The September 24 issue of BwB proclaimed Benny Lynch as “Scotland’s first-ever world boxing champion”.
This was my proclamation as part of an article by Canadian reader and boxing fan Rob Boag in which he discussed the ongoing support for a statue of Lynch in his native Glasgow.
However, another Canadian reader reckons Lynch was not Scotland’s first world champion boxer.
He claims this accolade belongs to another pugilist.
From his home in British Columbia, Clay Hackett said: “In your column, you stated Benny Lynch was the first Scots boxer to win a world title.
“In fact, it was Johnny Hill, who won the flyweight title in August 1928.
“He was a remarkable fighter, who had only one loss in his short but successful career.
“He died at his home in Strathmiglo after a bout of pneumonia, which resulted in a burst blood vessel in one of his lungs.
“He was only 23 years old at the time and I am convinced, had he not died so young, his name would have been as well known as Benny’s.”
Clay continued: “My father-in-law Johnny Curran was a well-known Dundee amateur flyweight, who, along with some other local amateurs, helped out with Johnny’s training in Fife.
“I enjoy your column very much.”
It is still very confusing to confirm just who was the world flyweight champion around that time.
What follows is an extract from Wikipedia:
The world flyweight title again became vacant when Fidel La Barba retired to attend Stanford University in 1927.
Several fighters claimed the title, including Wille Le Morte (elected by the New Jersey Boxing Commission), Midget Wolgast (who won an 18-man tournament defeating Black Bill on March 21, 1930, in the tournament finals, recognised by the New York Boxing Commission) and Pinky Silverberg (who briefly held the National Boxing Association title in 1927 before being stripped of it later that year).
After stripping Silverberg, the National Boxing Association recognised Frankie Genaro due to his victory over Canadian flyweight champion Albert ‘Frenchie’ Belanger on February 6, 1928, in an NBA-sanctioned tournament.
Some confusion about who was the real champion was settled with Genaro defeating Wolgast by TKO on May 16 and La Morte in a 10-round decision on August 6.
However, the title remained in dispute until Scottish flyweight champion Benny Lynch’s victory over NBA and British flyweight champion Jackie Brown on September 8, 1935, and American flyweight champion Small Montana on January 19, 1937, which unified the world titles.
No mention of Johnny Hill there. However, in other files, there is support for Hill.
Backing up Clay Hackett’s claim, an article on the BBC website — ‘A Sporting Nation’ — proclaims . . .
Most people think Benny Lynch was Scotland’s first world boxing champion, when the truth lies in an earlier and equally tragic tale.
In 1928, Edinburgh flyweight Johnny Hill was recognised by America’s most powerful boxing authority — the New York State Athletic Commission — as the world champion.
Born in 1905, in Edinburgh’s Brunswick Road, only yards from the same Sparta Amateur Boxing Club that would produce world champion Ken Buchanan, Hill won the British, European and world titles in just 18 months, a record never equalled to this day by any other Scottish boxer.
Lynch had to wait nearly two years until January 1937 to get unqualified American recognition as world flyweight champion.
In contrast, Hill received the recognition from the NYSAC on December 10, 1928, just three-and-a-half months after he had outpointed American world flyweight title claimant ‘Newsboy’ Brown over 15 rounds at London’s Clapton Greyhound Stadium on August 29, 1928.
This is a fact confirmed by Johnny Hill’s sole surviving brother, Alf, who has a letter in his Strathmiglo, Fife, home on New York State Athletic Commission-headed newspaper dated December 10, 1928.
Written by Charles J Harvey, chairman of the then all-powerful body in charge of matters of American world title legitimacy, Harvey assures Johnny’s father David that, while there are American claimants to his son’s world title, they would not be recognised until they had taken part in an elimination tournament to box Johnny Hill.
Similarly, most Scottish and British newspapers in August 1928 hailed Johnny Hill as Scotland’s first world champion.
But who was Johnny Hill?
He was born in relative middle-class comfort in a respectable tenement that still stands just off the capital’s Leith Walk. His father David, an ex-boxer with Edinburgh’s West Bow Amateur Boxing Club, brought up his son to be a fanatic teetotaller, although, ironically, that did not save Johnny Hill from dying aged 23 from pneumonia, the same illness that killed alcoholic Lynch aged 33.
Alf Hill recalls: “Johnny never smoked, drank or did anything that would interfere with progressing his boxing career. Besides, my father’s word was law to him in boxing matters.”
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