Sammy Lee won gold for Wales at the Commonwealth Games, reviving memories of another teenage talent, Colin Jones, who boxed for Britain as a 17-year-old at the 1976 Olympics. Eagled-eyed Owen Morgan spotted Jones in the Wales corner on the Gold Coast and recalls the impact of one of his schoolboy heroes.
The distinctive features of the man shouting advice from the corner of the boxing ring were unmistakably familiar, despite the passing of 35 years.
The closely-cropped hair was now a steely grey rather than the distinctive ginger it had once been, while there were a few more lines around the eyes and a couple more inches around the waist.
But as soon as I saw Colin Jones in the Welsh corner of that Gold Coast Commonwealth Games boxing ring, I recognised him instantly and I was transported back to 1983.
It was the year Margaret Thatcher won a second General Election with a landslide victory and appointed Ian McGregor as head of the National Coal Board – a move which would lead to the crippling miners’ strike starting the following year.
Britain was also facing record unemployment figures of over 3.2 million people, but Jones – the “Gorseinon Gravedigger”- was at the height of his destructive powers and lifting the spirits of a nation.
The big-hitting welterweight was about to engage in two of the most famous and brutally demanding fights in the history of Welsh boxing.
After twice stopping the much lauded British Champion Kirkland Laing, winning the Commonwealth title and then landing the European crown by knocking out Denmark’s Hans-Henrik Palm, Jones was lined up for a shot at the vacant WBC title against unbeaten American Milton McCrory.
The former mineworker and gravedigger was offered the chance of fighting for the world crown on British soil at Wembley, but for a much less lucrative purse than was on offer if he travelled to the States to fight.
For someone who just a couple of years earlier was earning £48 a week at Brynlliw Colliery, the money being offered to cross the Atlantic was life-changing.
Underdog Jones opted to take on the American in his own back yard, always a notoriously daunting task for visiting boxers.
The fight, to fill the crown vacated by the great Sugar Ray Leonard on his retirement due to a detached retina, was set in the altitude of Reno, Nevada, on March 19, 1983.
Jones set up camp high in the mountains at Lake Tahoe to prepare for the contest against the tall American, fighting out of the legendary Kronk Gym in Detroit.
The contest was one of the first 12 round world title fights, the WBC having reduced the maximum from 15, which was Jones’ preferred distance.
I remember settling down in Cwmgors Workingmen’s Club in the Amman Valley to watch the fight on television, probably with curtains firmly closed, due to the late hour and stricter licensing laws back in the early Eighties.
I had been brought up on stories of the great Welsh fighters crossing the Atlantic to take on the Americans in epic bouts.
Men like Peerless Jim Driscoll; Tommy Farr, who came within a hair’s breadth of beating the great Joe Louis and more recently the tragic Johnny Owen, who paid the ultimate price in pursuit of his world title.
I had watched flickering satellite television pictures accompanied by tinny commentaries from Harry Carpenter and Reg Guttridge describing the great ones such as Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran winning title fights in famous American boxing venues like, Reno, Las Vegas and New York’s legendary Madison Square Gardens.
Now, an ex- collier from 15 miles up the road in another mining community was bidding to put his name alongside those all-time greats. A small army of fans, many of them miners, had made the trip across the Atlantic to support their man.
It was an epic contest, mercifully fought in an air-conditioned venue, protecting the fighters – particularly the ginger-haired, fair-skinned Jones – from the fierce desert heat outside.
After a characteristically slow start, Jones came into his own by the fourth round and by the ninth commentator Harry Carpenter said the Welshman had McCrory “running for life”.
As the American tried to stay out of trouble from Jones’ relentless pursuit, boos started ringing out around the Reno Convention Center.
However, McCrory somehow managed to survive the onslaught when victory appeared to be within Jones’ grasp and even marginally had the better of the final round.
When the final bell rang, Carpenter who had covered countless fights declared: “What a fight that was. They have never seen a fight like that in Reno.”
After what seemed like an age waiting for the result, the announcer declared the bout a draw and the two men would have to go to war again.
To this day, I am convinced that Jones did enough to win the fight. But that may just be the ill-educated, patriotically biased view of someone who was a teenager at the time.
But many experts agreed Jones deserved to edge the decision and he surely would have done on home soil.
However, most of Jones’ supporters – and the man himself – considered a draw on American soil against an American boxer to have been a moral victory.
But there was still the opportunity to make it the kind of victory which would go down in the record books.
The much anticipated rematch was agreed for August 1983. Once more Jones had the chance to fight in London, but opted to travel to America.
However, this time there would be more barriers put in his way, rather than just surrendering home advantage.
The venue for the second fight was Las Vegas, where the fight would take place in the car park of the Dunes Hotel . The fight-time temperatures would touch a blistering 106 degrees in the baking mid-afternoon sun – conditions better suited to the appropriately nicknamed “Ice-Man” McCrory.
There were also some shenanigans in the lead up to the fight which was being staged by the infamous, shock-haired American promoter Don King.
Days before the fight, one of King’s right hand men told Jones’ camp that the Welshman would have to take a $100,000 reduction in his purse, due to the withdrawal of a sponsor, or the fight was off.
The Welshman’s equally savvy manager Eddie Thomas flew in a top US boxing lawyer 48-hours before the fight to dispute the reduction and the threat was promptly withdrawn.
McCrory’s camp also unsuccessfully tried to switch the day of the weigh-in to favour their man, who was struggling to make the weight.
The second fight started badly for Jones as McCrory dumped him on the canvas at the end of the first round, the first time he had hit the deck in his professional career.
Jones managed to beat the count and clear his head enough to see out the round. But when he got back to his corner, the fighter was having problems with his vision.
He recalled after the fight: “I said to Eddie ‘I’m blind’ and he replied ‘Can’t see, can you?’” said Jones. “I said ‘no’ and Eddie replied ‘Well how did you find your way back to the corner, then?’.
“That broke the ice for me. I thought that if he could be as calm as that, I’d better get out there and give it another bash.”
And give it a bash he did. The ex-collier showed characteristic grit to claw his way back into the fight, despite the searing temperatures which were so high Jones’ father badly burnt his mouth on the lip microphone he was using to comment on the fight for Radio Wales.
Just like the first fight, it took Jones three or four rounds to get started, but in the fifth he once again had McCrory in trouble.
The Gorseinon man continued to rally over the next few rounds. Then came the ninth – Jones’ favourite round, the one in which he had twice stopped Laing and the round where he almost stopped McCrory in the first fight.
Recalling the ninth, Jones said “I hit him from corner to corner”, culminating in a shuddering left hook which shook the American all the way down to his toes.
But again McCrory showed remarkable powers of recovery and for a second time they went the distance despite the almost unbearable heat.
During the final round, Carpenter commented: “Twenty-four rounds these men have gone and still it’s in the balance. And the tireder man of the two without question is Milton McCrory.”
The more tired he may have been, but when the judges scores were announced McCrory had finally won the title on a split decision.
Jones’ manager Eddie Thomas looked mystified at the end, convinced his man had won or at least should have been given another draw. The Merthyr man described the decision as a “disgrace”.
Jones himself was more magnanimous: “I thought the first one I could have edged, I think if they had given a draw in the second one, that would have been fair, but Eddie didn’t see it that way, Eddie thought I did better the second time and he thought there was a little bit of injustice there.”
There was some reward for the Gorseinon man later in the year when he was crowned Welsh Sports Personality of the Year, joining a long list of boxers to have won the title.
Jones would have another shot at the world title two years later when he took on Don “Cobra” Curry in Birmingham.
But the epic contests against McCrory had taken their toll and Jones wasn’t at the level he once was.
If the McCrory fights had been agonisingly close then this one was painfully one-sided in favour of the devastatingly dangerous Curry.
The American won in four rounds, the fight being stopped when Jones suffered a cut so deep on the bridge of his nose it looked in danger of being split in two.
At the age of 25, having been involved in boxing since he joined the local Penyrheol Amateur Boxing Club when he was just nine-years-old, Jones decided to call it a day.
Typically modest in his summation of his career, Jones has said since: “It’s such a big letdown in your life when you’ve had a draw and you know in your mind you can beat the fella and, at the end of the day, you haven’t done it. All these things add up. Unfortunately time and luck ran out in the end.
“Possibly I just didn’t quite have it right at the top.”
But for those of us who can remember those epic bouts in America, where he came so close to winning the ultimate boxing crown, Jones certainly had it.
The “Gorseinon Gravedigger” will always be a hero of Welsh sport who earned his place in its folklore the hard way.
He may not have returned from America with a World Championship belt, but he certainly made a nation immensely proud when it was going through one of its most difficult periods in recent history.
With such a sporting legend literally in the their corner as national coach, the future of Wales’ young boxers couldn’t be in better, or more experienced hands.
An Olympian in Montreal back in 1976 at the age of 17, a British Champion at 21, Commonwealth Champion at 22, European Champion at 23 and three-time world title contender, Jones is just the man to guide young boxers through their fledgling careers.
This month’s Commonwealth gold medals for Sammy Lee and Lauren Price, a silver for Rosie Eccles and a bronze for Mickey McDonagh, would suggest Jones’ legacy to Welsh boxing will extend far beyond those unforgettable fights in America back in 1983