Six steps to a boxing utopia (Part V)

5. INVESTMENT FOR GRASSROOTS AND FALLEN HEROES

Boxers tend to peak in their 20s and 30s but there’s an awful lot of learning that comes before then, and many years of life to negotiate afterwards.  

The pandemic was an exceptionally difficult time for many, yet the need for investment in grassroots boxing and the implementation of a sustainable boxing aftercare system became glaringly apparent during the various lockdowns. 

For every state-of-the-art gym on an affluent city center corner there are countless others struggling to make ends meet. And these are the gyms, predominantly in economically challenged areas, that provide purpose to children and youths who would otherwise lose their way to crime.

The English Institute of Sport in Sheffield is the home of England Boxing and provides funding for the leading amateurs in the country who hope to represent their country at Olympic Games. Should boxing lose its place as an Olympic sport – still a real possibility – it’s doubtful the program, which has spawned numerous world champions that have brought great interest to boxing, would continue. The consequences of that shouldn’t need spelling out.

However, it is the aforementioned blood and sawdust gyms, in towns and cities up and down every country, that face more extreme day-to-day challenges. Reliant on training fees from families without the means to pay them, hundreds of gyms operate solely on the goodwill of the proprietors. High-profile boxers like Anthony Joshua have invested their own money in certain institutions but, contextually, there’s barely any money filtering down from the top of the sport to ensure the gyms that harvest future talent are financially stable.

Even those coaches who are producing national amateur champions, like Steve Newland of Powerday Hooks ABC in London, are reliant on fundraising events to keep clubs alive. “We need money to keep us going,” Newland said. “We don’t have a lot of luck getting grants and we have been hit with some big bills.

“The gym is in a very old building and if we don’t have the heating on it will fall apart… It’s been a battle. It will cost us £10,000 to get through next season and I don’t want to put the subs [fees] up. We want to make it affordable for everyone. We only had one show last year so fundraising is the only way we can raise money.”

At the other end of the scale, numerous former boxers – plenty of whom were once household names – are struggling in the fighting afterlife. Some are too proud to ask for help and most certainly don’t want their physical and mental deterioration made public. Regardless, it’s help they need.

“I feel like I’ve wasted the last five years of my life,” Dave Harris – the head of UK charity Ringside Charitable Trust (RCT) – told BoxingScene recently. 

Selfless in the extreme, Harris is one of the most decent people in boxing. He has dedicated huge chunks of his life to training youngsters, managing and developing up-and-coming professionals, making the British Boxing Hall of Fame a reality, and, above all, doing all that he can to help ex-boxers who’ve fallen on hard times. In 2018 he set up RCT, and within a year it had achieved registered charity status. Harris’ dream remains to open a residential home, purely for ex-boxers who have nowhere else to turn, but he’s found it exceptionally difficult to secure even a conversation from any of the major powerbrokers.

“It can’t be good for their business can it?” he said. “Admitting that the sport that’s making them rich can cause brain damage. But it does. We all know that so that’s why we, as a sport working together, must be the ones who help our own. So, we own the problem, we don’t ignore it.” 

Harris’ idea should have come to fruition long ago. 

“While creating the Hall of Fame and tracking down ex-fighters, the shocking amount who are struggling struck me,” he said. “It’s a tremendous burden on their families but not all of them have the support of their families.”

Harris realised, as he drove these fallen heroes to ex-boxers’ meetings and events, that they came alive when in the company of other ex-boxers. They were at their happiest when encouraged to reminisce about their glory days and a rest home, in which they could spend their days among the like-minded, would provide great comfort to many.

Harris will tell horror stories about champions of old – of their misery and helplessness, of clawing out chunks of their own scalp due to the terror of feeling alone. His charity does all it can to help with donations, but it needs universal support to be sustainable. 

In America, there are organizations like Ring 8 and Ring 10 that stage events to raise money for ex-boxers. Former contender John “Ice” Scully regularly conducts auctions on his social media page, the profits of which he personally mails to those in need – like the family of Wilfred Benitez, one of the greatest fighters in history.

Far more should be done. Whether pension schemes, tax-deductible donations from the highest earners, or punters being invited to donate when buying tickets, there are plenty of options out there to ensure all corners of our sport are financially secure. 

The amount of money required to make a care home sustainable for many years and to protect the future of countless amateur clubs is comparable to the amount paid to a boxer who appeared on the undercard of a recent show in Saudi Arabia.