[Rocco Del Sesto]

So I was flipping through weekly Boxing News after coverage of Carl Gizzi's last fight, his 3rd round TKO of Jack Whittaker. Whittaker if you remember came out of a 2-1/2-year vacancy of the fight ring to stage a comeback as a late minute replacement opponent for Gizzi. Carl quickly took care of Whittaker. I then came across in the October 29th, 1965 Boxing News their next set of British Ratings, complete with fights up through October 26th. This ranking they show and expanded list to 15 fighters for the heavyweights instead of the normal 10 contenders under the current champion, Henry Cooper. I would never have guess this but in that number 15 slot is listed none other than Jack Whittaker!!! I saw this and then just looking at the rest of the names on the list I thought, how sorry a bad shape heavyweight boxing was in the UK at the time.

Remember I noted a bit awhile back, the New's "We Say" column writer(s) noted a decline of fighters in the UK, especially the heavyweights. Seeing these new rankings, the Boxing News would appear to be correct in that August 20th '65 assessment. They didn't have much else to pick from, so they apparently plucked Whittaker into that racking based on his previous record from 2-1/2 years previous which was 25-15-3. Not all that bad.

So that got me to wondering just who an active British (UK) heavyweight at this time. So, through a records search of BoxRec of UK heavyweight (not counting Commonwealth fighters who are not included in these British Ratings), I came up with a list of UK heavyweights who'd fought at least once in 1965 up to this October 29 Ranking. Boy! There isn't much! If you are the least bit interested in this 1965 history of British heavyweight boxing, stay tuned I'm going to go through that list and survey just who we got.