee and his two nephews George and James McKenzie. Both nephews further enhanced the Leith Victoria reputation by George winning bantamweight gold at the 1920 Antwerp Olympic games while flyweight brother James won Silver in the 1924 “Eric Liddell” never-on-a-Sunday Olympic games in Paris. James McKenzie was controversially outpointed by American Fidel LaBarba in the final. Similarly, the then newly founded club’s welterweight, Alex Ireland, had boosted the Leith club’s reputation internationally by winning Scotland’s first ever Olympic boxing Silver medal at Antwerp in 1920.

But Tancy Lee, despite not having his last pro bout until 1924, was not the only coach at the Leith Victoria. ”Curly” Peterson and Jock Stevenson also made the club renowned throughout Britain and the world in the 1920′s and 30′s. In the 1920′s a young flyweight and bantamweight called George Smith not only won titles and international honours while beating the present writer’s Uncle George Drummond in the 1930 East District bantamweight final, but set up a unique record against Dalmarnock and Glasgow’s Mick Hanlon in the Scottish bantamweight championships in Edinburgh in 1928. Having, he thought, outpointed Glasgow’s Hanlon over three rounds ringside officials dug Smith out of the shower and insisted that he fight a fourth round-he duly did and Hanlon-a loser over three rounds- won the decision previously awarded to himself.! George Smith subsequently became the only Scottish referee to handle a world heavyweight title fight-Muhammad Ali v Henry Cooper 1966.

Similarly, another Leith Victoria welterweight clubmate of George Smith’s -Eugene Henderson- became a top pro referee between 1930-60 officiating at the July 1951 world middleweight title fight where Britain’s Randy Turpin beat ”Sugar ”Ray Robinson over 15 rounds. Also in the 1920′s Scotland’s first ever world champion, flyweight Johnny Hill, was a Leith Vics boxer in the 1920′s. So noted was Tancy Lee and the Leith club in the 1920′s  that when American former world champion Aaron Brown- ”The Dixie Kid”- sought sanctuary after being shanghaied into Leith from a boat from Hamburg, Germany. The American then got a job as assistant coach to Tancy Lee at the club in 1924 until he was busted in Leith for trying to steal cocaine to feed his addiction from a Leith chemist.

But perhaps the best way to illustrate the Leith Victoria’s illustrious record over the last 91 years is to list some of its most famous boxers and their achievements.

• First Scottish boxer to win a gold medal in international competition-lightweight Jim Rolland at the 1934 London Empire Games.
• Alex ”Bud” Watson won ten Scottish and British lightheavyweight and heavy weight titles between 1937-47.
• Flyweight Jackie Brown won Empire Games gold at the 1958 Cardiff games then British and Empire flyweight titles.
• Bill Sutherly became the youngest ever winner of an amateur heavyweight title in 1961.
• The only Scottish brothers to win Olympic boxing medals-George and James McKenzie- boxed for Leith Victoria.
• The only Scottish amateur boxer to appear in a Martin Scorsese movie-”Gangs of New York” where he played the hangman-was former Leith Victoria 1960′s vintage light-middleweight, Alex ”Happy” Howden.
• 1998 Commonwealth Games featherweight gold medallist and British Commonwealth, European and W.B.O. superfeatherweight champion, Alex Arthur was a Leith Victoria product.
• The Leith Victoria won the Queens Trophy- presented annually to the outstanding Scottish amateur boxing club in the 1930′s- so often that they used it as a gym door stopper!
• In the 1930′s the Leith Victoria club used to box annually, boxers from the battleship ”HMS HOOD”- sunk in May 1941 by the ‘German battleship ‘Bismarck”

Famous Leith Victoria trainers and coaches; Tancy Lee, Curly Peterson, Jimmy Davis and Joe Fortune.

Text by Brian Donald