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BELTING ... but despite his success there is no permanent memorial to Jock McAvoy
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Call for town to honour our king of the ring
Dave Appleton26/ 8/2008
A STATUE may be erected to honour one of the greatest sportsmen Rochdale has ever produced – a man our civic forefathers seemed reluctant to acknowledge.
The town has permanent memorials to its most famous citizens – John Bright and Gracie Fields spring immediately to mind – but curiously Rochdale has never erected a statue in honour of Jock McAvoy, one of the greatest fighters the country has ever produced.
Now boxing fans are hoping to persuade the council to remedy the omission by erecting a statue of McAvoy at Hollingworth Lake, where he held training camps ahead of his bouts.
Were he alive today McAvoy, who died in 1971, would have been 100 in November and his legion of fans believe that therefore this year is a most appropriate time to honour the man who became a legend of the boxing ring.
A middleweight, McAvoy’s career stretched from 1927 to 1945, during which he reached the pinnacle of his sport, winning both the British and British Empire middlewight titles and British light-heavyweight title and just missing out on the world light heavyweight title against John Henry Lewis at Madison Square Gardens, New York, in March 1936.
But he did beat the world middleweight champion, Babe Risko, in a sensational first round knockout, again in New York.
It was, alas, a non-title fight and the American's handlers, fearing the loss of the crown, would not grant McAvoy a rematch with the title at stake.
But despite his worldwide fame, winning 133 of the 147 bouts he fought over an 18-year career, McAvoy never got the recognition at Rochdale Town Hall that many think he so richly deserved.
He had been a credit to the town yet, at least as far as local officialdom was concerned, he appeared to be very much a forgotten man.
Maybe it was his controversial activities outside the ring.
As Jack Doughty writes in his book, ‘The Rochdale Thunderbolt’, McAvoy’s private life was, in fact, something of a disaster.
Many people got hurt, often those closest to him, and when his name wasn’t in the newspapers for his boxing deeds it could be found in the police court columns.
Many people considered him to be a bully and perhaps he was but, as Doughty relates, McAvoy he was no coward underneath.
But as a trained fighter with two potentially lethal weapons – his fists – he should not have taken advantage of his obvious superiority over others.
In all sports champions are people to be admired who should never abuse their position, but it appeared McAvoy, great a boxer as he was, made little attempt to live up to such ideals.
But putting aside his chaotic personal life, in purely boxing terms McAvoy was surely one of the greatest sportsmen Rochdale has produced.
Lesser mortals have been commemorated in various ways, but of McAvoy’s immense contribution to British boxing there is no lasting edifice.
His great grandson Dave Bamford – McAvoy’s real name was Joseph Bamford – is starting a fund-raising drive to rectify what sports-loving people feel is a gross miscarriage of justice.
Mr Bamford, landlord of the Freemason’s Arms, in Milnrow, who has already had talks with Rochdale Council about his idea, said: "I am too young to have known Jock, as I wasn’t born until 1975, but I am proud to be related to such a great man.
"I have spoken to boxing trainer Brian Hughes, who also wrote a book about Jock, and he says that today’s boxers aren’t fit to lace his boots."
It was in 1932 that McAvoy became the British and Empire (Commonwealth) champion before making his boxing debut in the United States in 1935.
But his golden year came in 1937 when he held two British titles at the same time, light heavyweight and middleweight.
Then came the Second World War and in 1942 McAvoy met Freddie Mills but had to retire due to a muscle strain.
He made a brief comeback in 1945 after three years out of the ring, but in 1951 he was stricken with polio, leaving him wheelchair bound for the rest of his life.
One of the fund-raising efforts being organised by his great grandson is a boxing and nostalgia evening on 20 November – the centenary of McAvoy’s birth – at Richmond Hall, formerly St Patrick’s RC school which McAvoy had attended a child.
For more information ring 07875 205450.
What do you think? Should a statue be erected in the town? Vote in our online poll to the right of this page ...
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28/08/2008 at 09:48
Got an opinion you want to share?Should the town erect a statue to Jock McAvoy?
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If we can't support our local heros then who can we support.
31/08/2008 at 13:46