Horace Notice

Horace G. Notice was a British heavyweight who packed an entire championship story into a remarkably compact professional run, then disappeared from the rankings just as the wider boxing public was beginning to become aware of his talent. Born on 7 August 1957 in West Bromwich and long associated with Birmingham, he emerged from the Nechells Green ABC and proved his quality in the amateur code by winning the ABA heavyweight title in 1983. That credential matters because it situates him in a proper competitive structure rather than in the looser, opportunistic route some heavyweights take: the ABAs were a proving ground that rewarded ring craft, composure, and repeatable performance across a tournament, not just physical size. Notice carried those amateur fundamentals into the paid ranks later than many prospects, turning professional in his mid-twenties without fuss or gimmick. He was listed at just over 6ft 1in, orthodox, and—by the standards of the 1980s heavyweight scene—often a relatively “light” heavyweight, coming in around the 200lb mark rather than the super-sized figures who were starting to reshape the division. What he lacked in sheer bulk, he compensated for with tidy mechanics and a knack for doing his best work when the stakes rose. His career ended with 16 wins from 16 fights, 12 by stoppage, and he left the sport holding both the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles. The brevity of that ledger can make him look like a footnote beside more heavily documented contemporaries, but the quality of the names and the venues on his record—Grosvenor House, the National Sporting Club, Wembley Arena, the Royal Albert Hall, Liverpool’s Stadium, Dudley Civic Hall, Sunderland’s Crowtree, York Hall—marks him out as a champion who moved through the domestic system at speed and did the serious work in the traditional places.

Notice’s professional debut came on 24 October 1983 at Grosvenor House in London, where he boxed Andrew Gerrard over six rounds and won on points. It was a measured start: a debut built around getting rounds, learning the rhythm of professional pacing, and showing he could control a fight without needing a crisis to spark him into action. Within weeks, he was back in the same circuit, and on 30 November 1983, he stopped Theo Josephs in the first round at the National Sporting Club in London, a sharp contrast that hinted at the two strands that would keep appearing in his career—competence over distance when required, and an ability to end matters abruptly when openings presented themselves. In 1984, he doubled back to face Gerrard again, this time stopping him in two rounds in Wolverhampton, and he added wins over Paddy Finn and Winston Allen, again mixing stoppages with points results. Those early years were typical of a British heavyweight being moved with care: a blend of return opponents, durable professionals, and short-notice workers who could provide rounds. Yet even during that apprenticeship period, the matchmaking was clearly aimed at something more than a steady living. By March 1985, he was boxing 12-round contests, and on 26 March 1985, he knocked out Noel Quarless in the seventh round at The Stadium in Liverpool, a result that signposted him as a legitimate title contender rather than simply a well-schooled novice. Later that year, on 16 October 1985, he shared the Royal Albert Hall bill with a man who would go on to become a world cruiserweight champion, Anaclet Wamba, and Notice won an eight-round points decision. That win has aged well because it speaks to control rather than destruction: Wamba was not a soft touch, and the ability to negotiate eight rounds with a future world-level operator suggests Notice could box to instructions and bank rounds as well as punch. It also underlines the setting in which Notice was being developed—high-profile London stages rather than obscure away trips—an indicator that the business around him saw title potential and were positioning him accordingly.

The spring of 1986 became the hinge on which his professional life turned. On 4 March 1986, he knocked out Curtis Jones in two rounds at Wembley Arena, an eight-round contest that served as a short, forceful reminder that his progress was not built purely on decisions. Then, on 12 April 1986, he travelled to the Palace Lido in Douglas, Isle of Man, to challenge Hughroy Currie and left with the British heavyweight championship and the vacant Commonwealth heavyweight title after stopping Currie in the sixth round. In domestic terms, that was the moment Notice stopped being a name on an undercard and became a man with a target on his back. Currie was a serious, established heavyweight of the period, and taking his title away from him gave Notice instant standing inside a crowded British scene that included other ambitions and other stories. The manner of the win mattered too: a stoppage in a scheduled 12-round title fight tends to be the sort of performance that changes how matchmakers and champions view a challenger. Within a month, he was back at the Royal Albert Hall, boxing Mike Jameson over ten rounds and winning unanimously, which is the kind of result champions often need if they want longevity—proof that they can deal with an opponent whose first priority is survival and disruption. From that point onward, Notice’s record has a clear pattern: fewer fights per year, but a higher concentration of title-level contests, and a steady movement between the traditional arenas of British boxing. It is a structure that suggests a team confident enough in his readiness to risk him in meaningful fights, while also mindful that heavyweight titleholders in Britain were expected to defend against credible challengers rather than simply headline safe nights for as long as possible.

Notice’s reign as a British and Commonwealth champion was built on that old, unforgiving calendar of defences, away fans, and regional challengers. On 4 March 1987, he defended his Commonwealth title against Proud Kilimanjaro at the Civic Hall in Dudley, stopping the Zimbabwean in the eighth round. Kilimanjaro was widely known as the “Man Mountain,” and while Notice was not the biggest heavyweight of his era, this was a night that emphasised his efficiency: he could deal with size, pressure, and awkwardness, and still impose a finish. Less than three months later, on 26 May 1987 at Wembley Arena, he faced Dave Garside with the British title on the line and stopped him in the fifth round of a scheduled 12-round bout. That win effectively defined his championship profile: Notice was a champion who defended by removing opponents rather than merely outpointing them, and he did it against men who had earned their places through the domestic ladder. On 3 November 1987, he travelled north to Sunderland and knocked out Paul Lister in the third round at the Crowtree Leisure Centre, another British and Commonwealth defence that added a useful detail to his record—he was not tied to one city or one promoter’s comfort zone. Then, on 2 December 1987, he returned to Wembley’s Grand Hall and stopped Dean Waters in four rounds in a Commonwealth title defence, a fight that reached a broader audience and reinforced the sense that Notice was becoming a reliable television-friendly champion: he could box, but he tended to end fights before the judges were invited to become part of the story. His final professional bout came on 9 March 1988 at York Hall in Bethnal Green, where he again met Hughroy Currie and stopped him in the tenth round while retaining both the British and Commonwealth titles. That ending—late stoppage in a hard, scheduled 12-round defence—shows something else about him beyond the clean arithmetic of 16-0: he could carry authority deep into a fight. If you strip the record down to its essentials, you see a champion who moved from six-round learning fights to 12-round championship nights, and whose opponents became steadily more relevant as the years passed: first local professionals, then national-level heavyweights, then a champion in Currie, then a set of ranked domestic challengers, and finally a rematch defence that closed the loop. His knockout ratio is striking, but the distribution of those stoppages—early and late, across six, eight, and 12-round settings—suggests a fighter whose power was not a single-shot trick but a practical weapon he could apply as a fight developed.

The reason the story ends there is not because he ran out of challengers, but because boxing can strip a champion of his title without asking his permission. After the Currie defence at York Hall, Notice’s career was halted by retinal damage, described as double detached retinas, and the injury forced him into retirement while he was still unbeaten and still in possession of the two belts that defined his place in British boxing. The hard part of that kind of ending is its clarity: there is no ambiguity about a title loss, no slow decline, no series of defeats that gently tells a fighter the time has passed. One medical problem makes the decision for you, and the sport moves on. Notice himself later spoke of regrets not tied to fantasy matchups, but to the tangible milestones he never reached: he did not box for the European title, and he expressed a wish to have faced David Pearce, a gifted British heavyweight of the same era whose own career was cut short by medical fate. In other words, Notice’s “unfinished business” was not the sort of vague talk fighters use to keep their names alive; it was a list of realistic, era-appropriate ambitions for a British and Commonwealth champion. Outside the ring, he settled in South East London and built a family life with actress Jacqui Gordon-Lawrence, including their daughters Naomi and Amelia. The legacy he leaves the boxing historian is unusually clean: a short professional window, a perfect record, and championship status earned against credible opposition in recognised British venues, capped by a forced retirement that preserved the statistics but denied him the natural next steps. In an era often remembered for its headline heavyweights, Notice stands as a reminder that the domestic scene also produced champions who did the work decisively, defended their titles in the old circuit, and then vanished not through lack of ability, but through the simple, brutal fact that eyes do not negotiate with ambition.