James Cook MBE has died at the age of 66.

He was diagnosed with bladder cancer earlier in 2025, soon after which he started treatment, but his condition worsened and he passed in a hospital in London.

During a fine career Cook – born in 1959 in Runaway Bay, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica – won the British and European super-middleweight titles.

While growing up in Jamaica, however – he was being raised by his grandparents – it was cricket, and not boxing, that was his passion. He moved to London at the age of nine when his mother arrived from the English capital to collect him, and he was then raised on a difficult housing estate in Peckham, south London.

Cook had hoped to be a runner, but his growing interest in boxing took him to the Lynn AC Boxing Club and then on to East Lane ABC. His heavy hands contributed to him recording 20 victories in 26 fights as an amateur; he also twice reached the final of London ABAs, where he lost, via disputed decisions, to one Johnny Graham.

It was in 1982 when Cook made his professional debut, when over six rounds he outpointed Mick Courtney at London’s Lyceum Ballroom. His trainer was Brian Lawrence, to whom he always remained close.

In 1984 he earned his first professional title, when he stopped Tony Jenkins to win the vacant southern Area middleweight title. Perhaps his finest victory followed two years later, when he outpointed the celebrated Michael Watson, who in retirement remained a friend and visited Cook in hospital when he became unwell.

The British 160lbs title eluded him two years later when he fought Herol Graham – widely considered Britain’s finest never to win a world title – when they contested the Lonsdale belt that had been vacated by Tony Sibson.

Victory over Errol Christie followed in Cook’s next fight, and in 1990 so did the British super-middleweight title, when he stopped Sam Storey in 10 rounds. 

Cook, in turn, defeated France’s Pierre Frank Winterstein to win the vacant European title in his following fight in 1991, and he twice defended it, before losing to the Frenchman Frank Nicotra in Vitrolles, France in 1992.

After four successive victories back in the UK, Cook reclaimed the vacant British title by outpointing over 12 rounds Fidel Castro Smith. He fought thrice more, winning twice and then losing, on points at the conclusion of 12 competitive rounds, to Cornelius Carr in his final fight in March 1994. He retired with a record of 25-10 (14KOs). 

Cook thereafter became a successful trainer, and – largely on account of his commitment to the Pedro Youth Club in London, where he established a successful amateur club and an annual open-air tournament – in 2007 he was awarded an MBE in the Birthday Honours list for services to youth justice in Hackney, London. At Buckingham Palace he received his award directly from the Queen.

The brief on his MBE referenced his work on “Hackney’s notorious Murder Mile”. It came after he had also succeeded in boxing regardless of the prejudice that existed as a consequence of his being a black fighter during the 1980s and early 1990s. “What can I say?” he said in 2019. “My face never fit.” 

In the modern era he continued to work with the British light heavyweight Anthony Yarde.