National Sporting Club
Lord Samuel Wallace Lonsdale organised boxing matches and was the first president of the National Sporting Club. In 1909, he introduced the Lonsdale Belt as a new trophy for the British champion at each weight division. The belts were crafted from porcelain and twenty-two carat gold, supported by red, white and blue fabric backing, and were only to be held by a fighter as long as he was British champion. However, a British champion was allowed to keep his Lonsdale Belt if he defended his title successfully twice. Later belts were made from nine carat gold rather than the original twenty-two carat. A total of 22 Lonsdale belts were issued by the National Sporting Club, and of these 20 were won outright.
The holders of the first Lonsdale belts were:-
- Flyweight — Sid Smith, 1911
- Bantamweight — Digger Stanley, 1910 (retained)
- Featherweight — Jim Driscoll, 1910 (retained)
- Lightweight — Freddie Welsh, 1909 (retained)
- Welterweight — Young Joseph, 1910
- Middleweight — Tom Thomas, 1909
- Light-heavyweight — Dick Smith, 1914 (retained)
- Heavyweight — Bombardier Billy Wells, 1911 (retained)
The three above belts that were not retained by the holders were eventually held and retained by Jimmy Wilde (flyweight), Johnny Basham (welterweight) and Pat O'Keefe (middleweight).
Read more about this topic: Lonsdale Belt
Other articles related to "national sporting club, national, club":
... Basham was awarded the Lonsdale Belt on 21 December 1914 at the National Sporting Club after winning it from Johnny Summers becoming the first outright winner of the welterweight version of the belt ... The National Library of Wales records Basham winning the Lonsdale Belt in 1916, while The Toronto World newspaper of May 1916 writes that Basham was the holder of the Lonsdale Belt ... In May 1915 the National Sporting Club arranged Basham's first defence of his welterweight title, his opponent being Tom McCormick who had held the title briefly in 1914 ...
... Notes Loss 25-6 Bunny Johnson TKO 3 15/03/1972 Double Diamond Club, Caerphilly, United Kingdom Loss 13-3 Sarel Aucamp PTS 10 30/10/1971 Ellis Park Stadium, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa Win 11-7 ... Win 5-9 Emilio Okee PTS 10 16/02/1970 National Sporting Club, Piccadilly, London, United Kingdom Win 15-3 Bunny Johnson PTS 8 27/10/1969 Commodore Hotel, Nottingham ... Win 17-20-3 Lloyd Walford PTS 8 17/03/1969 National Sporting Club, Piccadilly, London, United Kingdom Win 61-15-5 "Boxing" Luis Gutierrez KO 4 06/02/1969 Liverpool Stadium, Liverpool ...
... Since 2003, the club has hosted a multi-category sports book literary award now known as the British Sports Book Awards ...
Famous quotes containing the words club, national and/or sporting:
“At first, it must be remembered, that [women] can never accomplish anything until they put womanhood ahead of wifehood, and make motherhood the highest office on the social scale.”
—“Jennie June” Croly 1829–1901, U.S. founder of the woman’s club movement, journalist, author, editor. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, pp. 24-5 (January 1870)
“[D]rilling and arming, when carried on on a national scale, excite whole populations to frenzies which end in war.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The Boston papers had never told me that there were seals in the harbor. I had always associated these with the Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor windows all along the coast you may see families of them sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea. To go to sea! Why, it is to have the experience of Noah,—to realize the deluge. Every vessel is an ark.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)