Ringside Report Looks Back at Former WBC Junior Middleweight Champion Maurice Hope

[AdSense-A]

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has a rich history of immigration. For us Scots we delight at the ice cream, the haggis pakora and the sweet and sour sounds of our cities when we go wandering round markets and shops with the air of the East, the sweeping aura of the Chinese medicine shop or the voices of Eastern Europe filling our ears.

As an island and country, the UK, has benefited enormously from foreign fields with the greatest asset of our times, the National Health Service, built on the sweat and the backs of those whose culture is described as foreign but whose contribution consistently gets recognized.
Of course, there are many who do not see their contribution in the same way but they are a minority of ignorant chanters at the sides of a society who needed the people who came to our shores. They came on the Windrush, when thrown out of Uganda by Idi Amin and after our Empire began to become quite rightly a more Commonwealth of nations.

In 1951, in the British colony of Antigua one such boy was born who was to go on to world champion level for the UK and delight and entrance a nation who would see him at the Olympics and deliver from his new home in London fight after fight, win after win and regular entertainment for the people who loved such endeavor – us fight fans.

Maurice Hope, 30-4-1, 24 KO’s came to the UK young, but it did not take him long to take up the pugilistic art. Nobody seems quite sure at what age he began but we all know that in 1972 he traveled to Munich, and then to West Germany, to represent the United Kingdom. At the Olympics he got all the way to the Quarter Finals before the Hungarian silver medalist beat him denying him a chance to medal himself.

One year later in 1973 he turned over and became a professional boxer.

Hope went to 4-0 before he suffered a loss when the points went against him on the 21st November in his first year as a professional when Mickey Flynn beat him.

Hope drew breath and recovered with the next five fights being five straight wins and leading to a British title. It was one only year later, on Guy Fawkes’s Night 1974, when he produced fireworks in the 8th round to knockout Larry Paul for the junior middleweight belt.

It may only have been his 11th professional outing but it was only his fourth in a public arena. He was being unleashed on the public in a move in British boxing and part of a stable that was to change our boxing forever and take it from the corner of your conscience and into the living rooms of the British public.

By June 1975 he went up in weight to middleweight to face Bunny Sterling for the British middleweight title in London. It was another 8th round stoppage, unfortunately for Hope he was the one being stopped and not doing the stopping. This was an odd fight as it was not at Hope’s weight and rumour has it that it was after the pair had clashed at a night club and decided to settle it in a ring. It was also another of Hope’s fight in a private club, so this loss was at least hidden from the public.

It was a judicious loss. Larry Paul was brought back in to the ring thereafter with him. Hope was to do the double on him for the British super welterweight title with another stoppage win. It was not just the wins he was racking up though, with the belts now on his mantelpiece, but the fact he was in between the title fights, knocking people, out almost at will.

It meant the next stage of his story had to be beyond British shores; it had to be for something bigger than a British title – he was off to Roma. On the 10th October 1976 he faced Vito Antuofermo for the European title. It was the first time Hope was to fight abroad but it was a successful trip as he knocked out Antuofermo in the 15th and final round with seconds left of it to go; he was now the European champion – he was now ranked.

The WBC then pitched him in against Eckhard Dagge on the 15th March 1977, for his very first world title fight – the WBC title in Charlottenburg in Germany. This was to be less of a triumph for Hope. After 15 tough rounds, that Hope clearly won, it was declared a very dodgy draw. Hope was furious but did think with the British Boxing Board of Control’s support he could do something about it and get a rematch. There was to be no rematch and Hope had to keep traveling, trundling and winning.

He may have been downhearted but there was little time for that because in less than two months he faced Frank Wissenbach for an EBU title defense that went the full 15 rounds. Hope was declared the winner by majority decision.

He defended his European crown once more, before in 1979, at the dawn of a new decade he faced Rocky Mattioli in Sanremo Italy for the WBC belt. Hope knocked the champion out in the 9th and became the world champion in a circus tent!

Mattioli had gone down in the first, complained of a broken wrist afterwards but from that point until the end, he was beaten to every punch and in every round. When Mattioli gave up after the 9th, jubilation surrounded Hope with his manager Terry Lawless in the ring alongside Hope’s boxing buddy Jim Watt who celebrated like the well deserved win it was.

Hope was to successfully defend his title 3 times with wins in September 1979 against Mike Baker by stoppage in the 7th, in the rematch against Rocky Mattioli in 1980 where he dominated throughout and winning, this time by stoppage in the 11th and then by the tail end of 1980 in November in a points win against Carlos Herrera. All three fights were in London. It was not the end however of his travels.

In 1981, in his penultimate contest he was in Las Vegas fort a money fight. Destiny abandoned his corner as facing him was the first Latin American Wilfredo Benitez, to win world titles in three weight divisions, the fighter about to become the youngest to so do Hope was in the very fight in which that was to be achieved. Hope was badly knocked out in the 12th round.

Unfortunately, the toll it took upon Hope was heavy and he was hospitalized. Throughout his pain in the ring, Benitez, celebrated and after the fight at the press conference he mocked Hope. As Steve Bunce so succinctly described Benitez, “a great boxer but a rotten human.”
When Hope got out of the hospital, he got married in Vegas and then returned home.

Hope was not to finish there. He came back and lost a European title fight to Luigi Minchillo in 1982 on a split decision before calling it a day.

It is reported that such were the Antiguans delighted with his achievements that he was gifted land by the government and he returned to live there and is an Ambassador for the island. Back in London, their recognition of his achievements is more modest – they named a cycle route after him.

As a symbol of why welcoming all comers is a pretty fantastic idea he stands tall. As a British boxer we can claim he stands aside many whose heritage has mixed the exotic with the quintessential mix that makes Britain, British. A former Olympian, world title holder and example to us all, RSR salutes Maurice Hope.

[si-contact-form form=’2′]