Almost a century of Ulster Senior/Elite boxing champions, across every weight division, are set to be named on the Holy Trinity boxing club’s social media pages. 

Starting tonight (Tuesday August 13 at 8pm) on the West Belfast boxing club’s social media platform is the first in an Ulster Senior and Elite Roll of Honour series.

The 12-part series stretches from 1929 to the present day; the vast majority of the finals staged at the heart of boxing, the hallowed Ulster Hall in Bedford Street, Belfast.
Trinity secretary Thomas Hawkins tells how the initiative came about.

"A while back we spotted a comment on our Holy Trinity Facebook page from James Magee of the brilliant ‘Tales from the Ring’ boxing podcast," he said.

"His dad is former amateur and professional star Noel Magee, one of the fighting brothers in that famous north Belfast boxing family.

"Commenting on our post listing the Ulster Senior Champions from 1988 to 1990, James said: 'It would be great to get the full list of Ulster Senior champions from over the years'.

‘‘That set the ball rolling. There may be another complete list out there somewhere but I knew we’d gathered up loads of Irish and Ulster records over the years, and particularly during our club’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2022.

‘‘So, after a long, deep dive into our stats files, we set about fact-checking, personalising many names and adding in pictures, and here’s your Ulster Champions Roll of Honour, James."

The stats were amassed from a variety of sources beginning with the early days of the Ulster Senior Championships contained on a few precious photocopies from former Ulster Boxing President Pat McCrory (RIP).

Special mention goes to legendary Irish sports journalist Gerry Callan whose boxing record books and posts have proved invaluable down the years for the club and feature in this Ulster compilation and also the Holy Trinity’s Irish Senior / Elite Champions Roll of Honour.

The work of The Irish News sports and photo journalists and the great Hugh Russell (RIP), also helped greatly over the years as did the archives of the paper.

Special merit also to the boxing books of Belfast sports journalist Barry Flynn, which helped the club dig out many accurate details, as did former Irish Boxing press officer Bernard O’Neill.

The introduction of the Women’s Championship in 2010 enhanced and added another dimension to this prestigious Ulster boxing event.

Since the early 2000’s there have also been several changes to weight divisions by boxing’s World Body (AIBA) in men and women’s categories, weight divisions taken out, new divisions added.

It made the task of collating and placing boxers in a continuous and correct division a bit of a challenge.

"Precisely accurate details of many Ulster finals were also often difficult to source, but best efforts have been made to avoid any errors or omissions; an impossible task I suppose, so apologies in advance for any slip-ups," added the Trinity secretary.

"Meantime, enjoy trawling back through your club’s Ulster title history."