AS WE HAVE seen, the 1920s were not a great decade for the quality of the British fighters at world level. However, in terms of quantity, British boxing had never seen anything like it. I estimate that there were around 35,000 professional boxers active at some point during the decade, with more than 20,000 tournaments taking place.
Between 1920 and 1925, there around 1,600 shows a year, on average, and then in 1926 more than 2,000 and by 1929, 3,000-plus. This compares with a figure of around 280 today.
The gradual increase in the number of active professionals, and the tournaments in which they could box, corresponds with a period of increasing industrial and economic hardship and it was not for nothing that the following decade became known as the…
