THERE is an extended custom of top-flight boxers changing into referees after retirement. Being the third man within the ring just isn’t a place that might swimsuit all people, however ex-fighters, having been there themselves, significantly at championship stage, have greater than most to supply when it comes to expertise and competence in what typically is a difficult function.
Jack Hart, Johnny Summers and Jim Kenrick are all good examples of this again within the Twenties, and Jimmy Wilde was a succesful and very talked-about ref a decade later. The custom continued after the conflict when Tommy Little, Benny Caplan, Ike Powell and Eugene Henderson carried the flag. In 2019 I produced an article on Wally Thom, an excellent referee all through the Nineteen Seventies, and the British welterweight champion throughout the Nineteen Fifties, and now I would really like to pay tribute to one other from the identical period who adopted this route, Croydon’s Mark Hart.
Mark was a part of a gaggle of boxers from Croydon who made an actual impression on the home scene within the early Nineteen Fifties, the others being Pat Stribling, Ron Pudney and Albert Finch. All 4 boxed at both middleweight or light-heavy and, little question, they’d have incessantly sparred one another. Stribling was managed by Tom Fisher, a Croydon man, whose secure was filled with native lads. Both Pudney and Finch went with Jack Burns, and Mark was managed by John Harding, the ex-manager of the National Sporting Club.
An excellent novice, Mark received the 1944 ABA heavyweight title, and the next 12 months he turned skilled. After beginning out as a heavyweight, his coach, Jack Hyams, determined that he would make a greater middleweight and slowly decreased his dimension. This made him right into a formidable and highly effective challenger on the new weight. By 1947 he was the South-Eastern space champion and was ok to share the ring with each Dick and Randolph Turpin (with whom he shared a six-round draw), Albert Finch and Don Cockell.
By 1949, after switching weights once more, he was the primary challenger for the British light-heavyweight title, having beforehand earned the identical place at middleweight, and, after successful 36 of his 47 contests he was matched towards Reg Spring of Southall for the South-Eastern space light-heavyweight title.
This bout passed off on the Royal Albert Hall and Mark punched his method to a transparent 12-round factors victory. After a shaky begin to 1950, when he received solely two of his first 4 contests, he outpointed Dennis Powell in a British title eliminator and this earned him the appropriate to meet Don Cockell once more, this time for the British title. In an important combat at Harringay Arena, Mark was knocked out within the 14th spherical. As there was a printer’s strike on on the time, BN sadly didn’t carry a report of this contest. Mark had 5 extra contests, with three wins, earlier than he hung up his gloves in 1953.
Throughout a lot of the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, BN didn’t routinely present the identify of the referee for the contests that it reported upon. This is normal apply right this moment and has been for over 50 years. It is sort of troublesome, subsequently, to present a lot in the best way of element about Mark’s early profession as a referee, however he was actually performing as third man by the mid-Sixties and he was a daily all through Southern space rings throughout the Nineteen Seventies.
He by no means achieved ‘star’ standing, however he was ok to referee the 12-rounder between Charlie Nash and Jimmy Revie on the World Sporting Club in 1976. I additionally keep in mind Mark answerable for the Randy Neumann and Billy Aird bout in 1975, the nine-rounder between Paddy Maguire and John Kellie the next 12 months and Jimmy Batten towards Trevor Francis in 1977. He packed in as a referee in 1979 after which turned a well-liked member of the very lively Croydon Ex-Boxers Association, the place he’s nonetheless remembered. He died in 2004.
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