Young McCormack

John “Young McCormack”, an Irish light heavyweight known early on as “Young Spike”, was born in Dublin on 11 December 1944 and boxed orthodox. He fought professionally from September 1963 to April 1970, compiling a record of 33 wins, 8 losses, and 1 draw from 42 bouts, with 27 knockouts. His last contest came on 6 April 1970, and he then left the professional ring behind.

McCormack was raised in Dublin’s inner city, the son of the boxer Spike McCormack, and he grew up on Sean McDermott Street in a large family. The nickname “Young Spike” fit the times and the trade, but he became better known simply as Young McCormack once he began to make his own way. His professional career started in September 1963, and the early run was busy, sometimes rough, and full of learning fights, 19 wins from his first 23 with a draw and three defeats, one of them to Belgian heavyweight champion Lion Ven, a reminder that Irish ambition often came with hard matchmaking.

By 1966, he was on the British title trail, and the key night came in June at the Royal Albert Hall, where he met his namesake John McCormack in an eliminator and won on points. Another eliminator win over Derek Richards followed four months later, and he kept the momentum with wins over Victor Chapelle, Ven again, and Valere Mahau, the kind of sequence that tells you a man is being marched to a vacant belt rather than talked into one. In June 1967, at the National Sporting Club, he stopped Eddie Avoth in the seventh round to win the British light heavyweight title, a decisive finish in a fight that mattered.

McCormack defended the British title against Richards in November 1967, then went to Sydney in February 1968 for the vacant Commonwealth championship at Sydney Stadium. It did not go his way, Bob Dunlop stopped him in the seventh, and it was the sort of trip that could cost a champion more than it paid. Back home, he made another defence of the British title against Avoth in January 1969, but lost it when a cut to his left eyelid forced his retirement in the eleventh round. He fought five more times that year, winning three, but losing to Guinea Roger and Tom Bogs as the form began to wobble.

The end came the way boxing ends for many, with one more tilt at the old ground. In April 1970, he met Avoth again in another attempt for the British title and was disqualified in the eighth round, ending his professional career. In later years, he worked with his younger brother Pat, himself a British champion, helping young boxers at St. Saviours Olympic Boxing Academy on Dorset Street in Dublin, a practical afterword from a man whose best work had been done the hard way, under bright lights.