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Gareth Jones’ exhaustive book series provides fitting tributes to well known, and lesser known, Welsh boxers, writes Alex Daley

Alex Daley on the Gun, a gym that emerged in the right place at the right time

MEMBERS of a Mold club were fascinated to hear the tale of a famous Welsh boxer. The speaker at the Rotary Club of Mold this week was Rotarian Pedr Roberts, who related the “rags to riches to rags again” story of Tommy Farr. A spokesman for the club recalled: "Thomas George Farr was born in 1913 at Blaenclydach, near Tonypandy. "He was one of eight children. The family grew up in abject poverty. "His mother died when he was nine and not long afterwards, his father, a collier and bare knuckle fighter, was seriously injured in a mining accident. "Tommy became the main breadwinne...

Cortina de Hierro –Castro’s Iron Curtain In 1946 after the end of the Second World War what Winston Churchill described as an Iron Curtain stretched across Europe separating East and West with all professional sport banned in the East. That brought an end to any fledgling careers and any future hopes of a professional career for boxers on the Eastern side of the Curtain. After just over forty years with the dissolution of the USSR the Curtain is no longer a barrier to professionalism and fighters such as the Klitschko brothers and Vasyl Lomachenko have since graced our sport. In 1961 afte...

Joe Erskine too small to be great Joe Erskine was one of the most gifted British boxers of his day, but was held back by a lack of size and punch power at heavyweight THE birth of the cruiserweight division in the late 1970s and early ‘80s was a boon for boxers too large for light-heavy but too small to make it on to the world stage as a heavyweight. Spare a thought, though, for the countless ‘inbetweeners’ who predated the division’s inception and were often forced to face bigger, harder-hitting men. There are numerous small heavies from boxing’s annals who one could argue would ha...