Tommy Nicholls

Having fought as a bantamweight at the 1952 Olympics, southpaw Tommy Nicholls was captain of the Great Britain boxing team at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. They had a squad of seven fighters and returned home with two gold, one silver and two bronze medals. Apart from the 1908 Games on home soil, it was, at the time, the biggest medal haul from a British team. Nicholls himself won the featherweight silver medal when he lost on a split decision to the Soviet Union’s Vladimir Safronov.

Nicholls was the son of a Yorkshire miner who moved to the Shropshire area as a youngster. Tommy started boxing at the Sankey Club in Wellington (now Telford) when he was around 15, and within eight years had won Midlands, RAF, Imperial Services, ABA, and European titles.

Nicholls won six Midlands ABA titles between 1950-56 and was the national ABA bantamweight champion in 1951 and 1952, and featherweight champion in 1955 and 1956. He won the first of many international honours for England against Scotland at Glasgow in 1951, and that same year lost to Ireland’s John Kelly in the European Championships at Milano. After completing two year’s National Service in the RAF, Nicholls returned civilian life in 1953 when he started boxing as a featherweight. He did not win his first ABA title at this new weight until 1955, when he also enjoyed his finest moment on the international stage in beating Aleksandr Zasukhin of the Soviet Union in West Berlin, to become the European champion. Nicholls was also voted the best boxer of the Championships. Another ABA title followed in 1956 as did that Olympic silver medal, before he eventually retired from the ring in 1957.

Despite all his honours and titles, Nicholls’ greatest claim to fame was on live television in 1955. The ABA – United States match was being broadcast live from Wembley. Nicholls had started his bout against Golden Gloves champion Harvard Lancour when the cameras started rolling and the first thing the viewers saw was Nicholls knocking out his American opponent with a left hook in the first round.

If that win over Lancour was sensational, Nicholls’ weigh-in before the 1951 International against Italy, also at Wembley, was bizarre. He was over the bantamweight limit when he first went to the scales for the weigh -in, and after some exercises, was still just over the limit. It was then suggested he stood on his head for a few minutes, and It worked. Nicholls made the weight, and went on to beat the European bantamweight champion Vincenzo Dall’Osso.