AIR DATE:
EPISODE: Episode 36
This week Neil discusses his heroes across the world, such as lightweight Len Wickwar, who was born in 1911, and holds the record for most fights – 473 – in history, and the boxer’s life in general. Talkin’ Fight Monday to Friday on YouTube or LIVE at talkinfight.com/live Weekday’s at 7pm EST (6:30 on Fridays) #boxinghistory @The World of Boxing! @USA Boxing #LenWickwar
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Transcribed:
Hello talking fight fans around the world, welcome to another episode of neil the deal with neil the deal himself.
Thanks for joining us, and tonight we’ve got a very special episode, lined up super social episode, something we’ve never really well.
We’Ve touched on, but we’ve never gotten to in any great depth in terms of its historical context and neil, you have found out some great information for us.
Let’S hear it hey good evening, graham nice, to see you again hope you had a nice weekend.
I did that guys.
Neil the deal show fans talking fight fans thanks for coming out.
Hope you guys had a nice weekend.
Uh stayed safe and stayed stay warm.
You know so uh yeah.
Last week we had an interesting a bunch of episodes in regards to fighters.
In the americas – and we are going to continue with that uh later this week, but we had a bit of a discussion uh on friday in regards to guys who have had many numbers of fights in many numbers of rounds.
So over the weekend i was actually it kind of kept bugging me a bit.
You know what i mean graham like well, really, who is the guy who’s got the most? Who is the guy who’s actually done the most rounds like really so? I did a whole bunch of research and figured out that this is the individual gram and we’re going to talk guys thanks again for the likes.
The shares, all the great stuff you’ve been doing.
The subscriptions keep them coming, but you’re going to love this.
This one is really neat so and again, i had no clue so.
This is all new to me as well, so guys check this out you’re going to love it all right.
We’Re going to talk about an english fighter all right.
His name was len wick war, len wick war, all right so apparently, mr wick war is the uh holder of the actually the most uh bouts, uh fights to date and most rounds to date.
So if you get your calculators out graham, this will be interesting because i do have one.
I was going to try to figure this out and i and i didn’t but it’ll be interesting, so we’re going to talk about him guys.
So his name is leonard, arthur wick war, that’s leonard, arthur wicker.
He went by len wickor.
He was born march 21st.
Apparently it was either march 11th or march 21st.
So there’s a conflicting thing: there is as actual birth date, so we’re going to call it march 21st, uh 1911 in uh in light lychester graham, was it or lester westminster, west yeah, leicester, lester, okay, lester, the united kingdom, which would be considered england correct, graham, like United kingdom is the whole country – i guess but england right lester’s in england, yeah duster’s in england yeah because he’s in a he was an english fighter, so he died.
Unfortunately, i mean uh.
We all do.
He died june, 1st 1980, which made him 69 years old at that time.
So he was a lightweight all right.
It was a lightweight and his career spanded from 1928 until 1947, so that would be 19 years guys all right interesting enough.
He was discovered by a guy named george biddles uh, who was also managed a guy from a place in england.
I guess, graham, you probably know nodding, nottinghamshire, not again, yeah sure not in hampshire yeah.
So apparently he was as a young child.
I guess that’s close to lychester right, leicester, leicester, and he would this this george biddle’s guy eventually was was was managing a featherweight at the time his name was tish marsden and he was a world champion guy.
This tish marsden and uh and uh.
Mr biddles saw uh saw him just kind of training in a gym they used to.
Apparently they were training in some sort of an attic or something in some uh.
Some like it wasn’t really a gym.
It was just they built something i guess for people to go up to the upstairs of like a store, some sort of an old store or something and uh.
Apparently, this tisch marsden was up there, training with this young kid and and the manager guy said, hey this kid’s pretty good so that that was len.
Wick war was the kid, so the crazy part about i’m going to mention this right now we could mention it later, but i think now is i mentioned that he died on june, 1st 1980 well tish marsden, who was his buddy? They both died on the same day june, 1st 1980.
So that’s kind of a weird thing to think that your best buddy that you grew up with and he he was a little older, uh, tisch marsden but uh.
They both died on the exact same day.
That’S freaking, weird, so jake, graham, he was never uh.
He never got a title shot uh.
He was never a title holder um.
He was close.
He was a contender back in the day, but his flight record is just undisputable, so he i don’t know where these are, but graham always knows all this great stuff.
So his biggest fight was um july in july 1939, at a place called the welford road stadium.
Welford, i guess that’s a that’s a big place in england.
Welford, it’s a new one, a new one here.
I don’t know that one.
It could have been a nottingham shire right and it’s just called the well it’s welford road.
So it’s obviously like it was.
It was just something right on welford road.
I guess it’s like a place where they had the matches back in those days so and he fought a guy at the time who was the british champion um and his name was eric boone, so we’re going to just say his notable fights.
You guys want to check out mr wickwire uh.
That is a notable fight.
I did see that today i watched that uh on youtube and it was interesting, really cool stuff, so he ended up getting knocked out in the ninth.
So wickware did not win the british title that time, but you know he uh.
He gave it his best shot.
So that was probably his biggest uh biggest accomplishment is getting at least to a british title, fight right all right, so we’re gon na go over these pro totals.
Graham, are you ready guys check this out? Okay, this, i actually was like you got to be kidding me so all right, i’m going to say this and you’re probably going to laugh total pro fights.
473.
400 473 fights what all right, so they equated it out to rounds.
So this this will answer our question about the rounds thing and what was going on last week and stuff, so i had 473 fights all right.
So this is where the math comes in uh.
He did four thousand and twenty rounds.
Four thousand and twenty rounds, wow wow, unbelievable stuff, guys so out of those 473 fights he actually won – 342 fights.
He had 93 kos all right.
That would give him a knockout percentage of 27 which isn’t the greatest, but it’s it’s a little over a quarter of the fights he did lose 86 fights out of the 473.
He had 43 draws and he had two no contests all right.
So i don’t know.
I was going to try to figure this out.
Graham, it was um okay, so if he had 342 fights divided by 4020 rounds, the average length of well actually 473, so the average length, i guess, would be almost 10 rounds.
A fight almost like, maybe the average, would be like eight and a half or something right all totaled at 4, 000 rounds, 473 fights.
So it’s you know it’s around that number, so he the stuff that he was doing was crazy.
So these are some of the things.
This is how he got to these astronomical numbers.
Like i’m like thinking.
How do you do that? So his pro career was in okay think about it.
Graham 19 years he did 473 fights.
So, let’s divide 473 by 19 you’re, probably going to get 20, makes it uh, 20 and 20 that’d be 400, so 20 24 or something so.
Let’S just say he averaged: he averaged 24 fights a year for 19 years straight, which would mean that would be two fights a month every year, at least for 19 years straight.
What that’s insane so i tried to figure it out because i’m thinking 19 years how the heck did he do that.
So then i find out so he turned pro at 17 right, so he started out really young and he was a flyweight when he started out, then he moved up to lightweight, but he would fight in his early days, three fights a night graham wow.
In the same night, he would fight three different opponents.
That’S this is how he got these numbers like these.
These crazy numbers of uh uh of total fights, like i mean if you get a hundred fights under your belt, like some of these guys, like mr monzone and and uh mr ezra charles, has over a hundred fights.
You know there’s a all kind of guys that have a hundred, but four hundred, that’s a that’s a little different.
You know what i mean like that’s just ridiculously crazy stuff, so in 1934, graham, mr wick war actually had 58 fights in one year, 58 fights in one year.
So that’s if he did for him for a month.
That would be 48.
, so he had another 10.
So he did five a month, so five fights a month in a whole year.
So it’s like he fought every week like literally well.
I know that’s what he did so this is how he got those numbers and uh he he fought right up to 1939.
Then the war came agram and uh, he didn’t.
He wasn’t part of the war, but he wasn’t unable to um fight professionally because they, i guess they they obviously stopped to the war.
The war stopped the boxing community.
You know what i mean, because a lot of the boxers ended up in the war, so they weren’t having any professional fights between uh, 39 and 45 and uh.
Then he started up back in 46 when they brought everything back and everything started getting somewhat back to normal.
I guess and uh he had his last fight in 1947 right, which was a loss, so he did all that and he retired uh.
Apparently he uh took a job just a regular job.
He was, he got, an engineering degree became an engineer and he worked as a in a packing company as a as a packing guy and a labor guy, but he also had the engineering behind him.
So he just basically retired and a regular job, and that was that right.
So that was that’s the guy’s basic career in a nutshell, you know it’s when you really think about something like that it.
It really takes me back.
What are you like? 400 470 fights? Abraham is pretty crazy, stuff right, it really is.
It really is, and you know he was just a young kid.
I guess out of england and uh, you know he started fighting young and he just kept going and, like i said with that number of fights like 19.
What was it 39? He had like he that’d, be a fight a week professionally, so that would that would be like whatever floyd anybody, floyd mayweather fighting every week like for years.
You imagine you make a lot of money at this rate.
At that rate, you know what i mean.
You know yeah or something i’m curious to know.
If you did make any money like, were these fights paying relatively well or back, then i mean: were they paying like a couple of shillings, a fight, absolutely man.
They were paying like the equivalent of probably from what the research i’ve done were.
The guys were fighting in the even in the 30s and the 40s, which were getting 15 a fight.
This is uh he’s, probably getting 10 bucks, 15 bucks, a fight type of stuff.
You know what i mean and back then 10 or 15, as we all know, is big money, like my grandfather was a stone mason and he built the parliament buildings and was getting paid 25 cents an hour and he didn’t have any machinery.
So try that you build to build the parliament buildings by hand, no machines for 25 cents an hour.
It’S just you think about that.
Just wow like in a whole week.
I think you know he’d work in eight hour days, told me get like two bucks a day and then every week that was his, that was his salary ten bucks a week and worked harder than any human being known to man like you, do not want to Be a stone, mason, intricate stone cutter and a stone mason for a living, because you’ll be broken, like literally it’s the craziest job.
I i tried it for a couple of years, and that was the end of me like i was like this is just crazy part.
So anyways, you guys want to go out check out len wick war guy with the most probably most fights for sure.
Maybe yeah there’s got to be wins too uh and rounds.
Four thousand twenty rounds check this guy out.
Look at him guys and comment.
Let us know what you think about that.
You know what i’m saying so stay safe, guys be good thanks for coming out, really appreciate everything and uh we’re going to get back to the americas starting tomorrow, so tune in and uh, and we’ll talk a little bit more about the fighters around uh america’s and Uh we’ll see you then so thanks for coming guys, i really appreciate it.
Take care of yourselves we’ll see you tomorrow night thanks a lot.
Neil appreciate it.
You’Re welcome graham, have yourself a good evening.
Guys go leave school, see you tomorrow, exactly okay,
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