Laurie Case

A railwayman from Darlington, Laurie Case worked for the London North Eastern Railway company. He started boxing as a flyweight and was the 1932 Northern Counties champion. He switched to bantamweight, and two years later reached the quarter-final of the European Championships in Budapest, where he lost to Hungary’s reigning Olympic gold medallist, Istvan Enekes. Case was also runner-up to Alf Barnes in the 1934 ABA Championship.

Case became the ABA bantamweight champion after beating Fred Ryan in the 1935 final. Ryan’s brother “Tiny” won the featherweight title that year. Also in 1935 Case went to America to fight in a Golden Gloves contest against a team of American boxers in front of 48,000 fans at New York’s Yankee Stadium. Case was one of eight Britons to win when he beat the American-Italian Charley Villereal. Trying to defend his ABA title in 1936, Case reached the final but an injured shoulder forced him to pull out of the final against Alf Barnes. Nevertheless, Case still got a call up for the Olympic but did not start. In between the 1936 ABA Championships and the Olympics, however, Case enjoyed a win over the 1935 New York and International Golden Gloves flyweight champion, Scottish-born New Yorker George Coyle in a contest between the Britain and the USA at Wembley.