Jimmy McLarnin

James Archibald "Jimmy" McLarnin (19 December 1907 – 28 October 2004) was an Irish-Canadian professional boxer who became a two-time welterweight world champion and an International Boxing Hall of Fame inductee. McLarnin has been referred to as the greatest Irish boxer of all time. BoxRec ranks McLarnin as the 11th best pound-for-pound fighter of all-time, the second best Canadian boxer of all time after Sam Langford, and the third greatest welterweight of all time.

Background

There was often confusion over McLarnin's exact place of birth and his date of birth. McLarnin himself was unsure as to the exact location and at various times claimed to be born in Inchicore, Dublin or the Lisburn Road in Belfast. Adding to the confusion he went by nicknames the Dublin Destroyer and Belfast Spider. It was Irish boxing historian Patrick Myler who later unearthed McLarnin's birth certificate which showed that McLarnin was born in Hillsborough, County Down, Ireland in 1907.

McLarnin's father, Sam McLarnin, a Methodist from Dublin, was described as 'a typical Dublin Irishman' and travelled throughout Britain and Ireland for work. He later married Mary Ferris from Belfast and they settled in County Down before being drawn into Belfast. When McLarnin was three years of age the whole family emigrated to Saskatchewan, Canada via Liverpool. The McLarnin’s started out as a wheat farmers but years later following a particularly harsh winter the family later moved to Vancouver where they opened a second-hand clothes store in Vancouver's east end.