The remarkable life of legendary fighter Lynch
IN the nearly three years that this series on the history of Glasgow has been running in your favouri t e local newspaper, today sees the first c olumn on a n i nd i v id u a l sportsperson.
There will only be a few columns dedicated to such individuals, and you may not be surprised to learn the identity of the first – Benny Lynch.
His remarkable story took place in a Glasgow still suffering from the Great Depression when for a brief period in the 1930s Lynch’s achievements lit up his native city where at first he was seen as a beacon of hope in desperate times.
His alcoholic downfall turned his tale into one of tragedy, however, and his death at the age of just 33 made his life into a story of ‘ what might have been.’
There is still some argument as to who was Scotland’s first world champion in the professional ring, but most experts and the National Records of Scotland ( NRS) accept that it was Edinburgh’s Johnny Hill ( 1905- 1929) though to my mind Leith’s Tancy Lee ( 1882- 1841) has a good claim.
Hill died of pneumonia when he was only 23 after just a few months as world flyweight champion, recognised as the titleholder by the powerful New York State Commission which ruled on such matters.
Hill’s life was over before Benny Lynch’s professional career had even started and that’s possibly why Lynch is often still acclaimed as Scotland’s first world champion – it says so on his gravestone in St Kentigern’s Cemetery.
Born in the Gorbals, Lynch’s birth certificate can be viewed on the NRS website. It states “Benjamin Lynch was born on 2 April 1913, the son of John Lynch, railway surfaceman and Elizabeth Alexander.
The entry in the statutory register of births for the Glasgow district of Hutchestontown gives the place of birth as 17 Florence Street.”
Of Irish Catholic descent, Lynch started out as an amateur in boxing clubs in the Gorbals with its famous mix of immigrants of all nationalities and religions.
After his boxer brother James died of meningitis, Benny Lynch had to be persuaded to take up the sport again and he said he would only do so for money.
He began his professional boxing career in the many booths that abounded in Glasgow before meeting up with the man whom would become his manager, Sammy Wilson.
Lynch fought his first licensed professional fight against Young
Bryce on April 24, 1931, just three weeks after turning 18.
He would not be unbeaten at first, but fighting sometimes weekly – he once fought on consecutive nights – mostly around Glasgow, he began to amass a decent record based on his phenomenal speed and growing punching power.
Never more than 5ft 5in, he easily made the flyweight limit and won that division’s Scottish title by beating reigning champion Jim Campbell on points at Cathkin Park in April 1934.
The following year saw Lynch step up to world level and after a draw with the Englishman reckoned to be world champion, Jackie Brown, in a non- title fight at the Kelvin Hall, on September 9, 1935, Lynch went to Manchester and floored Brown eight times in the first two rounds before the referee mercifully stopped the fight.
Glasgow had its world champion and on his return to Central Station, Lynch was greeted by tens of thousands of cheering fans.
The celebrations went on for weeks and many say that was what turned Lynch onto alcohol.
He parted company with his manager Sammy Wilson and his new wife Annie left him though they were later re- united and had two sons.
Though he lost non- title fights, Lynch managed to put aside his drinking problems long enough to train for successful world title defences against Small Montana of the USA – the American authorities recognised Lynch as undisputed world champion after that win – and Liverpool’s Peter Kane before his failure to make the flyweight limit cost him his world title which he forfeited on the scales before fighting and beating America’s Jackie Jurich in May 1938.
The end in the ring came a few months later against Ariel Toma.
Boxing magazine reported that Lynch “was sluggish and flat- footed” adding: “In the third and last round, Lynch took a left to the stomach, simply gazed upwards at the arc lights overhead, whereupon Toma stepped in and cracked him on the point of the jaw. Lynch came forward as stiff as a poker, to fall flat on his face to be counted out.
“It was an unhappy and tragic finish, which gave one that deeply hurtful feeling experienced when something you have prized and cherished has been dashed to the ground and smashed to smithereens never again to hold for you anything but a memory. Tragic, indeed”.
The British Boxing Board of Control had seen enough and withdrew his licence to fight. He went back to the booths where it all began but
It was an unhappy and tragic finish
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he was finished as a fighter. All the greatness of his time as world champion was forgotten as alcohol took over his young life.
He was even declared unfit for active service when he tried to volunteer after the outbreak of the Second World War.
He did not end up in the gutter as has often been claimed, but lived with his mother and desperately tried to beat his illness, even going ‘ dry’ for weeks in an Irish monastery, but he lost everything, including his wife and sons and all his money, before losing life itself, contracting tuberculosis and then dying of pneumonia brought on by malnutrition in the Southern General Hospital on August 6, 1946. Some 2000 people attended his funeral.
In recent years there has been considerable interest in Lynch’s life and several plays, films and documentaries have been made about him.
His greatness is very much part of boxing lore in this and many other countries and anyone who doubts his skills and courage need merely check out his name on YouTube which has several newsreel films of his fights showing just how dynamic he was in the ring.
His citation in the US- based International Boxing Hall of Fame, into which he was inducted in 1998, begins: “Benny Lynch was generally considered one of the finest ringmen below lightweight in the pre- Second World War era and is generally regarded as the greatest fighter ever to come out of Scotland.”
That verdict will do for me.