Perhaps no sport is as linked with nicknames as boxing, so much so that when Sylvester Stallone penned Rocky, he gave no fewer than five to fictional heavyweight champion Apollo Creed.
Fighters have always attracted monikers, going back to 19th-century champ Nonpareil Dempsey and beyond, but really took off around the 1920s, spearheaded by that era's heavyweight king Jack Dempsey—"The Manassa Mauler."
British boxing was not always so enamoured with the nickname, associating it more with the hoopla and razzmatazz of the US, where it was a sport for the press pack to coin a nom-de-guerre for upcoming contenders.
Plenty of British champions such as Benny Lynch, Ken Buchanan and John Conteh almost attracted a moniker that stuck.
It's maybe not entirely coincidental that it was in the 1980s, the decade of the Big Bang and rampant commercialism, that the UK truly embraced the nickname. The likes of "Ragamuffin Man" Lloyd Honeyghan and "Clones Cyclone" Barry McGuigan won world titles and almost edge their way into this list.
Consequently, this countdown is dominated by fighters of more recent vintage or those who fought on American soil and picked up a nickname there.
Among those who just missed out are Sheffield super-bantamweight Kid Galahad, lightweight contender Anthony "Million Dollar" Crolla and the always enigmatic early 2000s light-middleweight Richard "The Secret" Williams—a name that divides opinion but lodges itself in the memory.
And now, here are the 15 best-ever nicknames in British boxing.
//from Bleacher Report http://ift.tt/1p07tte
via IFTTT October 11, 2014 at 12:00AM
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