Belsize Boxing Club

The Belsize Boxing Club was founded on 31st August 1882, at a time when bare-knuckle prize fighting had all but died out, and the professional game was in its infancy. The club was, for half a century at least, not just run by the ruling classes - the scions of Oxford, Cambridge and London Universities, Sandhurst Military Academy, the armed forces, and the City – but its practitioners were from the ruling classes too. The Belsize nurtured ABA and Olympic champions, giants in the fields of law, banking, industry, anthropology, and many more, as well as decorated military heroes.

 

Club Captain Peggy Bettinson later co-founded the National Sporting Club. Rufus Isaacs joined the club in the 1880s, and went on to become Lord Chief Justice of England and Viceroy of India! J.W.H.T. Douglas, 1905 ABA middleweight champion, won the middleweight boxing gold medal at the London Olympics of 1908. Val Barker, 1891 ABA heavyweight champion, is remembered now for giving his name to the Val Barker Trophy, awarded to the most stylish boxer at the Olympic Games.

 

It pioneered pro-am exhibitions, often featuring professional luminaries of the day, such as Bombardier Billy Wells, Jim Driscoll and Ted 'Kid' Lewis, and amateur novices and open competitions. It promoted ‘smokers’, and displays featuring boxing exhibitions, juggling, military displays, and performances by well-known contemporary singers. It soon became the most influential amateur boxing club in the world and  for eight decades, the oldest.

 

 

 

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