Even when everything goes right, boxing still manages to have a problem

Born Monek Prager in a town near Krakow, Duff and his family fled to Britain a few years before the Second World War as the shadow of Nazism was poised to fall across Europe. His father was a rabbi who had a similar path in mind for young ‘Mickey’, as he became known, but boxing was a strong competing religion in London’s East End at the time.
Ultimately, it was no contest.