Former champion Brian Curvis dies

Brian Curvis fought for a WBA and WBC titles in 1964

Former British and Commonwealth welterweight champion Brian Curvis has died, aged 74.

Curvis, from Swansea, fought for a WBC and WBA titles in 1964, though mislaid a unanimous points preference to champion Emile Griffith during London’s Empire Pool.

That better was one of usually 4 suffered by Curvis in 41 contests between 1959 and 1966.

Described as an intelligent southpaw, he was awarded a BBC Wales Sports Personality of a Year endowment in 1960.

Curvis was knocked down in a sixth, 10th and 13th turn opposite eminent champion Griffith, though vocalization to BBC Wales in 1989 he said: “I don’t see a Griffith quarrel as a failure. To me it was a triumph.

“There was a biggest pound-for-pound welterweight champion given a mythological Sugar Ray Robinson, and there was we – not during my really best – nonetheless he couldn’t hit me out, he couldn’t stop me inside a distance. And there were a lot of thing he couldn’t do that night.

“What he did, of course, was get a preference and it happens that we mislaid that night.”

After winning his initial 13 fights as a professional, Curvis won a Commonwealth pretension opposite Australian George Barnes during a Vetch Field, Swansea in May 1960.

Six months later, he combined a British pretension by violence Wally Swift in Nottingham and finished his career but ever losing to a British fighter.

Curvis’s elder brother, Cliff, who died in 2009, was also a British and Commonwealth welterweight champion.

In a statement, a British Boxing Board of Control said: “The British Boxing Board of Control send their condolences to his family and friends.”