Yvon Durelle (October 14, 1929 – January 6, 2007), born in
Baie-Ste-AnneBaie-Sainte-Anne is a Canadian rural community in Northumberland County, New Brunswick.It is located on the southern shore of Miramichi Bay near its opening into the Gulf of St...
,
New BrunswickNew Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only constitutionally bilingual province in the confederation. The provincial capital is Fredericton...
, Canada, was a
British EmpireThe British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was...
champion
boxerBoxing is a combat sport where two participants, generally of similar weight, fight each other with their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee and is typically engaged in during a series of one to three-minute intervals called rounds. There are three ways to win...
.
From a family of fourteen children, Yvon Durelle grew up in a small
AcadianThe Acadians are the descendants of the seventeenth-century French colonists who settled in Acadia...
fishing village on the
AtlanticThe Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres , it covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface and about one-quarter of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek...
coast. Like many others of his generation, he left school at an early age to work on a fishing boat. In his spare time, Durelle liked to box and while still working in the fishery, he began prize fighting on weekends.
Yvon Durelle (October 14, 1929 – January 6, 2007), born in
Baie-Ste-AnneBaie-Sainte-Anne is a Canadian rural community in Northumberland County, New Brunswick.It is located on the southern shore of Miramichi Bay near its opening into the Gulf of St...
,
New BrunswickNew Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only constitutionally bilingual province in the confederation. The provincial capital is Fredericton...
, Canada, was a
British EmpireThe British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was...
champion
boxerBoxing is a combat sport where two participants, generally of similar weight, fight each other with their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee and is typically engaged in during a series of one to three-minute intervals called rounds. There are three ways to win...
.
Early life and career
From a family of fourteen children, Yvon Durelle grew up in a small
AcadianThe Acadians are the descendants of the seventeenth-century French colonists who settled in Acadia...
fishing village on the
AtlanticThe Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres , it covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface and about one-quarter of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek...
coast. Like many others of his generation, he left school at an early age to work on a fishing boat. In his spare time, Durelle liked to box and while still working in the fishery, he began prize fighting on weekends. Dubbed as the
Fighting Fisherman, he began his professional career in 1948, boxing at various venues around the province of New Brunswick. Over time he gained a reputation as a tough opponent with a hard punch and his victories eventually made him one of the top ranked
middleweightMiddleweight is a division, or weight class, in boxing. Early boxing history is less than exact, but the middleweight designation seems to have begun in the 1840s. In the bare-knuckle era, the first middleweight championship fight was between Tom Chandler and Dooney Harris in 1867...
fighters in Canada.
Championship years
In May 1953, Durelle won the Canadian middleweight championship then, after defending his title and winning 8 straight bouts, he moved up in weight class to fight in the
light heavyweightIn boxing, the light heavyweight division is the weight division between cruiserweight and super middleweight...
division where in his first fight against a heavier and stronger opponent, he defeated the Canadian champion to take the light-heavyweight title. The following year, he fought outside his native Canada for the first time, going to
BrooklynBrooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located southwest of Queens on the western tip of Long Island. An independent city until its consolidation with New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents, and second largest in area...
, New York to fight
Floyd PattersonFloyd Patterson was an American 2-time world heavyweight boxing champion. At 21, Patterson was then the youngest man to win the world heavyweight championship and, later, the first to regain it...
, an up-and-coming American
Golden GlovesFor the honor in Major League Baseball, see Gold Glove.The Golden Gloves is the name given to annual competitions for amateur boxing in the United States...
champion. Outpointed in 8 rounds by the man who would soon become the
heavyweightHeavyweight is a division, or weight class, in boxing. Fighters who weigh over 200 pounds are considered heavyweights by the major professional boxing organizations: the International Boxing Organization, the World Boxing Association, the World Boxing Council, and the World Boxing...
champion of the world, Durelle's strong performance in a losing cause against Patterson gained him wide respect in the international boxing world.
In New York City in March 1957, Durelle broke into the top ten world rankings with a 10-round decision over Angelo Defendis. In May he won the British Empire light-heavyweight championship and the following month fought the top-ranked contender in the world, Tony Anthony. In a fight most experts say he won handily, Durelle was given only a draw against the heavily favored Anthony but it elevated him to the number 3 ranking in the world. He became a much talked about sports personality in his native country after he beat the German champion,
Willi BesmanoffWilli Besmanoff is a retired German boxer who was a heavyweight contender in the 1950s.Making his professional debut in 1952, Besmanoff mainly fought in Germany for the first half of his career, before subsequently relocating to the United States...
. In 1958, he defeated Clarence Hinnant, regarded by many as one of the best all around boxers of the time. The victory provided Durelle with the opportunity for his first chance to fight for a world title.
Yvon Durelle's light-heavyweight championship fight against the great
Archie MooreArchie Moore, born Archibald Wright , was light heavyweight world boxing champion between 1952 and 1959 and had one of the longest professional careers in the history of his sport. A native of Benoit, Mississippi, raised in St...
on December 10, 1958 at the Forum in
MontrealMontreal is the second-largest city in Canada and the largest city in the province of Quebec. Originally called Ville-Marie , the city takes its present name from Mont-Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city, whose name was also initially given to the island on which the...
,
QuebecQuebec is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking identity and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, is one of the most memorable fights in boxing history. Listed as a 4-to-1 underdog, the bout made Yvon Durelle a legend in Canada, gaining him near cult status for his performance. In one of the first fights broadcast coast-to-coast on American television, Durelle stunned boxing patrons by knocking the champion down 3 times in the first round. Under boxing rules today (except those of the
World Boxing CouncilThe World Boxing Council was initially established by 11 countries: the United States, Argentina, United Kingdom, France, Mexico, Philippines, Panama, Chile, Peru, Venezuela and Brazil plus Puerto Rico, met in Mexico City on February 14, 1963, upon invitation of the then President of Mexico, Adolfo...
), the fight would have been stopped after three knockdowns in one round and Yvon Durelle would have been world champion. Also, he missed an opportunity when, after the first knockdown, he stood over Moore watching for several seconds before returning to his corner. As a result of his delay, the referee had to wait to begin the count, and Moore made it to his feet at the count of nine. Durelle swarmed all over the champion for four more rounds and knocked him to the canvas again in round five but Moore held on and eventually wore Durelle down to retain his world championship with an eleventh round knockout. The fight was the talk of the boxing world and members of the Canadian Press voted it the sporting event of the year.
From boxing to wrestling
Six months later, in June 1959, at Durelle's home village of Baie-Ste-Anne, thirty-five fishermen died when they were swept out to sea by 40 foot tidal waves that pounded the wharf. Distraught at the loss of friends and relatives, in August he lost in a world title fight rematch with Archie Moore by a third round knockout. In November of that year he lost in 12 rounds to the Canadian heavyweight champion,
George ChuvaloGeorge Louis Chuvalo, CM is a retired Canadian heavyweight boxer who was never knocked down in ninety-three professional fights between 1956 and 1979. He is often considered to have had the greatest chin in the history of boxing...
. Durelle fought only a few more times, before taking up professional wrestling in 1961. He returned to boxing in 1963 winning twice more before retiring permanently. He continued to earn a living at wrestling, primarily in eastern Canada but on occasion with
Stu HartStewart Edward "Stu" Hart, CM was a Canadian amateur wrestler, professional wrestler, promoter and trainer. Stu also founded Stampede Wrestling, a promotion based in Calgary, Alberta, and was the father of famous wrestlers Bret and Owen Hart.-Early life:Hart played football for the Edmonton...
's
Stampede WrestlingStampede Wrestling is a Canadian professional wrestling promotion based in Calgary, Alberta and was for nearly 50 years one of the main promotions in western Canada and the Canadian Prairies...
, in
CalgaryCalgary is the largest city in the Province of Alberta, Canada.The Calgary census metropolitan area is the third most diverse in Canada in terms of visible minorities after Toronto and Vancouver when considering only CMAs with population greater than 200,000...
,
AlbertaAlberta is one of Canada's prairie provinces. It became a province on September 1, 1905.Alberta is located in western Canada, bounded by the provinces of British Columbia to the west and Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the U.S. state of Montana to the south....
.
Later life
Despite his size and brutal profession, Durelle is often referred to as a modest and gentle man (his nickname was "doux", meaning "soft"). However, in the 1970s an event would profoundly impact him and his family when, in a bar that he owned and operated, he shot and killed a man who had attacked him. Charged with murder, he was defended by a young lawyer by the name of
Frank McKennaFrancis Joseph "Frank" McKenna, PC, OC, ONB, QC is a Canadian businessman and former politician and diplomat. He is currently Deputy Chairman of the Toronto-Dominion Bank. He served as Canadian Ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2006...
and was acquitted on the grounds of self defense. The trial received massive and sustained publicity and McKenna would eventually go into politics and be elected
Premier of the province of New Brunswick.
Retired in his native village, a small museum with souvenirs of his twenty-year boxing career was built attached to his home where he and his wife of more than fifty years greet fans who still show up to see the New Brunswick boxer. In an article for
ESPNESPN is an American cable television network dedicated to broadcasting and producing sports-related programming 24 hours a day....
.Com about the most memorable matches in boxing history, current-day referee
Mills LaneMills Bee Lane III is a boxing referee, and also a former boxer, judge, and television personality. He is best known for having officiated over several major heavyweight championship boxing matches in the 1980s and 1990s, and for starring in the television show Judge Mills Lane.-Biography:Lane...
said: "
I don't think you'll ever see a fight like Durelle-Moore again...That fight transcended what great fights are."
Durelle incurred a
strokeA stroke is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by thrombosis or embolism or due to a hemorrhage...
on December 25, 2006, and died on January 6, 2007, at The Moncton Hospital in Moncton,
New BrunswickNew Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only constitutionally bilingual province in the confederation. The provincial capital is Fredericton...
. He had also contracted
Parkinson's diseaseParkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that often impairs the sufferer's motor skills, speech, and other functions....
prior to this. His funeral was held on January 11, 2007, from Ste-Anne Roman Catholic Church in Baie-Ste-Anne,
New BrunswickNew Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only constitutionally bilingual province in the confederation. The provincial capital is Fredericton...
.
Related works
- Yvon Durelle's biography, The Fighting Fisherman: The Life of Yvon Durelle by author Raymond Fraser
Raymond Fraser is a Canadian author.Born in Chatham, New Brunswick, Fraser attended St Thomas University where in his freshman year he played on the varsity hockey and football teams, and in his junior year was co-editor with John Brebner of the student literary magazine Tom-Tom...
(Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-15863-7), published in 1981, republished in 2005.
- In 2003, Ginette Pellerin of the National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes innovative, socially relevant documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions. Its name in French is Office national...
made a French film documentaryDocumentary film is a broad category of visual expressions that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to "document" reality. Although "documentary film" originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can...
on his life called Durelle.
Awards and recognition
- Inducted into the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame
The New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame was established in 1970 to honor outstanding athletes, teams and sport builders in the Canadian province of New Brunswick...
in 1971
- Inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1975
- Inducted into the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame in 1989
External links