| |
| |
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF WORLD BOXING CHAMPIONS
|
|
| |
Jimmy Wilde was a most remarkable runt by any measuring
stick. The tiny Welsh wraith was the smallest of the
genuine giants of sports. He was 5 ft., 2 1/4 in.
tall, never topped 108 pounds for a fight, and
was-pound for pound-the most devastating puncher
ever seen in the prize ring.
Nobody had to tell him that big men fell harder. In
exhibitions he knocked out men who outweighed him by
70 pounds and in formal fights repeatedly gave away
20 pounds to the ranking professionals. As closely
as anyone can estimate he had 864 bouts and lost
only 4. The total includes hundreds of bouts fought
in the boxing booths of Britain.
The Jimmy Wilde facts are these: James Wilde, son of a
poverty-stricken coal miner, born on May 15, 1892,
at Pontypridd, Wales, the cradle of champions.
Freddie Welsh, Jem Driscoll and Bob Fitzsimmons also
came from the same section. Jimmy spent his boyhood
as a pit boy in the mines. He began to fight for a
living at Tylerstown, in 1908, when he was sixteen
years old. He weighed 74 pounds. In a boxing booth
tournament, he took on all comers and toppled
fellows almost twice his size. Yet long after he
made an imposing reputation around the boxing
booths, promoters and the public wanted no part of
him. They felt he was a sideshow freak making a
travesty of the sport.
Jimmy had about the worst physique ever owned by a man. He
resembled a walking xylophone, his ribs stuck out
so. His arms and legs were so scrawny that, small as
he was, he seemed 10 pounds lighter than his
announced 93 pounds. Fight fans nicknamed him "The
Mighty Atom." In Nat Fleischer's All-Time Ring
Record Book, the bible of boxing, a
typographical error gave Wilde's height as 2 1/2
inches. "It's a mistake, all right," Fleischer
admitted, "but it's easy to understand how it
happened. He didn't look any bigger." |
|
| |
John D. McCallum
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
