Randolph Turpin: The Leamington Licker Who Beat Sugar Ray Robinson and Held the World Title for 64 Days
Born into a fatherless boxing family in Leamington Spa, Randolph Turpin outpointed Sugar Ray Robinson in 1951 and lost the title back in New York 64 days later. Tax debts, bankruptcy and decline followed before his death in 1966.
For 64 days in 1951, a young man from Leamington Spa held the middleweight championship of the world after beating Sugar Ray Robinson over 15 rounds in London. Randolph Turpin's story runs from a fatherless childhood and a gym shared with his brothers to that summer night at Earls Court, and then through years of debt and decline that ended with his death in 1966, aged 37.
A Basement Flat in Leamington and a Father Lost to the War
Randolph Adolphus Turpin was born on 7 June 1928. Most accounts, including Wikipedia and the Leamington History Group, give his birthplace as Leamington Spa in Warwickshire; the local history group places it in a basement flat on Willes Road. The Leamington Observer, writing about the three Turpin brothers in 2022, says they were born in Warwick. The two towns sit side by side, and the family is tied to both.
His father, Lionel, came from British Guiana and served in the First World War. Wikipedia records that he fought on the Somme and was left with lung damage from a gas attack, and that he died within a year of Randolph's birth. England Boxing puts Randolph's age at the time of his father's death at three months. His mother, Beatrice, brought up five children, at first on a war pension. The Leamington History Group describes the Turpins as the town's first Black family and says they met real prejudice there.
The early years were hard on his health as well. England Boxing reports that he survived double pneumonia at three, and that a near-drowning left him partly deaf.
Dick, Jackie and Randolph: A Family Gym
Randolph was the youngest of three boxing brothers. The eldest, Lionel "Dick" Turpin, was born in 1920. British boxing had operated a colour bar since 1911, which kept fighters who were not white from contesting British titles. Once the British Boxing Board of Control dropped it in 1948, Dick fought Vince Hawkins for the British middleweight title at Villa Park in Birmingham that June and won. That made him the first Black boxer to hold a British professional title. According to Wikipedia, Dick later became his younger brother's trainer and went with him to New York in 1951.
Jackie Turpin, the middle brother, boxed as a featherweight. England Boxing says he turned professional in September 1946, the same month as Randolph. The Leamington Observer reports that he boxed professionally for ten years and later ran the Warwick Racing Club boxing gym, where he was still coaching at 80. The local history group says the three brothers trained together in a gym above the Nelson Club in Warwick. In 2022 the British Boxing Board of Control honoured all three at its annual awards.
An Amateur Prodigy
Randolph began boxing at the Leamington Boys' Club. England Boxing says he started at 12 and won 95 of 100 amateur bouts. Wikipedia records that in 1945 he won both the junior and the senior ABA championships at welterweight in the same season, and that he took the senior middleweight title in 1946. The sources disagree on one point here. England Boxing calls him the first Black boxer to win an ABA title. Wikipedia names him as the second, after Cuthbert Taylor in 1928. Like his brother Jackie, he served in the Royal Navy.
Climbing the Professional Ranks
His professional debut came on 17 September 1946, when he stopped Gordon Griffiths. Under manager George Middleton he won steadily. The local history group notes only one defeat in his first 43 professional fights. He won the British middleweight title and then the vacant European title, and by 1951 he had a strong claim to a shot at the world champion.
Earls Court, 10 July 1951
That champion was Sugar Ray Robinson. Wikipedia notes that Robinson had lost only once in 132 professional fights. Turpin prepared that summer at Gwrych Castle near Abergele in north Wales, where, the Abergele Post reports, the sessions drew hundreds of fans and tourists. The same paper says he met his second wife, Gwyneth, while training there.
Wikipedia gives the crowd at Earls Court as 18,000. Turpin went the full 15 rounds and was awarded the decision. The Leamington History Group's breakdown has him winning seven rounds, with three scored even. He was the first British fighter to hold the middleweight title since Bob Fitzsimmons in 1891. According to the local history group, close to 20,000 people turned out in Leamington to welcome him home.
The Polo Grounds Rematch
The return fight took place on 12 September 1951 at the Polo Grounds in New York, with Wikipedia recording a crowd of 61,370. Robinson stopped Turpin in the tenth round, so the championship stayed in Leamington for 64 days.
Light Heavyweight Titles and the Olson Defeat
Turpin went on to win more titles. In June 1952 he stopped Don Cockell in the eleventh round for the British and Commonwealth light heavyweight championships. In 1953 he won the European middleweight title for a second time. That year he also went to Madison Square Garden to fight Carl "Bobo" Olson. He was knocked down in the ninth and tenth rounds and lost on points over 15. Wikipedia reports that he suffered kidney damage from Olson's body punches and treats the fight as a turning point in his career.
The losses that followed were heavier. Tiberio Mitri stopped him in the first round in Rome in May 1954. Gordon Wallace put him down four times in October 1955. His last professional fight, on 9 September 1958, ended in a knockout defeat by Yolande Pompey. Wikipedia lists his final record as 66 wins (45 by knockout), 8 losses and 1 draw.
Money Gone, the Taxman and the Wrestling Ring
The sources differ on how much he earned. Wikipedia puts his career gross at about £150,000. The Leamington History Group says £300,000 was "frittered away". Wikipedia describes how an undeclared cash payment for the film rights to the Robinson rematch led to an Inland Revenue investigation. He was first assessed at about £100,000 in tax, penalties and interest, and the figure was later cut to £17,126 after an appeal by his accountant. He was declared bankrupt in 1962 and discharged in 1965.
Business ventures did not help. A hotel in Wales, which the local history group says he bought in 1952, was later sold at a loss. To earn a living he turned to professional wrestling. Wikipedia reports that the fees dropped from more than £100 for boxer-versus-wrestler matches to about £25 for ordinary bouts, and that he was injured more often wrestling than he had been boxing. In the end he ran a small transport café in Leamington, which the history group places on Russell Street.
May 1966
On 17 May 1966, Turpin was found dead in the flat above the café. He had gunshot wounds to the head and the chest. His 17-month-old daughter, Carmen, was in the room with him. She had been shot twice and went on to recover. Wikipedia notes that a final tax demand for £800 had reached him three days earlier. The inquest returned a verdict of suicide, and the local history group records that the weapon was a .22 revolver.
The verdict has been questioned. According to Wikipedia, family members pointed to a typed letter from 1964 in which Turpin wrote of threats over money he said he was owed. These doubts have never changed the official finding. Wikipedia also observes that he died less than a year after Freddie Mills, Britain's other world champion of the post-war years.
A Statue in the Market Square
Turpin was buried in Leamington Cemetery. In 2001 he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. On 10 July of that year, exactly fifty years after the Earls Court fight, a bronze statue by Carl Payne was unveiled in the Market Square in Warwick. A blue plaque now marks his birthplace in Leamington.
Sources
- Randolph Turpin, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
- Dick Turpin (boxer), Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
- Randolph Adolphus Turpin, the 'Leamington Licker', Leamington History Group, 5 December 2013 (updated 10 August 2026)
- Black History Month: Randolph 'Randy' Turpin – a true boxing pioneer, England Boxing, 19 October 2020
- National honour for 'colour bar' breaking boxing brothers, Leamington Observer, 9 March 2022
- Boxer Randolph Turpin at Gwrych Castle Abergele 1950s, Abergele Post, 25 September 2020
- Randolph Turpin statue, Warwick, The Sporting Statues Project, University of Sheffield
