Peter Keenan - a true champion both in and out of the boxing ring

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jul 30, 2000 | by Brian Donald

Scotland mourns the death of a sporting legend who, says Brian Donald, will be sadly missed

GLASGOW ring legend Peter Keenan, who died last week aged 71 and who was the first and only Scot to win two Lonsdale belts outright, liked to be referred to as P-K. But to me, as his official biographer, his life can be summed up by the four "C's" - compassion, commerce, combat and charisma.

His compassion for the underdog was seen an October, 1980, meeting of Scottish Board of Boxing Control licensees. Offended at what he considered a needless fuss over payment of a ring whip's licence fee due by elderly ex-Scottish champion Jim Maharg, Keenan saved the old fighter's blushes by paying the money himself.

Similarly, when 1956 Olympic gold medal winner Dick McTaggart was reported to be working as a Glasgow rat catcher in 1965 Keenan's reaction was as instant as it was instinctive. P-K offered to put up #1000 if the SABA would match it to stage a show on former light- weight McTaggart's behalf.

Keenan's talent for commerce was honed from the age of 15 when he became a self-employed coal briquette street salesman.

Subsequently, with the big purses that flowed from winning the British and European bantamweight titles between May and September, 1951, fighting at Firhill for promoter Sam Docherty, he owned two mansions and some of Glasgow's most desirable building land.

For Keenan, boxing was a branch of his commercial activities and if that meant suffering, as he did, 20 stitches in eye injuries after his successful June, 1951, British title defence against Dundonian Bobby Boland, then so be it. All told, in 16 title fights P-K would have 60 stitches put in ring injuries - proof of his courage.

Yet the commercial talents which operated in tandem with his outstanding boxing ability led to Keenan displaying sometimes almost suicidal courage in defence of his friends. In February, 1962, he was pictured in the ring defending his boxer John "Cowboy" McCormack against an unruly mob throwing bottles and chairs during a riot in Copenhagen after the Scot's European middleweight title loss to Chris Christensen of Denmark.

Similarly, Keenan told me how he once slapped the face of Muhammad Ali in a Paisley dressing room after The Greatest refused to do more to publicise the exhibition bout Keenan had hired him to perform.

Yet, it was in boxing rings as far apart as Paisley, Sydney and Manila that Keenan showed both courage and charisma. Like the mythical Greek figure Anteus, who grew stronger by contact with the ground, P-K was never better than after having been put on the canvas.

In February, 1949, Gorbals great Vic Herman knocked Keenan out of the ring, but it was P-K who stormed back to win on points. Similarly, in September, 1951, Spanish champion Luis Romero decked him early on, but it was the Glaswegian who rose to take the European crown at Firhill.

Keenan was also a great defensive fighter, as he proved against the two men he beat to give him his record-breaking double Lonsdale belts.

In 1953 at Paisley, Birkenhead slugger Frankie Williams was baffled by Keenan's counter-punching skills. Similarly, Fauldhouse's John Smillie, who had won the 1954 Empire Games bantamweight gold was stopped him in six rounds in 1957, so sealing ownership of a second Lonsdale belt.

Finally, the greatest proof of the wee man from Partick's gigantic charisma comes from his own story of how he was carried St Christopher like across the wet turf of Celtic Park by Billy Fullarton.

The same Fullarton of Bridgeton, who had led an anti- Catholic gang in Glasgow in the 1930s called the Billy Boys. Yet, not only did Fullarton succumb to Keenan's great innate personal charms, but the erstwhile anti-Catholic Fullarton went on to work until his death as a ring whip for P-K.

Keenan's one fear was that he might end up like fellow Scot Jim Higgins who, despite winning a British bantamweight title in a record 11 months, died destitute in an alley, not far from where P-K himself used to spar at the Anderson club with his own idol, world flyweight champion Jackie Paterson.

However, the qualities of courage and charisma that Keenan displayed throughout his life and ring career ensure that unlike poor Higgins, he will be mourned by many when he is laid to rest on Wednesday in Clydebank, where he began his amateur career in his uncle's Corinthians club.