Bungling managers brought KO for battling Woodcock

But Bruce Woodcock could have been a contender on the international stage for much longer were it not for his blundering manager and greedy promoter, according to a new book about his life.

Woodcock was born and brought up in Balby, Doncaster, and held the British and Empire heavyweight titles from 1945 to 1950 and was the European heavyweight champion from 1946 to 1949.

He had only started boxing in 1942, at the age of 22, but quickly built on his fearsome reputation as a Yorkshire amateur and expectation began to build that he would win the world title.

To achieve that goal he would have to travel to the US, but according to author Brian Hughes his rise to the top was hampered after his team lost sight of their star, blinded by big money.

Mr Hughes, himself a boxing trainer who has previously written about Sugar Ray Robinson and Willie Pep, said: “If he had received the right training, he would have been one of the all-time greats.”

Woodcock was managed by Mancunian Tommy Hurst and promoted by the legendary Jack Solomons, who were delighted with the success he achieved on this side of the Atlantic.

But Mr Hughes, who guided Robin Reid to the WBC super-middleweight title in 1996, said the pair had no idea what they were letting their fighter in for when they set him up against American stars.

He added: “Bruce had a good left jab and a good right hand, but he wasn’t cut out to fight those Americans. He didn’t weigh above 14st in his career and didn’t know how to handle these more powerful boxers.

“Solomons and Hurst also didn’t know how to counteract the Americans and Bruce was overwhelmed. They sacrificed him as long as they got bums on seats. Bruce went along with it because he made money – enough money to lift his mum and dad out of poverty in Doncaster.”

Woodcock’s first defeat against Italian-American Tami Mauriello in New York in 1946 shocked his adoring fans back home, but he bounced back on his return, winning six more on the run.

But Mr Hughes said what really derailed the Doncaster man was a second defeat to an American, Joe Baksi, in April 1947, a clash described by one contemporary commentator as “legalised slaughter”.

Woodcock’s jaw was shattered, but he battled on for seven rounds and despite the defeat came back to win four more fights , before two defeats on the trot led to his retirement in 1950.

Mr Hughes said the Baksi battle was “one of the most tragic sporting events in the long and disappointing history of British heavyweight boxing”.

He added: “We were all looking for a hero after the Second World War and that was Bruce. Unfortunately he didn’t have the right training. It wasn’t his fault, he was as brave as they come.

“They put statues up to a lot of people these days - it would be fitting if the people of Yorkshire commissioned one for Bruce.”

After he retired, Woodcock went into the licensed trade and spent more than a decade running a pub in the mining village of Edlington, just a few miles from where he grew up.

Even now, regulars in The Tumbler in Broomhouse Lane remember him fondly as a “firm but fair” landlord who wouldn’t stand for bad behaviour but welcomed his customers.

The pub’s current landlady, Angela Daley, said it had been renamed Last Orders in recent years, but she decided to go back to The Tumbler, partly in honour of the former publican.

She added: “When I moved in we did a big refurb, but we have put all the pictures of Bruce back up on the walls and a lot of the old regulars hark back to the glory days when he was in charge.

“When the younger lads misbehave you can often hear them saying things like: ‘You wouldn’t have gone on like that if Bruce were here’. His presence is still very much felt in this pub.

“Him and his wife apparently used to work behind the bar. They were here from when it opened in 1961 to the mid-1970s. We have people who have been coming in here for more than 40 years.

“People who were kids at the time remember him because they used to have off-sales where they would sell sweets. But he is remembered as strict as well; there was no swearing.”

Woodcock spent his retirement in the nearby village of Warmsworth and died in 1997.

Mr Hughes’s book, Battling Bruce, is described by its publishers as “an 188-page nostalgia trip into an era when Joe Louis was king of the ring”.

It is available from the author by writing to Brian Hughes Books, 41 Fold Lane, Chadderton, OL9 9DX.