Is CI's 'reigning champ' a 67-year-old pensioner?

Just who is heavyweight champion of the Channel Islands? Rob Batiste may have stumbled across the very man... MATT JENNINGS might well be the finest modern-day heavyweight boxer in the Channel Islands, but he may never get to don a CI belt.

That's for the simple reason that Channel Islands titles are no longer fought for. They haven't been contested for nearly half-a-century.

It just might well be that if Jennings was able to challenge for the CI crown he would have to lay down the challenge to a 67-year-old pensioner who is now living in Southampton.

Bob Le Gallez retired close on 50 years ago, he says, undefeated heavyweight champion of the Channel Islands.

'Nobody would fight me,' said the man who moved to the UK in 1974 and was prompted to call the Guernsey Press sports desk when a report suggested he had ducked out of a fight with the late, great Les Collins.

'I never backed out of any fight,' said the man who once went as far as the quarter-finals of the national ABAs.

The youngest of three brothers, Bob was trained at the St Andrew's Club by his father - Mornington John George Le Gallez.

Bob won many a junior championship and was a formidable opponent when he moved into the senior ranks where his brother Ralph, 10 years his senior, already shone.

But finding opponents for the big man increasingly became a problem.

One fighter brought from the UK to take him on was Dave Payne, the south-west area champion.

'We fought in the Ozanne Hall and I remember we broke the corner post and we had to have four people to hold it in position.'

He regards his victory over Tommy Gibson, another mainland fighter, as his best win.

'I beat him at St George's Hall and afterwards I was made an offer to turn pro. I turned it down though because my wife didn't like me boxing.'

A regular at Caesarean shows - 'Jersey kept phoning me to ask me to go over and top their bill' - Le Gallez fought against another fine local heavyweight at St George's the night Collins came out of retirement and KO'd the Dutchman, Jerry Pols.

Le Gallez lost on points and it still displeases him that the organisers moved the goalposts during the contest.

'When I fought Kenny Simon it was supposed to be an exhibition, but at the end of the second round they told it was for a decision, a real fight and we would have to go for it.

Le Gallez says at that point they winked at each other to confirm the agreement to share the spoils.

But a short while later it was Simon who had his arm raised in victory.

Le Gallez: 'I said to him afterwards we'd fight again in the championships. But it was the last fight he ever had.'

'I gave up when I was about 28 and since I gave up, nobody has taken the heavyweight title,' said the man who for years ran the Milton's Head Hotel in Nottingham, before moving to the south coast several years ago.

The suggestion that he was lined up to fight Collins before switching opponents and taking on Simon in 1960, irks him.

'I never had anything to do with Les Collins. I ran away from nobody - not even now.

'I used to train with Jonny Veron. Only me would train with him.'