Ringside Report Looks Back at Peerless Jim Driscoll

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By Radical Rhymes

I was probably thirteen when I found a book in the library called Peerless Jim written by Alexander Cordell. It was tucked away on a rack of scruffy paperbacks, but something about it just struck me as interesting. I took it to show my mum, who was seemingly unimpressed. Apparently, it looked too ‘adult’ for me. However, we were pressed for time and she was simply happy that I wanted to read, so, I tucked it into the book bag and promptly forgot all about it. I suppose having won the battle I wasn’t that bothered about the war.

Then, one sunny Summer afternoon I’d run out of reading, and there was Peerless Jim sitting there at the bottom of the bag. I can remember thinking: ‘Oh well, why not? What is there to lose?’ Talk about not judging a book by its cover. It was a revelation. A truly joyful experience. The best books transport you, this one opened an entirely new world and immersed me into it.

Boxing… But not just boxing. Wales in the late 19th and early 20th Century. Tiger Bay. Grinding poverty, the reality of losing a father to a mining accident, of being Irish in a hostile Welsh capital. So many interlocking stories, characters you could believe in, that you felt for, that you felt you knew. So beautifully written.

And of course, boxing. The young Jim who admired the rugby boys with their broken noses and cauliflower ears, and the Greek gods fighting in the boxing booths. The young Jim who was a fighter capable of putting much older bullies in their place, a child brought up in a tough world which served as an education in standing up. Taught to box by his uncle with his friend Boyo, it follows his progression through the boxing booths into the fledgling professional world.

And what a world! Something so alien to me, and yet so evocative. The blood and guts, the heroics and the defeats, and Jim’s rise to fight against the featherweight world champion Abe Attell. He destroyed Attell, who came into the fight overweight thereby denying Driscoll the title.

If you have never read the book, do so. The description of that fight, the pinnacle of Jim’s career, is one of the most vivid pieces of writing I’ve even encountered. Reading every punch, catching the champion on the counter, beating someone who’d previously seemed invincible, and so, so easily. It brought boxing into my view, it made me realise that it wasn’t just a bloody spectacle it was an art form.

That book, and Jim Driscoll as a historical figure, encouraged me to find other such artists. Joe Louis, Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, Sugar Ray Robinson, and of course, Muhammad Ali. Who couldn’t love Muhammad Ali? Bright, brash, beautiful and, in my humble opinion, genuinely the greatest. A fighter who found ways to win, to beat men who also appeared to be invulnerable.

But fighting is not the only thing that Jim and Ali have in common. They were men of principle. They fought battles inside and outside the ring. While Ali told a bullying government that he wouldn’t fight an unjust war against other poor people who’d never racially abused him, Jim refused to stay in America to claim the title he’d taken from Attell in real terms, he went home to fight an exhibition for charity. Both he and Ali understood what was important. Were they perfect? No. Were they good men? Yes. Were they great fighters? Indisputably.

I was lucky in relation to Peerless Jim. I found two copies of the book in a library sale many years later. And much later again I came to live in Wales where I went to see Jim’s gloves in the St. Fagan’s Museum of Welsh life. For me, that was a pilgrimage. Jim was buried in Cathays Cemetery with his famous left glove in a glass box above his grave. Someone stole that glove, but no-one can steal what Jim came to mean to me.

Radical Rhymes is a professional artist working with a range of media – predominantly animal/human portraits and landscapes – including, most recently, hand painted furniture. You can see his work on Instagram Radicalrhymes1969 or on Twitter @RhymesRadical

For commissions, please contact him on Twitter via Direct Message or by email at: radicalrhymes@outlook.com His work is also available to buy on Etsy

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