New boxing book published – Namibian

Veteran sports writer Koos van Zill recently published a book on boxing, Heavyweight World Champions of All Time.

Van Zyl, who previously worked for the Namibian Police but is now retired, said it was a lifelong passion.

“I spent years gathering material, and at some stage I thought I might write a book if someone was interested. I decided to do it,” he said.

After writing three books on Namibian cricket and one on Namibian crime, this is Van Zyl’s fifth book, the latter being his most successful.

“The book on crime in Namibia was my most successful book. I don’t know how much it sold, but at least it covered my expenses,” he said.

Van Zyl was a long-time cricket commentator on NBC’s Afrikaans radio service, but in recent years has used the budding book as his primary source material to showcase sports programming about boxing.

“Most information can be found on the internet, but the book is a huge time saver. Covering 113 world champions from 1885 to the present day, it’s a great source of trivia for the true boxing fan.” It also contains many questions and answers.

Some interesting trivia include:

Mike Tyson held the most heavyweight world title throughout his career. So 5 times.

In 1986, at the age of 20, he became the youngest heavyweight champion in the world and won the WBC title, adding WBA and IBF titles the following year. After his career was cut short for a rape that saw him in prison for three years, nine years later he returned in 1996 to regain his WBC and his WBA titles.

Heavyweight boxers who have won four world titles are Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko and Anthony Joshua.

Boxers with the highest knockout percentage are still active Deontay Wilder (97%) and Anthony Joshua (95%), with Frank Bruno at 95%.

While there are many other facts and figures of interest to boxing enthusiasts, Van Zyl hesitated to name the greatest heavyweight of all time.

“You can’t really compare different eras, so you can’t say who’s the best. A lot of people say Joe Louis was the greatest heavyweight of all time, but I don’t think so. That was a long time ago and training is completely different these days.

“Muhammad Ali was very good. No one came close to him in his time, but he cannot be compared to the current champion, Tyson Fury. We have completely different schedules,” he added.

Boxing enthusiasts who need a copy of the book can contact Van Zyl on 061 252846.