RICKY’S ROCKY ROAD

There were no easy breaks for Swindon’s former Southern Area welterweight champ Porter – a 76-€ght veteran

THE scene at Paris’ Orly Airport was surreal, and to Swindon’s Ricky Porter the memory remains sharp 47 years on. It was January 1971 and he had just whipped the world-class Frenchman Roger Menetrey in France. It was a fight Ricky was not supposed to win.

“When we were going through customs all the customs guys had seen the fight the night before on TV. One of them said, ‘You’re Ricky Porter!’ and they all started clapping. The airport was packed and people started looking round to see what this clapping was about. They couldn’t have all known who I was but they all put their suitcases down and started clapping. It was very touching.”

After nearly a decade as a pro battling for lucky breaks, that moment and the acknowledgment it showed meant more to Porter than the Southern Area welterweight belt he later won. Menetrey (who became European champ that year) was 39-2-1, with 35 wins inside schedule, when he lost to Ricky. Porter, meanwhile, was 24-35-3.

Although his voice has a Swindon twang, Porter was born in Paddington, London, in April 1943 to a Jamaican father and Welsh mother. Ricky’s father, Uriel, spent long spells on the road as a singer and actor, and when Ricky was a child his parents split up. He spent time in foster homes and a boarding school in Surrey, and it was through his foster parents in Swindon that his connection with the town began.

Porter had long been fascinated by boxing. Listening to radio broadcasts of fights inspired him. As did meeting the famous Buxton brothers (“they were some of the first mixed-race British boxers to really make an impact”) when Ricky’s stepfather, a reporter for pioneering black magazine Our World, took him to the Buxtons’ gym.

Porter began boxing at school and carried on after leaving, starting a railway apprenticeship in Swindon. “I won the British Railways title in 1962,” he recalls, “and I was Western Counties champion that year. But I got robbed badly in the ’62 ABA quarter-finals. By then I’d left the foster parents and was living on my own. I was struggling to live on my apprentice’s wage, so I thought I might as well go pro.”

Ricky was 18 when he signed with manager Nat Yess. “When my mother signed the contract, the length of time hadn’t been filled in. But when the contract came back my manager had put in seven years – the maximum contract length. My mum wouldn’t have agreed to that in case things didn’t go right. But as it was, I was tied for seven years.”

Signing with Yess was a mistake. “He was a nice enough fella, but he wasn’t ‘in’ with the likes of [promoters] Mickey Duff, Mike Barrett and Jarvis Astaire,” says Ricky. “Wherever I fought I was always going in with someone who was from that area. And, more often than not, I was coming in at a couple of days’ notice.

“I used to travel down to London and stay at my mum’s in Shepherd’s Bush. I’d train at Walkers Olympic gym, which was the old Klein’s gym, where Terry Downes and some of the African fighters like Dennis Adjei and Julius Caesar trained. But my mum tragically died in 1963, so all of a sudden I had nowhere to go in London.

“I’d weigh in at 1pm on the day of a fight. Then I had to find somewhere to go all afternoon. If I had enough money, I’d go to the pictures. If not, I’d go and sit in Hyde Park. I’d got married quite young and it was really tough to make it all work. I had to train in Swindon when I could, but mainly in those early years my training was work. I kept fit and strong because I was a roof tiler, a hod carrier, a coalman.”

Despite this adversity, Porter persevered. His record was speckled with losses, but in close fights the verdict never seemed to go his way. After six years, Ricky retired, demoralised and disillusioned, in 1968. He returned 11 months later, however, with fresh aspirations. Read all about his comeback in the August 16 issue.