I used to put on people’s lights as an electrician and then I was paid to put them out as a boxer
Jim Watt carved his legend with blood and guts in the ring but his humility and dignity transcend his sporting endeavours
Kenny and I spent 15 rounds knocking lumps out of one another. But we are the best of pals
JIM Watt is a good guy. My granny told me. She was rarely wrong, but never more right in this verdict. ‘aye, I remember her,’ says the champ. He details precisely where my granny lived upstairs from him in the close in Killearn Street, Possilpark. He was called upon by the widowed MacDonald to change bulbs or fix fuses some 50 years or more ago.
‘I used to put on people’s lights as an electrician and then I was paid to put them out as a boxer,’ he adds. the line may be practised but it serves as a reminder that Watt, now 70, did not have to find humility in the boxing ring. It was his constant companion.
there was the glory of two remarkable years as lightweight world champion. there was also the reality of being a five-year-old boy, who was deprived of his father, of being a middle-aged man who lost his two children.
the ring career itself would lend itself to the hackneyed arc of the Hollywood movie. Watt did not become a world champion until he was 31. He fought five times for the title from 1979 to 1981 in front of Scottish crowds bruised by the failure of the football team in the World Cup in argentina. He won them all.
His sixth and last world title fight was against alexis arguello, a future all-time great, at Wembley, the graveyard of so many Scottish hopes. Watt, the warrior, was carried out on his shield, surviving 15 rounds but losing on all the scorecards.
If boxing was his trade, an opportunity to prove his greatness, it is survival that is his most affecting, perhaps inspiring trait. He has bent at the waist to accept extraordinary praise but he has never bowed to awful tragedy.
‘a lot of things shaped me,’ says Watt. ‘My father died when I was five. My mother went out to work and supported us, me and my sister. I had the key of the front door on a string round my neck, tucked inside my shirt. I was told never take that off.
‘I was coming back to an empty house. It was that kind of life. I had a wonderful mother but I was not mollycoddled. I had to look after myself, make decisions. that shaped my personality.’
Family tragedy stalked him. His son was killed, aged 17, in a car crash in 1995. His daughter was found dead in her home in June 2015. She was 38.
‘I have had horrible tragedies. I have lost my two children. there is no silver lining there,’ he says. ‘the worst thing that can happen to you is losing a child. I have lost two.
‘I am mentally strong. I have managed to cope with it. My wife will always struggle with it. I spent a lot of my life conditioning my mind when a lot of my mates were going out and I was in training.
‘I conditioned my mind then to cope with what I had to cope with. It will maybe be very hard again some time. But that’s what I am doing at the moment.’
this is said without a hint of selfpity. this remarkable resilience was visible, too, in the ring.
Watt is speaking in a room next to where he has just attended a press conference to announce the British bantamweight title fight between two Scots — Kash Farooq and Jamie Wilson — that will take place at the St andrew’s Sporting Club, where Watt is now a patron, on September 27.
It supplies an appropriate moment to reflect on his career, particularly the major staging post of a 1973 fight against Ken Buchanan in Glasgow’s albany Hotel, then the home of the St andrew’s Sporting Club.
‘Kenny had just lost his world title six months before that to (Roberto) Duran. I had only 16 fights at the time and probably wasn’t quite ready to face Kenny,’ admits Watt. ‘But he needed one more notch on the Lonsdale belt, I was British champion and that is why the fight took place.’
He has no protest about the verdict being given to Buchanan.
‘the show I put up in that defeat did me a lot more good than any of my victories up to that point or even afterwards because I was a huge underdog,’ he adds. ‘I lost my title but launched my career. It gave me credibility.
‘Kenny and I are the best of pals. that’s what happens when you spend 15 rounds knocking lumps out of one another.’
Watt points out that his night with Buchanan showed he could trade blows with the best but it was a night in Madrid in February 1978 that showed he could beat the best. He faced Perico Fernandez and rose from a first-round knockdown to win comfortably.
the next year, he was winning the world title against alfredo Pitalua. Successful defences followed against Robert Vasquez, Charlie Nash, Howard Davis Jr and Sean O’Grady.
‘the great advantage I had was that I won the world title later in my life,’ he says. ‘I was a family man, I had a business in wedding cars and a garage. I knew this was not going to last.
‘Skill-wise, I was at my peak. I was sensible and my life was good. I put a lot of money into a pension fund, so I am sitting fine now.’
He also became an astute commentator, latterly with Sky, but it requires prompting for him to look back on his career.
‘People say: “Do you wish you were boxing today?” there is a lot more money in it but I don’t,’ insists Watt. ‘I was lucky that I was fighting big american names and they generated good paydays, so I have no cause to complain.
‘there were 24 titles on offer when I did it. there are 68 world titles now.’
His best performance was
against Davis at Ibrox in June 1980. ‘People tell me that but I don’t think it was a great fight,’ he says of retaining the title on a unanimous decision. Perhaps. But Davis was judged the best fighter in the 1976 Olympics, winning the Val Barker trophy over such as Sugar Ray Leonard and the Spinks brothers.
The fight that defined him, though, was surely the loss to Arguello.
‘I had been champion for a couple of years, I was already 33. I would have had a better chance against Arguello if I had fought him a year and a half earlier, when my dreams were ahead of me rather than in the bedroom drawer,’ he reflects.
The Nicaraguan, who had already won world titles at featherweight and super featherweight, showed the ability that made him a subsequent Hall-of-Fame entrant.
‘I never complained. He was a great fighter, he turned out better than I thought,’ says Watt. ‘I believed he was a bit mechanical and I thought I could have outsmarted him.’
It was clear from early in the fight that Watt was facing a master. This realisation was marked by blood.
‘I had a bad injury to the inside of my mouth in the tenth and Terry Lawless (trainer) said: “I want to pull you out”. It was obvious I was losing.
‘I said: “No”. Terry said later if it had been any of his other fighters, he would not have asked. He knew I would never have forgiven him for it. I saw it out. I got through it.’
The image of him, bloodied and battered on his stool, lives on with those who saw it. It was defeat but there was dignity, too.
‘No regrets,’ says Watt of his last fight. ‘Howard came over to Scotland and said: “I could beat Jim Watt with one hand tied behind my back and the other holding a cigarette”.
‘I met Arguello for the first time at the pre-fight press conference. He stuck out his hand and said: “Pleased to meet you Jim, how’s your family?” The guy was class.’
Arguello entered the Hall of Fame, fought with the Contras, carried his country’s flag at the Beijing Olympics and never lost any of his three world titles in the ring. He was a legend.
But he never changed bulbs in a Possilpark tenement. There are measures of champions and of men. Gentleman Jim meets both.