Just four divisions, were contested at the first New Zealand Boxing Association National Championships held at the Theatre Royal in Christchurch on the 26th and 29th September 1902. The first New Zealand amateur boxing champions, came from a handful of pugilists that fought out the Featherweight, Lightweight, Middleweight and Heavyweight titles.

The initial Featherweight division saw three preliminary bouts before semi-final action on the second night of the championships. 

A press report described the bout between Overend and Bell as very interesting. The go between the brothers Jones was also an interesting spectacle, although at the commencement neither seemed to be taking things very seriously.  In the final, the winner AL Jones, practically had the better of it and early in the first round he drew blood from his opponent. All through the bout, Jones showed considerably more science and judgement to be awarded the first National Featherweight title.

Jimmy Hagerty was known as the sawn-off Hercules, whose death in WW1 cut short a remarkable life, was a boxer to make his mark in the first decade of the new century. Hagerty was a freak, being no more than five foot and who used “kangaroo” methods to reach his opponents vulnerable areas. His leaping bounding offensives were something new to the New Zealand ring, as he would leap in to flail away and then weave low out of the way of any counter blows.

The pocket battleship fought his first bout in 1908, when he knocked out one Grieves in round two of an amateur bout in his hometown of Timaru. In all he fought 21 times for 20 victories in the lily whites against the best in Australia and New Zealand. His only defeat was to Jack Read who later won the Australian professional lightweight title. Hagerty won the National Featherweight title in 1909, before crossing the Tasman to Sydney for the Australasian titles. Little Jimmy’s all-out aggression completely bamboozled his Australian opponents, knocking out two, on his way to the featherweight crown.

He did not compete again at a New Zealand championship, but two years later was still chosen to represent New Zealand at the Australasian titles. Considerable controversy arose with his selection over current champion Alan Maxwell. His selection was vindicated when he again won the Trans-Tasman title and he later beat Maxwell over six rounds to settle all doubts and criticisms. An accomplished horseman, Jimmy became a national figure as a jockey. In 1912 he turned professional and immediately won the vacant featherweight title. In the paid ranks, Jimmy Hagerty won 12, lost 3 and drew 2, before his death in action in the trenches of Gallipoli.

Charlie Purdy, who became New Zealand’s first Olympic boxing representative, won back to back Featherweight crowns in 1922 and 1923.  In 1922 he beat  Billy Drew from Otago before repeating the feat the following year when he defeated Christchurch's Tommy Armstrong.  Purdy was adjudged to have been out-pointed by local French idol Marcel Thorley, at the 1924 Olympic's, although many at ringside were convinced that Purdy had prevailed. Purdy showed his true class, with a decisive win in the Tail Teann Games in Ireland after the close of the Olympiad, at which he was awarded the boxer of the tournament.

The late twenties and early thirties were the time of Johnny Leckie and Tommy Donovan, who not only had a number of magnificent professional battles, but both fought and defeated the American visitor Pete Sarron. The American fighter went on in 1936 to defeat Freddie Miller for the featherweight championship of the world. An attendance record that has never been bettered was set in 1930, when Leckie and Sarron met for the second time at the Kilbirnie speedway in Wellington, with over seventeen thousand fans jamming their way into the stadium.

Otago's Leckie and Donavan who hailed from Taranaki, squared off in the 1926 and 1927 Featherweight National finals with a win apiece, before the pair became reacquainted in the professional ranks. They met on six occasions in the 'paid to box' ranks with Leckie winning two, Donovan one - with three draws sandwiched between the decisions. While there was little between the great rivals, Leckie finished the six battles between the pair, with the only knockout of the series in their first meeting in Napier during May 1930. 

Two time Featherweight champion Clarrie Gordon who was another to wear the Olympic black singlet, was considered extremely unlucky to lose in a magnificent contest at the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, Germany, tasting defeat by a solitary points against Karlson from Finland.

Billy Patterson from Hawkes Bay won a brace of Featherweight crowns in 1948 and 1949, defeating Danny Glozier in both title deciders.

Few amateur boxers in the country, kept at the top of their game as long as Paddy Donovan, who preceded the Lightweight crown in 1956, 1957, 1959 and 1962, with the Featherweight title in 1954. The Hawkes Bay pugilist has a unique place in Boxing New Zealand history as the only Kiwi boxer to have earned selection at two Olympic Games. At the 1956 Olympics over the ditch in Melbourne Australia, he was accompanied by Welterweight Graham Finlay, while eight years later in Tokyo Japan his companion in the Olympic ring was Light Welterweight Brian Maunsell.

Article added: Monday 13 July 2020