Talk:Bob Gregson

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Removal of reference to Gregson having been English Champion

I’ve made an alteration to the text. The article claimed that Bob Gregson had been English prizefighting champion between the retirement of Gully and Gregson’s defeat to Tom Cribb. This is untrue, as reference to contemporary sources such as Boxiana makes clear (also, as indicated in the 1906 work Pugilistica, which collates all of the info in the contemporary sources). Gully had beaten Gregson, however after Gullly retired Gregson did not become champion. Instead, the two strongest fighters by popular acclaim, Gregson and Cribb, fought to determine who should be the new champion – a bout that was won by Cribb, who then became champion.

Unfortunately there is currently a great deal of misinformation of this type on Wikipedia, most of which seems to derive from the website ‘cyberboxingzone’, the info on which derives ultimately from a group called the IBRO (International Boxing Research Organisation). The IBRO seem to have taken it upon themselves to retrospectively appoint champions for various periods when there was no prizefighting champion, and also to retrospectively appoint champions for various weight-based categories which simply did not exist during prizefighting days. This is anachronistic and the contemporary sources contain no evidence on which to support these claims.

I’d suggest that the canonical list of English prizefighting champions is the 1906 list given between the preface and introduction of Pugilistica volume 1 (list entitled ‘Champions of England from 1716-1863’) and that anyone wishing to diverge from that list would need to provide significant evidence from the period to back up his claims. It isn’t sufficient to argue that someone might have been the best fighter available, the issue is clearly whether they were actually accepted as champion at the time – and the answer to that question in Gregson’s case is definitely ‘no’.

(I also removed a mention of St Martin’s Street being ‘in Leicester Square’, which is geographically incorrect.) Axad12 (talk) 05:13, 7 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]