Golden oldies of the ring

When they gathered at Emperors Palace on Saturday night, few of them were recognisable.

Everyone knew Brian Mitchell, of course, but others mistook Pierre Coetzer for Gerrie Coetzee. Most of them had to remind the fans who they were and who they beat - or lost to - during their heyday in the ring.

Jeff Ellis, boxing historian, publisher and former fighter, brought many golden oldies of the ring together to reminisce, watch some young guns throw leather and just enjoy themselves.

Among them were former household names like Jimmy Abbott, still a heavyweight in spite of having shed some of that massiveness, and Stanley Christodoulou, the referee who was inducted into boxing's Hall of Fame with Mitchell (they are the only South Africans there).

Everyone had a story from the glory days.

There was Ben "TNT" Lekalake who was meeting some old comrades and opponents for the first time in many years.

His pro career in the ring lasted from March 1973 to October 1976, when he fled the country to go into exile after the Soweto uprising. He did military training with MK in Tanzania, Angola, Zambia and Russia and was educated in the US.

For his short time in the ring, he had an impressive career as a lightweight: 15 wins out of 22, 11 of them by knockouts. He twice fought for the national super featherweight title, losing on both occasions in 1975 to Nkosana "Happy Boy" Mgxaji.

Lehlohonolo Nkatlo, now in his fifties, bumped into the man who stopped him from winning the vacant Transvaal featherweight title, Norman Bromfield. The two fought in November 1982, with Bromfield winning on a seventh-round TKO.

Nkatlo recalls that his best fight was a defeat against South African super-bantamweight champion Jerry Mbite in 1984. He lost on points, but "it was a hell of a fight and they gave it to him because he was the champion and I was not".

Bromfield remembers a good fight against Bashew Sibaca, in Cape Town, that he lost on points in 1984 but, two years later, he won the South African featherweight title, defending it twice before losing it to Gerald Isaacs in Eldorado Park in 1986, and then retiring.