THE EUROPEAN super-middleweight belt which Callum Simpson and Ivan Zucco will compete for on Saturday at Oakwell has a long and varied history.
It was first fought for on the island of Sicily in 1991 and, in a result which Simpson will be looking to reverse this weekend, Italian Mauro Galvano defeated Englishman Mark Kaylor on points.
Over the next three decades, the two countries have both had various European champions at the weight and hosted contests for it on several occasions. It has also been won by men from France, Germany, Denmark, the Republic of Ireland, Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Georgia.
The title has been contested in ten different countries including at a casino in St Petersburg, Russia and an ice hockey arena in Helsinki, Finland.
It was also fought for a lot closer to Barnsley at the North Bridge Leisure Centre in Halifax in the mid-1990s when the champion was Yorkshireman Henry Wharton who also lost to Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank for the world title.
This is not the first time the European super-middleweight belt has been up for grabs at an English football stadium.
Londonder Dean Francis won it at Millwall’s The New Den in 1997.
More recent British fighters to win the title are James DeGale, George Groves and Callum Smith who all went on to win world titles and are among the most successful boxers from this country in recent decades.
Another Brit Lerrone Richards took it in 2021 then it was won three times by Frenchman Kevin Lele Sadjo who vacated the title late last year so Simpson and Zucco were made mandatory challengers.
Fighters to have won the European belt at other weights include John Conteh, Tony Bellew, David Haye, Tyson Fury, Lennox Lewis, Frank Bruno and the Klitschko brothers Vitali and Wladimir.
