Early Life and Career
Johnny Owen was born John Richard Owens, the fourth of a family of eight children to working class parents Dick and Edith Owens in Merthyr Tydfil on 7 January 1956. He began to box at the age of eight and enjoyed a lengthy amateur boxing career taking in some one hundred and twenty six fights. Highlights of his amateur exploits were the winning of several Welsh titles.
Owen was a quiet, reserved, friendly character outside the ring. Inside the ring Owen was a formidable opponent with determination and strength in contrast to his frail looking body and possessed an impressive stamina built by long hours running up the steep hills of the South Wales Valleys.
He finally turned professional in 1976, winning his debut match with a points victory over fellow Welshman George Sutton, in Pontypool, on 30 September; at the time, Sutton was ranked number three contender for the British title. In 1978 Johnny Owen was defeated by welshman Adam Jenkins, He never regained the Welsh Title.
Read more about this topic: Johnny Owen
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“For with this desire of physical beauty mingled itself early the fear of death—the fear of death intensified by the desire of beauty.”
—Walter Pater 1839–1894, British writer, educator. originally published in Macmillan’s Magazine (Aug. 1878)
“The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all.... I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)