A WELCOME RETURN
It is good to see boxing back at the famous Royal Albert Hall
FRANK WARREN’S show at the Royal Albert Hall marked a very welcome return for the noble art to London’s most iconic boxing venue. When I started following the sport in the early 1970s, boxing was held in the hall around seven or eight times a year, and all the best fighters boxed there.
The first professional show to be staged in the hall was the tournament to mark the end of the Great War. The patronage afforded to this event by the King was enough to override the stuffy attitudes and concerns held by those in charge of the place towards boxing, and from that point onwards the sport never looked back, with many memorable battles taking place there. It is one of the most perfect venues at which to watch boxing. The hall is oval-shaped and most of the seats look down upon the ring from quite close-up. I remember being able to hear the grunts of the combatants and the squeak of the leather even from one of the cheaper seats when I visited the place in the early 1980s.
In my collection, I have the poster for the third tournament to be held there in March 1920. At the top of the bill, Joe Beckett defended his British heavyweight title against Londoner Dick Smith. Beckett was returning from his recent ignominious defeat to Georges Carpentier, and he won comfortably in five rounds. Throughout the early 1920s, Major Arnold Wilson became established as the regular promoter and he put on many excellent shows. This unfortunate man lost everything in 1924, thinking that he could fill Wembley Stadium with a contest between Tommy Gibbons and Jack Bloomfield. The fight was a financial disaster and he was declared bankrupt. Harry Jacobs then stepped into the breach to replace him. Jacobs was a very experienced promoter, and after starting out in the small halls, his residency at the Royal Albert Hall placed him at the forefront of British promoters. His early events featured Ted Kid Lewis, Tommy Milligan, Teddy Baldock and Phil Scott, and he had no difficulty in attracting the crowds.
The American, Jeff Dickson, then took over the venue. This man had many long battles with the boxing establishment in this country and he proved a regular thorn in the side of the Board of Control. He could promote, however, and he reigned supreme throughout the 1930s, bringing boxing to the place very regularly. His stars included Jack Petersen, Len Harvey and Jack Kid Berg.
Regular boxing continued at the hall throughout the war, largely due to the efforts of promoters John Muldoon and Jack Cappell, and then Jack Solomons moved into the place in 1945. Jack became Britain’s leading promoter during this period, and he used the hall as a breeding ground for those fighters who were not quite at the top level, but who would go on to have their most important contests at the White City, a few miles away.
Jacks’ great rival was Harry Levene. The two men could not bear the sight of one another and they had a fierce rivalry at the top of British boxing for over 20 years. Readers might remember that Solomons promoted the first contest between Henry Cooper and Muhammad Ali at Wembley in 1963, and that it was Levene who staged the second one, at Highbury football ground, three years later. Levene took over the mantle at the Royal Albert Hall from Stan Baker in 1954. His first show featured Sammy Mccarthy, George Happe, Jimmy Davis, Arthur Howard and Peter Waterman.
Harry will be remembered for his close involvement with Mike Barrett and Mickey Duff, and between them these three men were the leading promoters in the UK until the early 1980s. The great shows that I remember were those staged by Barrett and Duff during the 1970s, when the fights took place on Tuesday night and were invariably broadcast on Radio Two. John Conteh, Alan Minter, Joe Bugner, Chris Finnegan and Charlie Magri all featured many times. It is great to see the old place back where it belongs, with a boxing ring in the middle of it.