Alan Minter Alan Minter Alan Minter (born 17 August 1951) is a British former professional boxer who competed from 1972 to 1981. He held the undisputed middleweight title in 1980, having previously held the British middleweight from 1975 to 1976, and the European middleweight title twice between 1977 and 1979. As an amateur, Minter won a bronze medal in the light-middleweight division at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Minter was the 1971 Amateur Boxing Association of England Middleweight Champion. He won the bronze medal at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. Minter began his professional career in London on 31 October 1972 by knocking
World Boxing Organization (as they did with several established champions in the lower weight divisions), the WBO sanctioned a fight between two relatively unknown fighters, Francesco Damiani (winner of the super heavyweight silver medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics) and Johnny DuPlooy, to determine the inaugural holder of its own heavyweight title in 1989. All other sanctioning bodies of boxing recognized the then-undefeated Mike Tyson as the undisputed heavyweight champion. Damiani, meanwhile, went on to become the first WBO heavyweight champion. At heavyweight, especially in the United States, the organization initially struggled to gain credibility as a major sanctioning body, with WBO heavyweight