BOMBARDIER WELLS: From a Ring-
Side Seat'
THE SPEAKER this evening will always have a place in our gallery of boxers. He stood for all that was best in the game, and perhaps the finest tribute one can pay to him is to remember that his universal popularity, which was won by his victories, was undiminished in his defeats.
He did most of his boxing before the War ; learnt it as a member of the Broad Street Club down at Shadwell, but only made up his mind to turn professional when he was with the Army in India.
He won the Heavyweight Cham pionship of Britain, and kept it from 1911 to 1919. He won the Lonsdale belt outright by beating such boxers and fighters as Iron Hague, Packey Mahoney , and Sergeant Voyles.
Those who heard his broadcast in 1933 on Giants of Yesterday and Today had an example both of his modesty and spirit. He might have mentioned casually that he met Georges Carpentier twice. But he went out of his way to. tell listeners that Carpentier knocked him out in seventy-five seconds at the National Sporting Club in 1913. And it was a splendid moment in his talk when he said : ' But, Georges, I'd like to have another turn with you, Although you're seven years younger. I don't believe you'd beat me.' That has been the spirit of the best boxers in the long and glorious annals of the ring.