‘A SHEER JOY TO WATCH’
Looking back on the life and career of ‘an accomplished artist’
BIRMINGHAM’S first world champion, Billy Plimmer, made a lot of money in the ring but lost most of it. The luxury belongings had to be sold. But there was one possession Billy would never part with – a souvenir of the greatest triumph of his career. They weren’t much to look at – this battered, bloodstained pair of boxing gloves – but Billy had worn them the night he won the world bantamweight title from Tommy Kelly in New York.
Top boxing writer James Butler once had the privilege of examining the gloves. “Made of yellow dog-skin and lightly padded with cotton wool instead of hair, they weighed only two ounces each,” he recalled. “Holding them in my hands and examining them, I could read the whole story of that famous fight – for while the right glove was comparatively clean, the left was stained with blood where it had played ceaselessly on the American champion’s nose and mouth.”
That was Plimmer’s signature shot – the left lead. It was “as near perfection as any punch I have seen,” wrote Butler. Plimmer was born in William Street, Aston, in February 1869, and was not from a fighting family. His boxing interest grew from watching booth fighters on the fairgrounds that visited Birmingham frequently.
Pretty soon, Billy was booth boxing himself, and it taught him a great deal. But he would attribute the development of his brilliant left hand to another activity. Working at an early age bottling pop in a factory in Aston, Plimmer developed remarkable hand-to-eye coordination. It would later translate into fast, accurate punching.
Billy remembered his first fight as happening in 1887, at the Eagle Inn pub in Birmingham – a KO win. No press coverage exists to corroborate this, but contests have been traced for Plimmer from the following year onwards. At first he confined his fights to the Midlands, but from 1889 he also boxed in London. In May 1891, Billy beat Jem Stevens, of Bethnal Green, at the newly opened National Sporting Club for the vacant English bantam crown (then 110lbs).
Billy travelled to the US that October with the aim of tempting the reigning world bantam champ, Tommy “Spider” Kelly, into the ring. He based himself with one-time English lightweight title contestant Charlie Norton, a Brummie expat who was now running a saloon in Newark, New Jersey. Plimmer told Norton of his wish to challenge Kelly for the title and Norton set to work arranging bouts for the newcomer. Initial scepticism from US fight scribes turned to admiration when they saw Billy in action. After a string of fine performances, the Kelly match was made.
It took place on May 9, 1892, at an old skating rink on the outskirts of New York. Kelly, an all-action marauder, started well. But Billy defended smartly and smashed his vaunted left fist into Kelly’s face round after round, systematically wearing him down. By the 10th, Tommy had nothing left and the brilliant Birmingham lad put him down for keeps.
Plimmer stayed in America for a series of fights and an exhibition tour. He defended his world crown three times in the States and outpointed the great George Dixon, a Hall of Famer. Back in Britain, Billy successfully defended his world title against George Corfield in May 1895, before losing it to Pedlar Palmer that November by DQ.
“The Birmingham boy was one of the most serious fighting men I have ever known,” wrote Butler of Plimmer. “He never smiled either in or out of the ring, and in victory or defeat he still maintained the same expression of frozen gravity. But what an accomplished artist he was. In action, Billy Plimmer was a sheer joy to watch!”
Plimmer died of pneumonia, aged 60, in February 1929. It was 87 years before another Brummie boxer – Kal Yafai in 2016 – picked up a world title.