What does that entail?
Basically, it is the delivery of coaching courses to aspiring coaches and helping to develop new boxing clubs that are in the position I was all those years ago. I had to take a step backwards with that when my daughter was born but have recently been invited to rejoin them but this time working with helping to develop the fighters coming through. I hope I can take them up on that at some point in the near future.
Tell me about the club and the fighters you are working with at the minute.
The club has now moved to the current premises which are great – the building had a gym in before so the space works for us. I couldn’t do any of what I do without the exceptional volunteers who work alongside me. There’s 10 of them who all give their time up for free, they all come in as much as they can after work, and although I’m Head Coach they all adhere to my way of thinking which means we all deliver the training in the same manner, same style, which means there is no confusion whether a fighter is working with me or one of the other guys.
As for the fighters coming through at the minute, it’s an exciting time for us. There’s Chad Gaynor who fought in 4 national championship finals as an amateur and won 2 of them. Since turning pro he’s gone from strength to strength and has now been invited to fight in the upcoming Prizefighter on Sky – he’s undefeated in his pro career and has a real chance of winning it – and he’s still only had 9 pro fights.
Ashley Shaw – when he came to me 4 years ago he his record was 4 wins, 10 losses. This year he has won 2 national titles and just won two gold medals boxing for England. Then there’s Maxi Hughes, Joe Rodgers, Jamie Hughes and Mason Reilly. All really good fighters with great careers ahead of them.
Although the club has a lot of members, we like to keep to a small fight team which allows us to prepare them properly individually. We also don’t rush them into turning and fighting professionally – even though some of them want to! We like to give them 12-18 months longer than some gyms before we let them fight at amateur and professional level – our view is that if we start them too early then they possibly lose their quality quickly, and we also like our boxers to still have their life outside the gym. They are still young men and need to have other interests in life than just their boxing. This is easier done with some than others – I have to physically ban Mason from coming into the gym or he’d be here every day, all day!!
I’m also really proud of the work we do with our deaf members. We have 2 qualified coaches who are signers as well as 3 deaf members. One of them is an exceptional boxer but unfortunately as current rules stand, deaf people are prohibited from fighting wither as an amateur or professionally.
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