Australian boxer, who became world champion in the bantamweight division. He was the 2009 Inductee for the Australian National Boxing Hall of Fame Veterans category.
Carruthers’s boxing career started as an Australian representative at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. In his first-round match of the bantamweight competition, he fought Fred Daigle of Canada and won on points. He defeated Arnoldo Par‚s of Argentina in his second match. However, he had sustained an eye injury during his bout with Par‚s, and had to withdraw from the quarter-final match.
Carruthers joined the professional ranks in 1950, and was an immediate success. By then, he was being managed by Dr. Jim McGirr, and trained by “Silent” Bill McConnell.
He won the Australian Bantamweight title in 1951 and then the British Commonwealth and Bantamweight Championship of the World the following year. Carruthers became Australia’s first universally recognised boxing World Champion. Great Australians of the past?including Young Griffo, Mick King, and Les Darcy?had all won world titles, but they had not received international acceptance at the time of winning their respective crowns. After defending his newly-won World bantamweight title against Vic Toweel in Johannesburg, and then against the American Henry “Pappy” Gault in Sydney, it was found that Carruthers was carrying a 30-foot-long tapeworm.
He was matched for a world title bout against the New Zealand Bantamweight Champion Lyn Philp. For unclear reasons the fight never went ahead. Carruthers last fight was in Wellington, New Zealand in 1962 where he lost to Jimmy Cassidy.
Carruthers worked on the Sydney docks as a wharf labourer in the 1950s. He was married to Myra (n‚e Hamilton) until his death and was survived by four children – Boyd, Ginna, Dimiette and Lukas. During the 1950s he owned the colourful Bells Hotel in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo. After that he had a number of businesses, including several vegetarian takeaway and juice bars in Sydney.
In his last years Carruthers suffered from lung cancer and Parkinson’s disease. He died on 15 August 1990. In 1995 he was inducted into the World Boxing Hall of Fame.
Link to Wikipedia biography