Lonsdale Belt
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The Lonsdale Belt , more correctly the Lord Lonsdale Challenge Belt , is a British championship belt from professional boxing that is awarded by the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC) to British champions of every weight class who have won four such title fights. It was introduced in 1909 by Hugh Lowther , the Earl of Lonsdale , as the National Sporting Club's Challenge Belt and is considered to be the world's oldest championship belt in boxing that has been awarded.
regulate
A professional boxer receives a Lonsdale Belt as a prestige item if he wins four title fights for the British Championship. It does not matter whether he wins the title once and defends it three times, or wins the championship title four times in the course of his career. A boxer can only fight for one belt per weight class.
history
Hugh Lowther was the patron and first president of the National Sporting Club, founded in London in 1891 . Originally the belt named after the club passed into the possession of British champions who had twice defended their title. The first title holder was the lightweight Freddie Welsh in 1909 , the first heavyweight in 1911 Billy Wells .
The belts of that time were still made of 9-22 carat gold with an enamelled main shield on the front, on which there was an image of two boxers in a ring. This shield was framed by a gilded oak leaf below. There were also four other signs with pictures of boxers. The belt itself was formed by a ribbon in the colors red, white and blue.
The belt has been awarded by the British professional boxing association BBBofC since 1929. In 1936/37 he replaced the motif of the main shield with a portrait of the founder Lord Lonsdale, which is closed above by a lion. The national flowers shamrock ( Northern Ireland ), thistles ( Scotland ), roses ( England ) and daffodils ( Wales ) have been on the four secondary shields since then . After the Second World War, the gold was replaced by gold-plated sterling silver , the three-colored ribbon was retained.
Until 1987, when three successful title fights were enough for a Lonsdale Belt, boxers could win several of these belts in one weight class. The record holder is Henry Cooper with ten championships and three heavyweight belts.
Others
Twenty-one boxers acquired a Lonsdale Belt from the National Sporting Club. That of Digger Stanley, the first bantamweight title holder, was sold after his death in 1919 by his widow to the club, which handed it over to title holder Johnny Brown. His son later gave the belt to the Museum of London Docklands , where it is open to the public. Welsh Johnny Owen , Jimmy Wilde and Howard Winstone belts are on display at the Museum of Welsh Life in Cardiff .
In 2011 welterweight Jack Hood's Lonsdale Belt sold for £ 36,000 .
literature
- Lonsdale's Belt: Boxing's Most Coveted Prize by John Harding
Web links
- Lonsdale Belt , BoxRec
- The Lonsdale Belt , BBC