Frank Maloney Meets Dave “Boy’ Green on the Dinner Club Circuit.

At the present moment in Britain, there are a number of top American fighters doing what we call the dinner club circuit. They go around chatting, have dinner, speak to the gathered attendees for about forty minutes, show some film and then answer questions. As a measure of the popularity of this sort of thing, a short while ago we had Larry Holmes entertaining up to 1,000 people

Mickey Kingwell, Dave “Boy” Green, Frank Maloney Click for Larger Image

in Manchester with John Conteh and Earnie Shavers. Recently, Thomas Hearns, his nephew and Emmanuel Steward were also touring Britain. The British fight fans love the American legends but there is still room for Britain’s favorite fighters as well.

Last month, in my hometown of Chislehurst, which is in the suburbs of London and not really a fight town, I was pleasantly surprised to see that David “Boy’ Green was having a book signing for the launch of his biography, “Fen Tiger”, at my local pub, the Imperial Arms. By the way, the host, as we call the guv’ner of a pub in Britain, is none other than Mickey Kingwell, a very talented former top amateur boxer here in Britain. I took along with me to the book signing an American journalist, Curtis McCormick, who was over in England for the Ricky Hatton – Mike Stewart fight. Curtis was impressed by the amount of people who turned up on a Tuesday night just to shake hands, get their picture taken with and buy the book of David “Boy” Green.

Frank Maloney, Mrs. Lonkhurst, Bob Lonkhurst Click for Larger Image

I’m sure that many Americans will remember David “Boy’ Green for his fights with Sugar Ray Leonard and Carlos Palomino. Curtis told me he was very impressed with the response and admiration that was shown for David and other fighters that turned up in the audience from yesteryear. The wide range of attendees included; Keith Bussey, a

retired middleweight who gave European, Commonwealth and British Champion Tony Sibson all he could handle for eight rounds, David’s co author and British Board of Boxing Control Inspector Bob Lonkhurst and a businessman with a long association with the game, named Tommy Mulholland. When I was growing up Tommy worked and sponsored a lot of fighters including my former brother in law, Tony Hutton, as well as former British light welterweight champion Joey Singleton of Liverpool.

These sorts of events are really good because you can talk about the old days, you can talk about the history of boxing and you can relive some great fights. I enjoyed ten minutes of great conversation with David, talking about Carlos Palomino, who I remember seeing for the very first time when he was training at the Thomas a’ Beckett. Palomino had been brought over as an opponent for John H. Stracey, but unfortunately, he forgot to follow the script and destroyed Stracey. Palomino then came back to Britain and did the same thing to David Green. David told me that he never met a more clever and harder hitting welterweight than Palomino.

These are some of the memories that I have from growing up in and around the boxing world and it’s probably some of the reason I fell in love with the sport and also went into it as a full time business. I wonder, other than the once a year even at the worldboxing hall of fame, do many towns in America have these sorts of events with former fighters and former champions?

Bob Lonkhurst with Dave Green book “Fen Tiger” Click for Larger Image

Frank Maloney

www.frankmaloney.com