For the better part of three decades, the boxing promoter, manager and matchmaker Mickey Duff, who has died aged 84, was one of the most powerful and influential figures within British boxing, earning respect across the world for the depth of his knowledge, his business acumen, and an ability to develop the fighters whose careers he steered.
Duff could claim to have had a direct influence on the successes of 19 world champions, many of them winning the honour before the proliferation of world governing bodies diminished the achievement of being a title holder. With his business partners, Harry Levene, Jarvis Astaire, Mike Barrett and Terry Lawless, Duff was the British sport's dominant figure before the emergence of Frank Warren as a genuine rival in the 1980s.