Equally, cut proneness hampered Walter's losing effort to keep his British bantamweight crown against old foe Alan Rudkin at Manchester's Bellevue in May 1968.
Yet on other occasions cuts were to emphasise that Walter McGowan had inherited a large portion of his dad Joe Gans' never-say-die ring spirit, as shown against Bathgate's Joe Connolly in 1934. For example, witness Walter's bloody battle with Osamu Miyashita at London's World Sporting Club on 15 March 1967 when the wee man from the Burnbank district of Hamilton also became the first Scottish boxer to fight a Japanese opponent in Great Britian.
On this occasion Miyashita ripped open Walter's left eye with a stiff right cross, forcing McGowan to reveal his tactical genius inside the ropes by moving outside the arc of the Nipponese boxer's potent right hand.
Similarly, a 10th round cut eye in his first Spetember 1966 British bantamweight clash with Liverpudlian Alan Rudkin only spurred Walter to box even more impressively to score a victory that meant he had imitated fellow Hamilton boxer Jim Higgins, who had won a bantamweight Lonsdale Belt in the 1920s in a record time that stood for over 50 years.
Again in 1965 Walter was ahead by the proverbial mile on points against world-rated bantamweight Ronnie Jones from Chicago in a non-title bout in Paisley when a horribly lacerated left eye cost McGowan the verdict: the fight was halted on cuts, making Jones an undeserved victor.
Nevertheless, victory was the most common denominator in the McGowan career with the pocket dynamo proving the power of combination punching by stopping just under 50 percent of those whom he defeated in the ring.
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Again, top contemporary Scottish ring coach John McDermott MBE winner of Commonwealth featherweight gold in 1962 as an amateur, sparred often with Scotland's only double outright Lonsdale Belt winner Glasgow bantamweight, Peter Keenan; Scottish lightweight ring legend Ken Buchanan rates McGowan as being the best technical boxer of all the Scotish ring greats.
Again, Walter's penchant for collecting honours was shown when he became the first Scottish world boxing champion to be honoured in the Queen's Birthday honours list in 1966.
A lifelong Rangers fan who used to train with Ibrox legends like Jim Baxter at Ibrox Park in the 1960s, Walter was also a keen golfer, and in the 1990s trained Palestinian boxers in Israel.
A recent period of ill health has not dimmed wee Walter's popularity with the Scottish fight crowd as he always attracts a loud cheer when introduced at Scottish boxing shows.
