IN HIS dotage, Jimmy Batten, former British light-middleweight champ who faced Roberto Duran, talks with the slow, deadpan assertiveness of a veteran hard man. He possesses the deliberate, no-nonsense tones of the grey-haired London faces portrayed in early Guy Ritchie films such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch.
To an extent, that ruggedness passed me by as a staff writer for Boxing News some 45 years ago. Here, it stirred and simmered slowly and deliberately.
Back then, the Millwall champ was something of a pin-up puncher, his picture even adorning the front cover of a teen pop magazine. “Thinking about that upset me, really,” Batten said, his eyes trained on mine, “because I can’t do it anymore.”
Today, Jimmy is battling
