James G. Clark (February 26, 1914 – September 12, 1994), also known as Jimmy Atkinson, was an American
boxer Boxer most commonly refers to:
* Boxer (boxing), a competitor in the sport of boxing
*Boxer (dog), a breed of dog
Boxer or boxers may also refer to:
Animal kingdom
* Boxer crab
* Boxer shrimp, a small group of decapod crustaceans
* Boxer snipe ee ...
who competed in the
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: ''Olympische Sommerspiele 1936''), officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad (German: ''Spiele der XI. Olympiade'') and commonly known as Berlin 1936 or the Nazi Olympics, were an international multi-sp ...
.
He was born James Clark Atkinson in
Norfolk, Virginia
Norfolk ( ) is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Incorporated in 1705, it had a population of 238,005 at the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in Virginia after neighboring Virginia Be ...
, to parents Ernest Atkinson and Beatrice Davis.
At the 1936 Summer Olympics he was eliminated in the quarter-finals of the
middleweight class after losing his fight to
Henryk Chmielewski. After the Olympics, he turned professional with a career record of 19 wins and 20 losses.
His biggest professional win was a first-round knockout of
Tony Zale
Anthony Florian Zaleski (May 29, 1913 – March 20, 1997), known professionally as Tony Zale, was an American boxer. Zale was born and raised in Gary, Indiana, a steel town, which gave him his nickname, "Man of Steel", reinforced by his reputat ...
on February 21, 1938 in Chicago.
Clark was inducted into the Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Buffalo Boxing Hall of Fame in 1998.
An Army veteran of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, he died at the age of 80 in
Jamestown, New York
Jamestown is a city in southern Chautauqua County, in the U.S. state of New York. The population was 28,712 at the 2020 census. Situated between Lake Erie to the north and the Allegheny National Forest to the south, Jamestown is the largest pop ...
.
References
External links
*
Biography for Jimmy Clarkfrom
BoxRec
BoxRec or boxrec.com is a website dedicated to holding updated records of professional and amateur boxers, both male and female. It also maintains a MediaWiki-based encyclopaedia of boxing.
The objective of the site is to document every profess ...
1914 births
1994 deaths
Sportspeople from Norfolk, Virginia
Boxers from Virginia
Middleweight boxers
Olympic boxers for the United States
Boxers at the 1936 Summer Olympics
American male boxers
United States Army personnel of World War II
{{US-boxing-bio-stub