Boxing legend Ken Buchanan’s oldest son has revealed he hero-worshipped his famous father long before he knew he was his dad. Raymond Fraser Buchanan had posters of the Scottish world champion on his wall as a kid – but learned at age 10 that the star was actually his father.
The undisputed world lightweight champion from 1970 to 1972, Ken was a sporting superstar. Growing up in Prestonpans, East Lothian, Raymond watched Ken’s biggest fights on TV. He and his pals would go outside after, put their boxing gloves on and try to recreate the moves they’d seen.
Raymond said: “I’d say, ‘Right, I’m Ken Buchanan, you’re Muhammad Ali.’ And my pals would tell me where to go and say, ‘No, I’m Buchanan, you’re Ali.’ So that was always the first fight to be settled.”
Raymond only learned Buchanan was his dad after a couple of his close pals started calling him by a new nickname, Cannon, which rhymed with Buchanan, when he’d been called Rainbow before. When he asked family members, they understood locals who were in the know were starting to talk in front of their kids and Raymond learned the truth.
In a complicated family revelation, Raymond was told the woman he considered his mum, Rose, was actually his gran. And the woman he thought of as a sister, Maria, was his mum. Another shocking revelation was that his father was boxing star Ken.
Raymond said: “Everything I thought I knew about the people closest to me was wrong. They were still my family and I loved them, but I had to get used to the new relationships. The strangest thing of all was that Ken Buchanan was my hero, and here was the woman I thought was my mum telling me my hero was my dad.”
A short time later, Raymond, who now lives in Wishaw, Lanarkshire, heard that Buchanan and his friend, boxing champ Jim Watt, were playing football at Meadowbank in a charity match. Raymond arranged to go and watch with some of his friends, confiding in them that Buchanan was his dad, and later they queued for an autograph.
He said: “My pals were telling me to tell him I was his son, but I was totally tongue-tied and couldn’t say anything to him except, ‘Aye’. But after I got my autograph and walked away, a couple of them told him who I was. I don’t think it was too many nights later that our phone rang, and it was my dad wanting to talk to me.”
A relationship developed after Buchanan visited his son in his black Daimler, with personal plate KB 123, causing a stir on the council estate. He took his son out and kept in contact, but while Raymond met his younger brother and sister, he was never invited fully into the family fold.
Ken had dated mum Maria in the 60s but they split before he was born. Buchanan went on to marry first wife Carol. Buchanan had a disastrous second marriage to Eileen, who left him within six months for another man.
Raymond has written a book about his early life, Boxing Day, which will be published next week. He intends his book to be a positive read because of all he has overcome to reach 56.
But there are harrowing elements, with a pattern of major events happening on Boxing Day, including Rose’s death in 1999. Raymond also had a touching reunion with his dad on August 14, when the boxer’s statue was unveiled and put in place outside the new St James Quarter in Edinburgh.
Fellow Scottish boxing champ Watt also attended and posed for photos. Buchanan narrowly beat his Glasgow rival over 15 rounds in 1973, the only time the two fought, but the up-and-coming Watt earned his respect and a lasting friendship developed
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Raymond also took up boxing in his teens and carved out a promising amateur career, at times training under his father’s watch, and even fought him once behind closed doors. Asked who won, he laughed and said: “You’ll need to read Boxing Day.”
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