A giant portrait of boxing great Colin Jones has gone up on the wall of Penyrheol Boxing Club, the club he boxed for as an amateur.
It is the latest community mural by artist Steve Jenkins, who paints as Jenks.
The black and white portrait shows Jones mid-punch in red gloves and red shorts with “Colin” on the leg, against a packed arena under the lights.
Jenks shared photos of the finished wall on Facebook, writing: “This one is celebrating another local sporting legend, Colin Jones MBE.”
He said he’d had “a great time squeezing this one in during dry weather this week”, and that he had “some inside bits to do in the gym next”.
Colin Jones: from Penyrheol ABC to the Montreal Olympics and three world title fights
Jones was born in Gorseinon in 1959 and learned his boxing at Penyrheol ABC.
He was 17 when he boxed at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, the youngest British boxer at the Games, according to the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame.
As a professional under manager Eddie Thomas, he won the British welterweight title in April 1980 by stopping Kirkland Laing at Wembley.
Commonwealth and European titles followed, the European belt won by stopping Hans Henrik Palm in Copenhagen.
In 1983 he fought Milton McCrory for the vacant WBC world title, drawing the first fight and losing the rematch on a split decision.
His third world title fight, against Don Curry in Birmingham in 1985, was stopped in the fourth round on cuts. He finished with 26 wins from 30 professional fights, 23 of them inside the distance.
Known as “The Punch”, he went on to coach Welsh Commonwealth Games teams and the British Olympic squad. He entered the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame in 1999 and was made an MBE in 2020.
Jenks: the artist behind murals from Pontyates to Port Talbot
Jenks started out painting NHS tribute murals while furloughed from a factory job during lockdown, and went full-time as the requests kept coming.
He told Swansea Bay News that story in June, when he finished the Pontyates village mural, a wall packed with ideas from the village’s schoolchildren that he called his “gift to the community”. Among the pupils’ picks was EastEnders’ Dot Cotton, because actress June Brown was evacuated to Pontyates during the Second World War.
His other work includes a five-panel seafront mural in his home town of Llanelli, which he paid for himself, and a tribute in Port Talbot to Meyrick Sheen, the late father of actor Michael Sheen.
Back in 2023, he worked with pupils at Tŷ Trafle School in Gowerton to turn their own designs into a graffiti mural on the school wall.
Not every wall has lasted: his Brunel mural in Briton Ferry was painted over in July after the building’s owner objected.
For the Penyrheol wall, Jenks thanked councillors Andrew Stevens, Jan Curtice and Nicola Matthews “and of course Colin”.
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