If boxers can be judged by the number of their soubriquets then Jimmy Wilde was certainly one of the greatest. They called him “The Tylorstown Terror”, “The Ghost with a Hammer in his Hand” and, most frequently, “The Mighty Atom.”

Marvelling that so slight a man could pack such a devastating punch, the American heavyweight Gene Tunney called Wilde simply “the best fighter I ever saw.”

Wilde was as tough as the social conditions in which he grew up. As boy in the Rhondda he worked underground at the local pits, his tiny frame allowing him reach into gullies too narrow for grown men.

Like most fighters of his era he learned his trade at the fairground boxing booths where gnarled old pros would take on all comers in far from glamorous circumstances. Scrawny little Jimmy Wilde soon found himself the main attraction.

He fought his first professional fight at 16 and took a British title in 1913 at the age of 21.

So remarkably powerful was the Welshman- who never tipped the scales above eight stone- that he attracted invitations to take part in medical research.

Having suffered his first defeat in a bid to become the European champion in 1915, he returned the following year to take the title. Months later he became the first ever undisputed World Flyweight Champion with his demolition of Young Zulu Kid of the United States.

Eventually he had to take on bigger men to find his match. He toured America dispatching numerous opponents from the higher weight divisions.

By the time he came to defend his World Flyweight title in 1923 he had not fought for the previous two years. His undoing came at the hands of Pancho Villa in New York after an epic bout in which Wilde, cut badly above both eyes, could eventually no longer see.

It was the end of an incredible career that had seen Wilde go into the ring as many as a thousand times. On all but a handful of occasions he had come out the winner.