Mark Kaylor, the former British and Commonwealth middleweight champion, has died at the age of 64.
Kaylor, one of Britain’s finest middleweights in an era that included Herol Graham and Tony Sibson, started out as an excellent amateur who would represent his country at the 1980 Olympics, leading many to tip him for the very top. He nearly got there, too.
Born in Canning Town in London, Kaylor was then brought up in Stanford-le-Hope in Essex where he would learn to box at the Shell Club after being bullied at school. He won numerous schoolboy championships and at the age of 16 opted to move back to Canning Town, where he would live with his grandmother, because he wanted to box for a bigger club. There he joined West Ham and, while still a teenager in 1980, claimed the revered ABA trophy before reaching the last eight in Montreal. The following year he won gold at the European Championships in Italy.
His success in the vest saw him join the famous Terry Lawless stable upon turning professional where he would train above the Royal Oak pub with the likes of Frank Bruno, Kirkland Laing, Maurice Hope and Lloyd Honeyghan.
Kaylor – who had fast hands and oozed quality when in the mood – is likely best known for his feisty rivalry with Errol Christie in 1985 which was a feud that would make the recent skirmishes between Chris Eubank Jnr and Conor Benn look like playground spats.
By then Kaylor had won the British and Commonwealth titles, beating Roy Gumbs in five rounds, and lost them, on points over 12 to Sibson, before being matched with Christie in an eliminator for the Lonsdale Belt. The pair exchanged punches on the street after being asked to pose for photographs following a press conference at a London casino.
“Back then I had a quick temper that I’d rather not have had,” Kaylor said in 2012. “There was always this spark in my head. Today, I’m embarrassed by it. Errol was a nice guy. There is no way I could behave like that now.”
Kaylor went on to win the fight in eight rounds but, by then, he had a reputation for struggling to keep his temper in check. Two years before he was thrown out of a bout against Tony Cerda for hitting multiple times after the bell had sounded to end round nine. “I just couldn’t help it. It was me I was mad at for fighting badly and I couldn’t stop myself,” he later reflected.
There were occasions when Kaylor looked, and felt, like a world-beater. He would name his win over Bobby Watts, who he stopped in four rounds in 1983, as his finest performance: “That was the night when I could pretend to be a world class fighter.”
Kaylor struggled to make the middleweight limit and was visibly drained while being picked apart by “Bomber” Graham in 1986. An expedition to light heavyweight resulted in him getting knocked out by Tom Collins in a bid for the European crown. “Tom really hurt me,” Kaylor reflected. “It was like getting a lump of two-by-four across your head… I was only 27 but I felt 100.”
By the time he settled at super middleweight, his peak had gone. He retired in 1991 with a record of 40-7-1 (34 KOs) after a punishing loss to James Cook.
Kaylor would move to America in retirement and worked as an aerobics instructor at a gym in Chino Hills, California.
“Boxing was such a fantastic part of my life,” he told Boxing Monthly in his later years. “I met so many decent people. The good far outweighed the bad. I just feel so blessed to have done something I loved so much for such a large part of my life.”