Olympic middleweight

boxer

Born: December 10, 1948;

Died: August 4, 2017

ROBBIE Davies Senior, who has died aged 68 after a long battle with dementia, was one of 1970s Britain’s most explosive and charismatic middleweight boxers and later popular with television boxing audiences in the 1980s.

He was born and raised in Birkenhead, which has always been a hotbed of champion class boxers such as British middleweight champion Pat McAteer in the 1950s and Pat Dwyer in the 70s and Davies had the same explosive capacity to thrill the fans in memorable, epic tussles.

He did not enter the amateur fight game until he was 24 – an age when many pure boxers quit the sport. But age did not stale his potential and he made his competitive debut in 1972 with Birkenhead amateur boxing club.

Within 12 months of his debut, he took an English Northern Counties light middleweight crown and a place in the 1973 British ABA light-middleweight final where he lost to the British Army’s Roger Maxwell. However, such defeats on television only made Davies even more popular nationally because of his uncompromising, take-no prisoners style.

Another close defeat in the 1974 British ABA 11 stone class semi-finals galvanised the Birkenhead brawler into winning a place in the British boxing squad for the 1974 Commonwealth Games in New Zealand where he confirmed his great potential to become a star in the paid ranks by winning a bronze medal.

After a switch to another famed Merseyside boxing club, the Liverpool Golden Gloves, Davies not only boxed a further eight times for England but won a coveted berth in the British Olympic Games Squad for Montreal in 1976. His controversial and disputed elimination in the second round stages was no disgrace considering that future world pro flyweight champion Charlie Magri would be knocked out in the first round of the games by his Canadian opponent.

Meanwhile, Davies had attracted the attention of the top Liverpool pro boxing promoting and management team the Atkinson brothers – Charlie and Mike Atkinson –who were determined to guide the Birkenhead boxer in the paid ranks, particularly after his British ABA title winning performance in 1977 when he finally won British amateur boxing's top prize, becoming 1977 ABA middleweight champion.

Charlie Atkinson knew just how much of a box office draw Davies would be as a professional and his judgement was vindicated wholly – if not in title-winning terms – by the huge demand from promoters and fans alike to see him. Witness Davies’s fourth round knockout of bitter Merseyside rival Joe Lally who had previously given the Birkenhead man all the trouble he could handle in their amateur days.

Both Lally and Davies decked each other before Davies finally defeated Lally in a rumbustious clash in March 1979. It was a crowd-pleasing win that paved the way for the Birkenhead battler to challenge classy British super-welterweight contender Pat Thomas in an eliminator for the British 11 stone crown five weeks later.

This bout was a microcosm of Davies’s whole pro career as his blood curdling attacks on Thomas had the fans in an emotional ferment but left Davies open to the counterpunches which dropped him on the canvas four times in the last round to lose the decision on points.

Shortly after this failed attempt for Lonsdale Belt glory, Davies retired with an ostensibly modest 11 wins and four defeats in a 15-bout professional career. It was a fight record which viewed in cold print looks mediocre, but it fails to capture just how dynamic and popular Davies was among British boxing afficionados and television boxing audiences in the 1980s.

In his native Merseyside especially, Robbie Davies is still as revered and remembered as former Liverpudlian world lightheavyweight champion John Conteh.

Robbie Davies is survived by his son Robbie Davies Junior, who is a highly rated contemporary Liverpool super-lightweight, and his extended family.

BRIAN DONALD