Sylvester Mittee

Sylvester Mittee, known in boxing circles as “The Master Blaster”, was born in Saint Lucia in October 1956 and, after migrating to England, became a decorated amateur before turning professional, where he campaigned across lightweight, light-welterweight, welterweight, and light-middleweight. He boxed orthodox at 5 ft 7 in and finished with 33 fights, 28 wins and 5 losses, with 22 stoppage wins. He has a Wikipedia page.

Mittee was a serious amateur in London before he ever boxed for money. He won the 1973 ABA Junior Class-B title with Crown and Manor ABC in Hoxton, then took the 1976 ABA lightweight title boxing out of Repton in Bethnal Green. Later that year, he boxed for Great Britain at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, receiving a bye before being stopped in the third round by Romania’s Simion Cuţov, who went on to win silver. That background mattered. He fought like a man who had been appropriately drilled: straight punches, quick hands, and a willingness to step into range to make his work count.

He turned professional on 25 October 1977 and was quickly established as a finisher, piling up stoppages in the smaller halls and on the London circuit, often appearing on bills at the Royal Albert Hall and York Hall. The record shows him mixing levels and weights as opportunities came. Still, the pattern stayed the same: he pressed the action, he punched in combinations, and he looked to take a man’s resistance away rather than take his rounds.

The climb brought hard tests. He challenged Clinton McKenzie over fifteen rounds and lost on points, a reminder that the British title level has a way of exposing what works only when a fight is fought at your pace. Mittee rebuilt, kept moving, and by the early 1980s was beating good, seasoned names—Gary Pearce among them—while adding the sort of wins that keep a boxer in the domestic picture.

His peak arrived at welterweight in 1985. He beat Rocky Kelly over twelve, then, on 18 September 1985 at Alexandra Palace, he outpointed Kostas Petrou to win the British welterweight title and, with it, the Commonwealth championship. It was a proper title win, achieved on a big domestic stage against a man known for pressure and toughness, and it confirmed Mittee as something more than a puncher with a good amateur pedigree.

That reign was brief and unforgiving. On 27 November 1985, back at Alexandra Palace, he defended the British title against the unbeaten Lloyd Honeyghan, with the European title also at stake, and was stopped in the eighth. It was the kind of fight where a man’s ambition collides with another man’s momentum, and Honeyghan’s pace and relentlessness proved decisive.

Mittee boxed on into the late 1980s, still winning more often than not, but the title route grew steeper. In March 1987, he fought Kirkland Laing for the vacant British welterweight title and was stopped in the fifth. His final bout came on 18 May 1988 in Lewisham, a second-round stoppage win over Rob Thomas. The legacy is straightforward: an Olympian and elite British amateur champion who became British and Commonwealth welterweight champion, a fighter with real finishing intent—22 stoppages in 28 wins—and a reputation built on sharp, assertive work rather than safety-first boxing.