Percy Holtby

Holtby measured training distances with a joiner’s rule. He marked a fighting square on the workshop floor and left it there after retirement. Visitors sometimes mistook the faded lines for the outline of an unfinished cabinet. His boxing was similarly concerned with usable distances. He advanced behind a compact guard and preferred to complete an exchange before beginning another. The carpenter’s habit of checking an edge appears in the sporting accounts as a concern with position: where his feet had finished mattered as much as the blow he had attempted.

Recorded style: Pressure fighter.