DICK McTAGGART was the finest and most successful amateur Scotland ever produced, and also perhaps the most underappreciated boxer in the history of the sport, north of the border.

A child of poverty and product of Dundee, he was born in 1935 at a time when Scotland and Britain’s working class were experiencing the tender delights of Tory-imposed austerity.

Purified by economic pain, the McTaggart family, like every other family, was forced to learn the art of survival.

His father early on decided that if he was going to have to fight, he should learn how. From a family of five boxing brothers, it was imperative that he did.

This then is how McTaggart’s foray into the world of boxing began.

At just 12 he had his first amateur bout. It was to be the first of the staggering 634 he would have throughout his career. His record of 610 victories tells its own story as to his quality in matters pertaining to the squared circle.

As for honours won, here we have a remarkable record of achievement — Imperial Services champion 1954, 1955, 1956, 1958, Allied Forces champion 1956, Britannia Shield winner 1954, 1957, RAF champion 1954 – 1958, Duke of Hamilton plaque 1962, Northern Counties champion 1963, ABA champion 1956, 1958, 1961, 1963, 1965 (moving through featherweight, lightweight and light welterweight), Scottish champion 1957-1960, 1962, 1964, 1965, Olympic gold at the Melbourne Games 1956, British Empire champion 1958, bronze at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, and finally European champion 1961.

A notoriously humble and unassuming man, McTaggart retired from competitive boxing at age 30 in 1965.

He later explained why: “It got to the stage where I’d done everything I wanted to achieve in boxing, but I was also struggling with injuries — so, I decided to call it a day.”

So why did McTaggart eschew the notion of turning professional, given his incredible amateur pedigree?

“I was asked a good few times,” he said. “Each time they’d offer me money in my hand, but I wouldn’t have done it because I just enjoyed boxing. Once you turn pro, it’s not a sport any more; it’s a living, and I didn’t fancy doing that.”

McTaggart enjoys an illustrious place in sporting history as Scotland’s only ever Olympic boxing gold medallist.

That he also took bronze in the 1960 Rome Games — where a young Cassius Clay first burst onto the international scene — cements McTaggart’s right to be recognised as one of the best to ever do it from anywhere on these islands.

Though he may have retired from the ring at age 30, he did not leave the sport. Instead, he utilised his vast experience and knowledge and applied it to coaching.

Revealed in a fine profile of his life and boxing career in 2019 — published on the website British Vintage Boxing — is that in his role as coach of the Scottish amateur boxing team, he took a squad to compete in Moscow in 1966.

There, an hour-long documentary on his life and achievements was broadcast in front of a live audience, after which he was lauded with a standing ovation.

Thereafter, the plaudits continued. This in the form of an MBE in 1985 and with inductions into the International Boxing Hall of Fame and its Scottish counterpart in 2000 and 2002 respectively.

His invitation to attend the 2012 London Games as guest of honour was likewise a well deserved high point.

Today, at age 89, Dick McTaggart remains in decent health and enjoys a quiet existence in his native Dundee.

For such as he, along with his fellow Dundonian and Scottish amateur pugilist Frank Gilfeather, boxing was less a means to the vast personal riches that is so prevalent in the modern game, and more about self-realisation and positive self-reinforcement.

Staying with the theme of positive self-reinforcement, its negation in combat sports terms is embodied in Conor McGregor’s latest foul-mouthed outburst on X (formerly Twitter).

It came in response to fellow MMA fighter and native of Derry in the north of Ireland Paul Hughes’s fight against the Dagestinian younger brother of famed former MMA champion, Khabib.

Khabib handed McGregor his first defeat in the octagon, forcing him to tap out when they met back in 2018. McGregor was accused of engaging in Islamophobic tropes against Khabib during what was an ugly build-up to the fight.

Derry MMA fighter Paul Hughes was filmed heaping praise on Khabib after recently fighting his younger brother. It triggered McGregor’s wrath on X in the form of a succession of subsequently deleted angry posts.

In them, McGregor attacked Hughes for “daring” to have an Irish tricolour flag on his profile, calling him a foreigner and so on. That he did so on the very eve of the anniversary of Bloody Sunday on January 30 made such a slur even more distasteful.

The backlash McGregor received from multiple quarters in response leaves no doubt that the once popular Dublin MMA star has seen his estimation plummet in the eyes of many.

Recently convicted of sexual assault in a civil court, losing him many sponsors and business partnerships away from MMA, McGregor reputational suicide continues at pace.

He ain’t no Dick McTaggart, that’s for sure.