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| Jimmy Wilde |
‘I have nothing to declare but my genius.’ So supposedly said the famous Mr Wilde while passing through New York customs. That’s Oscar Wilde, the famous writer, not Jimmy Wilde, the famous fighter. They were two very different men but here’s one thing they shared. Neither was shy about his brilliance.
Jimmy Wilde passed through New York customs for a US fight tour 37 years after Oscar Wilde, but I doubt Jimmy made any such remark. However, in the late 1950s, several Boxing News readers were aggrieved by a similarly bold statement Jimmy had made in a TV interview. Apparently, he’d been asked to predict the outcome of a fantasy match-up against fellow flyweight legend Benny Lynch, with Wilde declaring that he would have beaten Benny inside a couple of rounds.
Perhaps Jimmy truly believed this, or maybe he said it for a bit of devilment. Either way, you could make a good case for him beating Lynch, although I don’t think such an early demolition would have been likely.
Both men were exceptional but there was something extra special about Wilde, who many claim hit harder than any flyweight in history. In his booth days, he had reputedly KO’d heavyweights and later, as a bona fide pro, he had little trouble dismantling the best flyweights and bantams around. They called him ‘the Tylorstown Terror’, ‘the Mighty Atom’ and ‘the Ghost with a Hammer in his Hand’, for his frail appearance belied his destructiveness.
Seeing the little Welsh legend on film, though, can be an anticlimax. First, there’s the quality of the fight footage. Shot from distance with a single static camera, it is grainy and indistinct. I wonder how much better Wilde would look with multiple camera angles, slow-motion replays and close-ups?
And then there is Jimmy Wilde himself. I admit, when I first saw him fight, I was a little disappointed. With his fists dangling at his side and his footwork often messy, he could hardly be termed a textbook boxer. But as I now realise, this unorthodoxy is part of what made him the force he was.
So what exactly was Jimmy Wilde’s genius? That very topic was discussed in Boxing News back in June 1951, when people who’d witnessed his fights were still around.
‘Speed plus timing did the trick,’ wrote BN contributor Bill Evans. ‘Of course, he was unorthodox. He could bring across a punch from an unexpected angle and take an opponent unawares. For this reason, he was neither a good coach nor a good example to the young — in a boxing sense only, I mean. He could show you just how he punched but he alone could punch that way.’
But BN reader Norman Allen-Jones disagreed on the point of speed, writing, ‘Jimmy definitely did not speed, except with eye and brain.’ Allen-Jones also observed that Wilde moved ‘flat-footedly’ inside the ring and ‘rarely maintained his stance throughout a round’. So what about his genius?
‘I saw him first in 1913,’ Allen-Jones recalled. ‘He had ducked very low and his opponent sent a left over his shoulder. A friend said to me, “Now watch two uppercuts.” “Uppercuts!” said I, scornfully. “Where from?” Then they came, a left and a right neck stretch under the chin, while Jimmy was still “in two doubles” underneath. Where the power of those strokes came from I still cannot understand. He made it look so easy and natural.’
Article © copyright Alex Daley.
This piece by Alex Daley (first published in Boxing News on 26 January 2017) is one of 132 articles featured in the anthology Boxing Nostalgia: The Good, the Bad and the Weird. You can find our more or buy a copy here.
