Marcel Thil boxer

Marcel Thil (29 May 1904 – 14 August 1968) was a French boxer and middleweight world champion. Statistical boxing website BoxRec rates Thil as the second best European boxer ever across all weight divisions, after Joe Calzaghe.Thil was born in Saint-Dizier, a commune in the Haute-Marne department in north-eastern France. He started boxing at a very young age and turned professional at the age of 16. Thil was a journeyman boxer for a number of years but as he gained experience and matured to full adult strength, he developed power in both hands and began to win regularly by knockout (KO).Thil won the French middleweight boxing championship in 1928 and captured the Europe title the following year. After losing his European championship in 1930, Thil won his next 15 fights and then defeated Gorilla Jones by a controversial 11th-round disqualification to capture the National Boxing Association (NBA) world middleweight championship and the vacant International Boxing Union (IBU) world middleweight championship on June 11, 1932, in Paris, France. With his championship victory, Thil became the toast of Paris. He was a major celebrity and a good friend of celebrated actor Jean Gabin.Thil successfully defended the title on July 4, 1932, with a 15-round unanimous decision against Len Harvey, but then went more than a year without a title defense. Thil was stripped by the NBA for failing to make a title defense by August 15, 1933, but he remained the IBU champion.On May 22, 1933, Thil won against German Jewish refugee Eric Seelig, former holder of the German middleweight and light heavyweight championships, at the Palais de Sports in Paris, in a twelve-round points decision. By a few accounts, the bout was for the world title, but the boxers were overweight according to Le Petit Parisien. On January 29, 1934, Seelig fought Marcel Thil again in Paris, losing in a twelve-round points decision.In addition to defending the IBU middleweight championship, Thil moved up a weight class to win the European light-heavyweight title in 1934. He would successfully defend the title once.