Cliff Curvis (19 November 1927 – 22 April 2009), was a champion

welterweight Welterweight is a weight class in combat sports. Originally the term "welterweight" was used only in boxing, but other combat sports like Muay Thai, taekwondo, and mixed martial arts also use it for their own weight division system to classify th ...

boxer from Swansea,

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

. Curvis fought professionally from the mid-1940s until 1953, winning both the British and Commonwealth titles when he beat

Wally Thom Wally Thom (14 June 1926 — 1980) born in Birkenhead, Merseyside an English amateur middleweight and professional welter/ middleweight boxer of the 1940s, and 1950s, and referee of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, who as an amateur was runner ...

in 1952. Curvis was one of four brothers who boxed, most notably British and Commonwealth champion

Brian Curvis Brian Nancurvis (14 August 1937 – 9 January 2012), who fought under the name Brian Curvis as a professional, was a boxer from Swansea, Wales who was active from 1959 to 1966. He fought as a Welterweight, becoming British welterweight cha ...

Career

Curvis was born in Swansea in 1927 to Dai Nancurvis. His father had been a bantamweight fighter during his time in the British Forces, and had set up a gym in Swansea in which Curvis trained as a youth. He turned professional in 1944 at the age of 16 weighing in at

flyweight Flyweight is a weight class in combat sports. Boxing Flyweight is a class in boxing which includes fighters weighing above 49 kg (108 lb) and up to 51 kg (112 lb). Professional boxing The flyweight division was the last of b ...

. His first fight was a second-round knockout over local fighter Bryn Collins. By the end of 1945 he was fighting in larger venues in England, including a victory over Cliff Anderson at the Queensberry Club in Soho. Into his late teens, Curvis moved up to featherweight. He lost only one of his first 19 fights, and that came from a disqualifaction against Frankie Williams. As a featherweight he beat both Germain Perez, the French champion and former Northern Area champion, Tom Smith. On 2 December 1946, he faced

Al Phillips Al "The Aldgate Tiger" Phillips (25 January 1920 – 7 February 1999) was a Jewish English professional featherweight/lightweight boxer of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, who won the European Boxing Union (EBU) featherweight title, and British E ...

at the Royal Albert Hall in a title eliminator for the British featherweight title. Phillips, who would the next year become the European champion, knocked Curvis out in the second round. Curvis had been finding it difficult to making the weight at featherweight, and after losing to Phillips he moved up to lightweight.Stead (2008) p.187 The next year he faced fellow Swansea-based fighter,

Ronnie James Ronnie James (8 October 1917 – 12 June 1977) was a British Lightweight boxing champion. Born in Swansea, Wales, James had over 130 professional bouts winning 114 of them, 61 through knockout. In 1946 he challenged Ike Williams at Cardiff fo ...

. James had been unwell in the week before the fight but still met Curvis at the

Vetch Field The Vetch Field was a football stadium in Swansea, Wales. It was used for football matches and was the home ground of Swansea City until the club moved to the newly built Liberty Stadium in 2005. Opened in 1912, the ground held around 12,000 ...

in Swansea on 2 June. Curvis was reported as being 'faster throughout' and came close to knocking his opponent out before James' team threw in the towel in the seventh. By 1949 Curvis was making headway as a lightweight and on 31 January he was awarded an eliminator bout for the British lightweight title. His opponent was Scottish boxer Harry Hughes and the two faced each other at the Drill Hall in Abergavenny. Curvis lost the match on points. Again Curvis reacted to an eliminator loss by moving up the weight scale to welterweight. Curvis continued his progression and in the summer of 1950 he won his first title eliminator, beating Gwn Williams to set up a shot at the British belt. Before the title challenge he beat ex-Dutch welterweight champion Giel de Roode, followed by a loss to

Charles Humez Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "f ...

, the recently deposed French welterweight champion. On 13 September 1950 Curvis faced Eddie Thomas for the British welterweight title. Held at St Helen's in Swansea, the fifteen round fight went the distance, Thomas winning by points decision. In April 1951, Curvis travelled to Ayr in Scotland to challenge Billy Rattray in an eliminator challenge for a British welterweight challenge. Rattray lasted only until the second when Curvis won by knockout. He followed this up with a fight against Wally Thom in July 1952, the final eliminator for the British welterweight belt. The fight was halted in the ninth, when Curvis was eliminated for hitting Thom after a break but before the referee had ordered 'box on'.Stead (2008) p.188 Thom went on to beat Eddie Thomas, capturing both the British and Commonwealth welterweight titles, and on 24 July 1952 Curvis was given his first shot at a British belt when he was lined up to challenge Thom. Curvis stopped Thom in the ninth via knockout, becoming British and European welterweight champion. Curvis lost the European belt to South African Gerald Dreyer on 8 December 1952. The match, held in the newly built Rand Stadium in Johannesburg, resulted in Curvis losing his Commonwealth belt. He had Dreyer down in the sixth, but he survived a 'long count' which lasted as long as sixteen seconds; this was followed by Curvis breaking his left hand and without his main attack he was forced to box defensively for the rest of the fight. Curvis lost the bout on points. His final fight was against Frenchman Gilbert Lavoine for the vacant EBU European title. Curvis was disqualified in the tenth and never fought professionally again.

Career

References

Bibliography

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See also