Ringside Report Looks Back at Boxing Champion Robin Reid

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

There are plenty of boxers who fly “under the radar” and do not get the headlines or the credit that they deserve, partly because in a sport where there are thousands involved, we can forget or just be unaware of anyone not likely to be at the top of their divisional tree. When it comes to fighters of today that can be unfortunate but as time progresses and people move on, scouting for the next “big thing”, we forget more readily those who graced and headlined when another boxer filled our focua. Sometimes we even forget those who were at the top and gave us nights to remember.

Robin Reid, 42-8-1, 29 KOs, born in Kingston, Jamaica, a super middleweight when the division as stoked, is one such example. The “Reaper Man” fought professionally between 1993 and 2012 and was the WBC champion in 1996, then the IBO champ in 2004, as well as the WBF champion for a while. Perhaps why his name is not so well known, amongst the casual fan is down to sharing the limelight with a certain Joe Calzaghe.

His pedigree stretches from a stellar amateur career where he won bronze for Great Britain at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and was his pinnacle within the amateur code to those world titles. Reid had been an outstanding British amateur, both as a junior and senior fighter. Amongst the accolades he got in the amateur was finishing second at the world championships in 1989 in Puerto Rico. In 1990 he was 3rd at the light middleweight Amateur Boxing Association (ABA) championships, fought at the 1991 world championships in Sydney and in 1992 got to the Olympics.

At Barcelona, in his first bout, Reid knocked out Marcus Thomas of Barbados in the 1st round, then recorded two points wins – against Leonidas Maleckis of Lithuania and Ole Klemetsen of Norway before losing on points to the Dutch representative, Turkish born Orhan Delibas who went on to win silver, in the semifinal.

The year after the Olympics, Reid turned professional, making his debut in the Goresbrook leisure Centre, Dagenham, with another first round win when he knocked out Mark lee Dawson on the 27th of February that year.

By 1996, he was facing Vincenzo Nardiello in Milano, on the 12th of October, for the WBC belt and stopping Nardiello in the 7th round gave him the title. But his preparation for the fight was apparently interrupted by an unlikely and unwelcome visitor. In an interview with Britain’s Boxing News both Reid and fellow stablemate Michael Gomez Jr. were interviewed. I shall let Gomez take up the story from his interview. “We were training late one night when he was getting ready to fight Vincenzo Nardiello. We got changed, I said, ‘See you later, Rob’ and went. I was walking out and there were bits falling down from the ceiling. I looked up and there was a foot coming though. They were breaking into the gym to rob the Co-op underneath. I creeped back into the changing rooms and went ‘Ssshhh’ to Rob. We got sweeping brushes and mops and we stood either side of the hole in the roof. The fella landed on his feet, and I just turned around and went, ‘F**k off.’ They got arrested.”

Reid went on to defend the title against Giovanni Pretorius on the 8th of February in Millwall by knocking him out in the 7th round. Then came the contest against Henry Wharton, who he defeated by majority decision in Manchester on the 3rd of May 1997. It was always going to be a tough contest and one that Reid was very wary of. Back to the interview in Boxing News, Reid went on to explain, “I stuck the old VHS tape in the player and remember sitting on the couch shaking with nerves. I was more nervous watching him than I was when I fought him, and I don’t really know why that was. Reality kicked in, I guess. Most of the fights I had on tape ended with him chinning someone with a left hook, so that certainly didn’t help my nerves. He was a big hooker and his power seemed to always be there, even if he was getting hammered. That was another thing that shook me up, the idea that I could be beating this man up for round after round and he could still clean me out with one shot. Wharton was dangerous for every second of every round and that fact alone made me nervous.”

After the Wharton win, Reid defended his title against Hacine Cherifi on the 11th of September in Widnes by split decision. From the outside, knockout, majority and then split decision wins suggests a slide. Band on the 19th of December 1997, back in Millwall, by unanimous decision he lost his strap to Thulani Malinga.

A rebuild was needed. Unfortunately for Reid he was to find himself, as part of that journey, facing the Welshman we were all getting hot under the collar about: Joe Calzaghe. In Newcastle, on the 13th of February 1999, by split decision, for Calzaghe’s WBO title, Reid lost to Calzaghe, however many believe it was the closest that Calzaghe ever came to a loss. Dismayed by the result, and not for the last time, Reid had caught Calzaghe time and again with his right hand, but it was never enough for two of the judges, though the one who gave him the fight did so by the same margins as his compatriots, but in the opposite direction: 116-111.

Reid then came up north, to Hampden Park, Glasgow, on the 24th of June 2000, to take on Silvio Branco for the WBF title. Losing by unanimous decision, and fairly widely, Reid was undaunted. In December of the same year, he faced Mike Gormley for the same title and this time got back to winning ways by knocking Gormley out in the 1st round. To be fair to Gormley he had been a late replacement for Ron Martinez who had failed the medical. At Wembley, on the 19th of May 2001, Reid successfully defended his title by stopping Roman Babaev in the 3rd round and then in July of the same year, in Liverpool, stopped Soon Botes with another successful defense. Further defenses were to follow but the caliber of the opponent was never world title level for the other sanctioning bodies. Reid continued 2001 in Glasgow again, this time in the Kelvin Hall, where in October he knocked out Jorge Andres Sclarandi in the 3rd round, before ending the year in Coventry 2 months later to win on points against veteran Julio Cesar Vasquez.

2002 saw his final defense of his WBF title when he was in Wembley on the 10th of July, winning again on points against Francisco Antonio Mora. Al roads led to another time that Reid felt that the stars were aligned against him – the first against Calzaghe four years before and now – for the IBF and WBA titles in Nuremberg, Germany against Sven Ottke. The records book show that, om points Reid lost the decision. Reid fought well but appeared to be fighting against more than his opponent when he lost by unanimous decision. But it hardly tells the tale. Again, in his interview in boxing News, Reid goes into great detail about the performance of referee, Roger Tillman: “The guy had never refereed a world title fight before and was clearly way out of his depth. I was basically getting points taken off for punching my opponent.” Reid was warned for head butting, holding, using the inside of his glove and rough housing, knocked Ottke down in the 6th but never saw it counting as knockdown. “The referee was a master at ruining the flow of the fight and guiding Ottke to the finish line. Every time I got near and threw a punch, I’d hear ‘stop!’ and we’d have a little pause.”

Reid was winning and his corner was telling him so and then came the intervention of his manager, Jess Harding, who warned Reid that he was being “ripped off.” “At that point you just see my face drop as the reality dawns on me That’s the last thing you want to hear, especially when you’ve just been patting yourselves on the back for a game plan that seemed to be working. Now it was like an emotional roller-coaster. Do you stick with something we believed was working or try something different? When they were reading the scores, I remember thinking, wow, I’ve absolutely p***ed it. I didn’t think I’d get it this wide in Germany. Maybe this place isn’t as bad as they make out. Then all you heard was ‘And still…’ Ottke looked at me, with his bruised eyes and swollen cheekbones, and kind of shrugged as if to say, sorry, welcome to Germany.”

It more than ruined his dream, of a world title. Reid, had, by now, also been clear he wanted Calzaghe in a rematch. Having two world tiles to unify with Calzaghe in an all British fight would have been headline grabbing.

Reid, however, did not dwell too much on lost opportunities as his career kept brining opportunity. On the 26th of June 2004, in Belfast, against an unbeaten Brian Magee he was to become world champion again. This time as the IBO title holder he won a tight fight on the score cards, though Magee hot the canvas on four occasions. In 2005 on the 6th of August more opportunity came along in the shape of another shot at a title when he took on Jeff Lacy for the IBF belt which Ottke had vacated when he retired – Reid put on the table his IBO belt too. Again, the prize was a route to that rematch with Calzaghe. Unfortunately, Reid was no match for Lacy who stopped him in the 8th round. Lacy got the fight with Calzaghe but lost to the WBO champion.

Down the ranks came Reid, though his fighting days were far from over. On the 9th of November 2007 in Nottingham Reid was to retire against Carl Froch for the British title, and announce his retirement, not long afterwards.

Fighting was clearly in his blood as he spoke of coming out of retirement to take on the then British champion, Tony Dodson in 2009. Reid’s reasoning for taking on Dodson, was he wanted that Lonsdale belt and he saw the fight between the two of them being a huge domestic affair. Dodson, however, was still to fight Brian Magee for the British title at the time.

He did come out of retirement – in 2011 – to compete in the super middleweight prizefighter organized by Matchroom and Eddie Hearn, where Tobias Webb beat him in the first round on the 23rd of March in Liverpool. There were three more fights to follow until Sheffield Arena on the 20th of October when Kenny Anderson for the British title, once more, stopped him in the 5th round and Reid went back into retirement – never having won that Lonsdale belt.

Careers outside of the ring have included dabbling with an acting where he took over a film role in Killer Bitch when MMA fighter Alex Reid walked off set. He also became a judge for the World Boxing Federation (WBF), joining their advisory board in 2016. But we fight fans remember the tussles in the ring and the brief but very vital time he was at the top of the sport. And for that he is very fondly remembered.

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