Looking Back at Former WBC Welterweight Champion John H. Stracey

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

Regular readers of all things Ringside Report will know all about our eponymous leader’s fascination for all things Sinatra and the promotion of original and quality gangster material like the Sopranos and the Mafia. Whilst America have the legacy provided in celluloids and myth, we have the glamour of the Kray twins in London and J Arthur Thompson in Glasgow.

I say glamour, as there is nothing particularly glamorous about the East End of Glasgow or London which are the former stomping grounds of the Krays and Glasgow’s hard men. Both legacies in the UK have made their way onto film but the USA have the most glitz to go with their gangster.

From the world of the gangster, it is hardly a massive leap to the man who punches another man in the head for a living. The violent correlation between the image of crime and reality of boxing means that these are hardly opposites that attract. Increasing regulation means the connections are more mythical than real these days but there was a time when the two worlds co-existed and mixed rather than collided.

I mention all this because during my research into my latest boxing hero of yesteryear I was to find that only last year he was helping out a sale in the East End of London of Kray memorabilia.

Like Reggie, Ronnie and their big brother, Freddie Kray, he was a guy forged in the white heat of a post war Britain that was rebuilding and trying to work out what it was going to create as a future for its heroes. He grew up in the same area as people who were trusted more than the authorities to keep things in check and order maintained. Stracey was known to the Kray family, frequently in their houses and retains a fondness for them that is shared the length and breadth of the East End.

Whilst the Krays found crime as a release, John H. Stracey found his fists were more profitable if they were turned to legitimate activities. At the event, held in the Blind Beggar Pub in London – where Ronnie Kray shot dead his rival George Cornell in the sixties – Stracey still looked fit and able in his WBC attired jacket. His connection with the area was but 200 yards away from the pub – the Collingwood Estate where he grew up and lived till in his mid-twenties. Stracey even remembers the night that Cornell was shot. He was 15 years old and ran up to see what was happening as he had been hanging round the Estate; the event was soon to become both mythical and the downfall of the Krays. It was a tough time for the young people of the East End and we are all the better for a guy who went from tough street fighter to World Champion in 1975.
These regularly held sales often benefit Bethnal Green’s Repton Boxing Club who can boast a number of impressive luminaries including the Kray twins themselves!

Stracey’s 51 fight record saw only 5 losses, 1 draw and 45 wins – 37 by knockout. The first knockout came in his very first fight in 1969 when he took out Santos Martins in the 2nd round. Another 12 wins followed before that draw in fight 14 against Frankie Lewis.

It took 3 years as a pro before he was beaten and that happened in 1972 when he was outpointed by Marshall Butler. Later on, that year he faced Bobby Arthur for his first crack at the British welterweight title. It was to be his second loss as he was disqualified and had to wait for another 8 months in a rematch to win the Lonsdale belt; he knocked Arthur out in 4 rounds.

In 1974 Stracey was to venture overseas as he won the European belt in Paris against Roger Menetrey by knocking him out in the 8th. The complex boxing politics of the 1970’s meant that Stracey had to wait a little for his world title shot but it came in 1975 when he faced Jose Napoles in Mexico for the WBC belt.

It was a cauldron and with 40,000 screaming Mexicans wanting him to lose, the plucky East Londoner breathed in and took them all on.

Firstly, due to the delay in getting to the ring, Stracey worked the crowd by making light of it; they laughed with him. When the champ got to the ring, Stracey led the applause; he was winning friends or making sure he got out alive. Napoles was a wiry veteran that many young guns had tried to stop but failed. With over 80 fights already, being a refugee from Cuba and a man older than the 30 odd years to which he admitted, this was no easy task for Stracey – in Napoles’ corner was Angelo Dundee!

Stracey though had prepared well. He had been to Mexico in the Summer of 1968 to box at the Olympics. He knew the humidity and acclimatization needed – he got there 3 weeks before the fight. He had faced Napoles once before – in sparring. Napoles had been in London in 1972 to fight Ralph Charles and Stracey had worked him well with his jab; Stracey’s manager, Terry Lawless told him to remember that and Stracey did.

Things may have been prepared for well, but they did not begin well.

Stracey went down in the first from a left hook. He hung on and found the strength to get through the first round.
He needed to get back up and into the fight and so he did.

Napoles was to go down himself in the 3rd as Stracey’s effective offense was working well and sought out Napoles’ eye. It began to close and before they got to the end of the 6th round, referee Octavio Meyran stepped in to stop the contest, making Stracey world champion.

It is talked about as one of the biggest, if not the biggest, shocks in British boxing. Stracey had gone into a den and taken the lion apart to wrest his belt from him.

It sent Napoles into retirement and Stracey was only to defend the title successfully once; against Hedgemon Lewis who he knocked out in the 10th round.

On the 22nd June, 1976, at Wembley, against another Mexican, Carlos Palomino, Stracey was to be knocked out in the 10th round and lose his title. There were two more fights – one win and one loss – before he hung up the gloves and went into retirement.

That retirement found him doing the circuit as a speaker with plenty of interest to say. His business ventures into pubs gave him renewed focus after the bright lights of being a much vaunted boxing champion who battled through more than just game opponents. His is a legacy against which the exploits of British boxers who go abroad may be judged.

Of course, the heat of Mexico is a little less intense now than it was then, isn’t it???

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