British middleweight boxing champion

 

Born: January 29, 1963;

 

Died: June 11, 2017

 

 

 

ERROL Christie, who has died of lung cancer aged 53, was a legendary former middleweight boxing champion whose feat of winning more amateur boxing titles than any other British boxer (eight) earned him a unique place in the Guinness Book of Records.

 

Born in Leicester but raised in a tough Coventry housing scheme, Christie needed his innate combativeness from an early age just to survive and advance in life.

 

Born to a violent, schizophrenic and illiterate father who regularly beat, not only Christie and his four brothers but also his mother, Christie reckoned that the toughness and stoicism he displayed in the boxing ring was a by-product of his harsh upbringing. Christie also made no secret of how the racism that he witnessed in the working class Coventry of his youth deeply scarred him.

 

But Christie himself also admitted that while boxing was his salvation from a life of crime and social underachievement, his personal saviour was a Scottish shop steward at Coventry's Triumph motor factory -Tom McGarry -who taught him the basics of how to become a champion boxer at McGarry's Standard Triumph amateur boxing club.

 

And under McGarry's shrewd tutelage what an amateur record it was to become. Christie became British ABA champion in 1981 and then European under-19 champion in East Berlin in 1983 by beating and outboxing the allegedly invincible Soviet champion, Kilimov. Christie was also captain of the England senior international boxing team between 1980-83.

 

According to Christie in his autobiography, No Place to Hide - How I Put the Black in the Union Jack, increasingly weary of life in both Coventry and in amateur boxing, he signed a professional boxer's contract with Burt McCarthy, who had played a role in heavyweight champion Frank Bruno's rise.

 

Christie not only won his first 13 paid bouts but excited fans by stopping 12 of his first 13 opponents inside the distance. He also became a television star on ITV's weekly Fight Night shows which were compulsive viewing for British boxing fans in the 1980s and early 1990s.

 

Yet despite stellar victories over world-rated stars like Frenchman Joel Bonnetal and later American Sean Mannion, Christie himself never fought for a world title as often as his natural talents might have dictated he should.

 

Instead, his most important fight was in November 1985 - a British middleweight title eliminator fight between Christie and Londoner Mark Kaylor.

 

So worrying were the racial undertones pre-fight - which incidentally grossed £82,000, a British record for a 10-round non-title fight - that both the Board of Boxing Control and the trade paper Boxing News warned both boxers sternly to be on their best behaviour.

 

Despite decking Kaylor twice, Christie later ran out of steam and was himself stopped. Christie himself admitted he was never again the same boxer after this bitter defeat by Kaylor. He finally retired in 1993.

 

Thereafter, the intelligent and resourceful Christie survived some rocky times to successfully sell children's clothing in a London market. He then underwent a personal renaissance thanks to the White Collar boxing craze which exploded in London in the late 1990s and early noughties. Among the successful Christie white collar boxing proteges were X Factor presenter Dermot O' Leary and Arnon Milchan, the producer of the Brad Pitt fight flick Fight Club.

 

Errol Christie also remained close to his extended family and was, in retirement, a well respected figure who included among his admirers former world champions Chris Eubank and Barry McGuigan.

 

He faced his final recent battle with terminal lung cancer with the same stoical fortitude and spirit by which he had lived his life

 

 

 

BRIAN DONALD