Boxing coach and manager

Born: 1930;

Died: June 9, 2016

JIMMY Murray, who has died aged 86, was the proud Glaswegian coach who discovered the boxing legend Jim Watt and helped him to his early success and an eventual world lightweight championship.

His lifelong love affair with boxing began in the late 1940s when he was a regular at Glasgow's Grove Stadium and other city venues where ex-Scottish and world class featherweight turned promoter, Johnny McMillan, promoted hugely popular pro boxing shows which showcased Scottish greats like Peter Keenan, welterweight Willie Whyte, and many others.

A passionate egalitarian socialist who idolised Aneurin Bevan, Murray had no problem with squaring his left-wings beliefs with the essentially capitalist financial ethos of professional boxing because he believed with passion that boxing in Glasgow was quintessentially a working class sport. For that reason, he would express his dismay at the rise of white collar boxing dinner promotions which he regarded as heresy against boxing's working class roots. Although, ironically, that was where he tried to advance the career of his most famous discovery.

Like Angelo Dundee and Terry Lawless who superseded him as Jim Watt's coach and mentor, Murray never boxed seriously himself but he had real ability as a coach and mentor which he picked up while doing his national service with the Royal Air Force in he early 1950s. He was a very successful boxing coach at RAF Colshot in England.

On demob, he founded the Cardowan Amateur boxing club in Maryhill's St George's Cross area and it was there that a young football-mad youngster from Possilpark called Jim Watt, gravitated to mark time during the long winter of 1962-63. There Watt teamed up with Murray whom Watt accurately describes in his 1981 autobiography as being 'an eccentric with strong ideas and principles. Certainly there weren't many Scottish boxing coaches who were yoga teachers and health food gurus but his ability to teach and motivate boxers was beyond question as Watt himself acknowledged in his book.

Witness Jim Watt's first round knockout in just 45 seconds of London's future world welterweight titlist John H Stracey in the British ABA championships in Manchester in 1968. Watt then won the British title final by beating the much touted Bristolian Bobby Fisher - a performance that provoked Watt's future boxing tv pundit buddy Reg Gutteridge, who was at ringside, to comment prophetically ''Jim Watt is one to watch."

The Fisher win put Watt in pole position for selection to the British boxing team of the Mexico City Olympics of 1968 but, encouraged by Murray, who had a pro ring second's licence, the man from Possilpark announced he was turning pro under Murray's management.

Meanwhile, British boxing trade paper Boxing News paid tribute to the way hat Murray had handled Watt's amateur career by commenting that Watt was unmarked after his 37 amateur bouts.

Under Murray's tutelage, Watt won a British lightweight title and Lonsdale Belt and European titles. But the one thing that Murray lacked was the sine qua non of making the real big time in pro boxing: connections within the sport with big promoters in London. This meant that Murray had to agree to Watt fighting mainly in the kind of dinner suited pro boxing venues that Murray the Socialist detested, for relatively small purses - and it was a source of frustration to the increasingly ambitious Watt.

Also, when Watt lost his British lightweight title and Lonsdale Belt to Edinburgh's Ken Buchanan in January 1973 on points, cracks began to appear in the relationship between manager and boxer.

Consequently, in 1976 when London-based Terry Lawless phoned Watt to offer to guide his career, Watt jumped at the chance as Lawless had in spades, the connections with promoters like Mickey Duff that Jim Murray lacked.

So Watt, under Lawless, went on to world title glory and big lucrative title defences in Glasgow and London between 1979-81. But even Watt admitted he owed a great debt to Murray for the careful handling of his pre-Lawless career and the imparting of basic boxing skills to Watt was fundamental to his overall boxing success.

Meanwhile, although deeply upset by Watt's defection to Lawless, Murray nevertheless guided Glasgow's last Jewish boxing champion Gary Jacobs who later won British and European lightweight tiles.

In later years Murray had spells of illness but that did not stop him writing and publishing two volumes of memoirs about Glasgow boxing and his own not inconsiderable contribution to the sport in his beloved native city.

I came to know Murray well during my own spell as a professional boxing referee in the 1980s and I liked him a great deal even though he could be thrawn and stubborn and I never agreed with his Quixotic idea that Scottish boxing would never really prosper until it returned to its small hall, proletarian roots as in the 1930s.

He was above all, man of integrity who personified the 19th century American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson's dictum that ''Whomsoever would be a man must be a Nonconformist.''

BRIAN DONALD