Benny Lynch

Benny Lynch (2 April 1913 – 6 August 1946 in Gorbals, Glasgow, Scotland) was a Scottish professional boxer who fought in the flyweight division. He is considered by some to be one of the finest boxers below the lightweight division in his era and has been described as the greatest fighter Scotland ever produced. The Ring Magazine founder Nat Fleischer rated Lynch as the No. 5 flyweight of all-time while his publication placed him 63rd in its 2002 list of the "Best Fighters of the Last 80 Years". Like Fleischer, both Statistical boxing website BoxRec and the International Boxing Research Organization also rank Lynch as the 5th greatest flyweight ever. He was elected to the Ring Magazine hall of fame in 1986 and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1998.

He was born in a tenement flat at 17 Florence Street in the Gorbals area of Glasgow and learned his fighting skills in the carnival booths that were popular in the West of Scotland during the Great Depression.

European flyweight champion

Lynch won the Scottish flyweight boxing title on 16 May 1934 with a 15-round decision over Jim Campbell in Glasgow. He then went on to win the British, European and world flyweight titles from Jackie Brown in an historic bout held in Manchester on 9 September 1935. The fight attracted enormous support from Glaswegians who travelled en masse to watch Lynch floor his opponent eight times before the bout was stopped in the second round.

World flyweight champion

There was dispute, on at least on one side of the Atlantic, as to who was the best flyweight boxer in the world. Lynch settled the matter when he out-pointed Filipino Small Montana in London in 1936 to established himself as the undisputed world flyweight boxing champion. From 1932–36, he lost just five fights; two of them were points losses to Jimmy Warnock a 'southpaw' from Northern Ireland, on 2 March 1936 in Belfast and again on 2 June 1937 in front of a home crowd in Glasgow. In 1937 he handed legendary English puncher Peter Kane his first loss by devastating knockout.

Later career

By 1938, Lynch's drinking lifestyle meant that he could no longer make the weight for the flyweight division. He forfeited his world flyweight title against American Jackie Jurich, when he weighed in at 118.5 lb (53.8 kg), half a pound over the bantamweight limit. Despite his weight problems, Lynch stopped Jurich in the 12th round.

Death and legacy

On 26 August 1939 his boxing license was officially withheld due to an inability to meet the standards of the Boxing Board's fitness test. He would continue to battle with alcoholism for the rest of his life despite several attempts to treat the disease. Lynch died in 1946 of malnutrition induced respiratory failure, aged 33. He was buried at St. Kentigern's Cemetery, Glasgow, with some 2000 people attending the funeral.

He was featured on the cover of Scottish rock band Gun's second album, Gallus, in 1992. A documentary about the life of Benny Lynch, directed by John Mackenzie and narrated by Robert Carlyle, was made in 2003. The second track on the Scottish folk musician Norrie MacIver's début solo album is a biographical song about Lynch.