Michael J. Clarke, OAM, aged 90 years old, commenced researching and studying the history of boxing when he was only 6 years old. He has gone much further than any other historian by studying the social impact of the sport on society in Australia.
He has researched and compiled the complete record of the sport in Australia commencing from 1800 to the present day, a mammoth task never before attempted by any other boxing writer in Australia.. That project took about 8,000 typed A4 pages and covered a period of almost 200 years.
Commenced writing articles on Australian boxers in 1956 for The Australian Ring, and continued providing other magazines with articles and information, these include:- Fighter, Small Glove News, Square Ring, Australian Boxer, The World of Boxing, Boxing News (England) and The Ring (USA).
Michael has written 6 books on Australian boxing, which is more than any other Australian author, and probably the world. They included a four volume series “Boxing”, then “The Fighting History of the Sands Brothers” and “The Legends of the Ring.” Copies of those books are kept in the National library of Australia in Canberra.
Michael has an encyclopaedic knowledge on most things dealing which have an historical bent, but in particular “boxing.
In the year 2004 he was awarded the prestigious Medal of the Order of Australia and received further honours later that same year in being placed on the Wollongong Council’s Board of Honour.
