John H Stracey swapped the gloves for a microphone in his second act. Half a century on from his famous world title triumph in Mexico City, the former champion is now hoping a new World Cup song can inspire England ahead of the 2026 tournament.
After several street scuffles as a small lad in Bethnal Green, Stracey’s father marched him through the doors Repton Boxing Club at 11 years old.
He moved through the amateur ranks impressively – schoolboy, junior, senior – and represented his country at the Olympics in 1968, losing in the last 16 to eventual gold medallist Ronnie Harris of the USA.
If his Olympics run didn’t end as he wanted, it would still prepare Stracey for his own World Cup final. He turned over to the paid ranks five days before his 19th birthday and won the British and European welterweight titles before landing a shot at Mexican great José Nápoles in the sweltering, high-altitude cauldron of Mexico City for the WBC world title in 1975.
“I was very, very confident. Extremely confident. I actually preferred being away from home. When you’re defending a title at home, there’s so much pressure. But when you go abroad for a title fight, everybody expects you to lose anyway. If you lose, they say, ‘Well, he boxed 5,000 miles away.’ But if you win, that’s the great thing about it.
“Mexico suited me because I’d already boxed there as an amateur in the Olympics. Chris Finnegan won gold there, and we had some really good fighters.
“But the big thing was the altitude. It was 7,500 feet above sea level, so you couldn’t just arrive and start training hard the next day. You had to ease yourself into it. If you look, I’m the only British boxer ever to win it in Mexico, no one’s ever done it, and I don’t know if it’s because they don’t prepare properly.
“When we went there for the Olympics, we arrived two weeks early. For the Napoles fight, I made sure I got there three weeks before. I knew if I was going to have any chance at becoming champion, I had to be there long enough to become accustomed to it.”
Stracey recovered from a first-round knockdown in front of 42,000 fans at the Plaza de Toros – just 24 of whom, he says, had travelled from Britain – to stop Nápoles in the sixth and become world champion. After all deductions, he walked away with £2,000 and a car, but, more importantly, he had fulfilled a lifelong ambition to win the title. Yet boxing was never the only thing Stracey imagined himself doing.
Long before he became world champion, he had dreams of becoming a singer. In fact, when he mentions a talent competition trophy he won at 12 years old, it’s easy to imagine it sitting proudly alongside the green and gold WBC belt today.
“Music had always been there. In fact, before boxing, I wanted to be a singer. I won a talent competition in 1962 at a holiday camp. That’s what I wanted to do originally, but singing became number two and boxing number one.”
After retiring in 1978, Stracey swapped the buzz of the ring for the stage, alongside various business ventures. He’s proud to point out that he has shared stages with the likes of Johnny Mathis, Tony Christie and Russ Abbot, and performed, as he once fought, in Las Vegas. Today, he writes songs and takes his act all over the country, drawing great satisfaction from sing-alongs at retirement homes, sometimes changing his stage name so boxing doesn’t dominate the conversation.
This year, the national pride born from his boxing days and his passion for singing collide with the release of ‘66 All Over Again’, a catchy World Cup anthem backing the Three Lions to bring the trophy home 60 years on from their last success, which Stracey, now 75, watched as a 16-year-old amateur fighter.
“Oh, I loved it [watching in 1966]. Alan Ball became my favourite player. It was such a special time to be English.”
“The song actually started years ago, around 2010. I wrote the lyrics and a mate of mine helped with the music because I can’t write music myself. I can hear the tune in my head, though.
“Nothing really happened with it for years, but recently some people heard it and loved it, so now we’re releasing it for the 2026 World Cup.”
If Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Declan Rice et al. need extra motivation, they perhaps won’t look to the lyrics or the tune, but to the man singing and what he managed to achieve back in 1975 on away soil.
Indeed, the former world champion points out that if England makes it through the group, there’s a chance they’ll play in the thin air of Mexico City during the knockout stage. He’s not unaware of the synchronicity and would happily return to the place so vital to his story to share the moment.
“If they flew me over, I’d be right in my element.
“When we boxed in Mexico as amateurs, we went to the Plaza de Toros bullring to watch bullfighting. We hated it and walked out. I remember saying, ‘I’ll never go into a bullring again.’
“Years later, my world title fight against Nápoles ended up taking place in that exact same arena.”
If Stracey was to go and perform for the team, 7,500 feet above sea level, the question becomes how the nerves of the first notes stack up against those of a ring walk. He says there is no comparison.
“Oh, singing’s much easier. You can forget the odd word, but you mustn’t forget the odd punch.”
