Gloves pack punch at sporting sale: Top prices paid for gear worn by boxing champions. Danny Penman reports

MUHAMMAD ALI's boxing gloves, used in his victory over Joe Bugner in 1972, were sold for pounds 1,200 at an auction of sporting memorabilia at Bonhams in London yesterday.

The gloves formed part of a collection owned by Roland Dakin, a British Boxing Board of Control referee for 38 years. The collection included gloves worn by champions like Rocky Marciano, Henry Cooper and Frank Bruno. Marciano's gloves fetched pounds 1,400, Cooper's pounds 320, and Bruno's pounds 250.

Robert Hillman, 27, from Sevenoaks, Kent, who bought the Marciano gloves, said: 'I know it seems a lot to pay - but Rocky was a great fighter and I'm proud to own them.'

Other items in the sale included an autograph book containing signatures from seven of the eight Manchester United footballers killed in the 1958 Munich air disaster. It fetched pounds 580.

Just a few days before the crash, the vendor - then a young fan, persuaded David Pegg, a team member, to collect his colleagues' autographs. Pegg collected the signatures of 10 team-mates, six of whom - Tommy Taylor, Mark Jones, Duncan Edwards, Roger Byrne, Eddie Colman, and Bill Whelan - died in the crash with him. The autograph book was later returned to the vendor by Pegg's mother.

A collection of thousands of football programmes owned by the late Harold Palmer, former sports editor of the Daily Telegraph, was sold for pounds 25,135.

The collection was split into more than 100 lots - one of which included the programme for the Germany versus England match at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin on 14 May 1938.

The programme - including a photograph of the England team giving a Nazi salute during the German national anthem - sold for pounds 700.

(Photographs omitted)