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Sports correspondent & historian with |
As I pen my weekly sports blog this week, three small groups of the best boxers in the Western Bay of Plenty are on their way to the big dance of amateur boxing in this country.
The 113th edition of the Boxing New Zealand National Championships is to be held at the Te Rauparaha Arena in Porirua City, from Wednesday, September 24, until the senior finals end on Saturday night.
There will be no fancy sponsorship naming rights or up-market locations in a blue-collar sport that has few pretensions.
Pugilists from the Tauranga Boxing Club, Bay BodyFit Gym and the Tauranga Boxing Academy will carry a long history of Tauranga region boxing into the ring in Porirua.
Papers Past reveals evidence of boxing in Tauranga that dates back nearly 140 years. Bay of Plenty Times carried a piece of the Tauranga Gymnastic Club, holding an athletic tournament at the Harrington Street Hall on August 25, 1887.
The programme consisted of dumbbell exhibitions, parallel bars, Indian clubs, single stick fencing, bayonet drill and a boxing melee (fights).
Some 24 years later in August 1911, the Bay of Plenty Times reported that a meeting had been held to establish a boxing club in Tauranga.
As was the custom of the day, a well-known identity would front the organisation as the president. In this case it was Mr W Herries who was the Bay of Plenty, then later Tauranga constituency, Member of Parliament.
Boxing continued to flourish in Tauranga. On the evening of December 28, 1921, the Bay of Plenty Boxing Association staged a big deal in a New Zealand Professional welterweight title fight.
The period after the end of World War II was a golden period of boxing, with the return of servicemen and young men looking for athletic outlets.
Boxing was alive and well in Tauranga and Mount Maunganui. Trainers included Tom McCord, Gib Roper, Bob Thomas, and Chris Easterbrook, while Messrs Holling and Crawford oversaw training in Mount Maunganui.
Tauranga’s first NZBA amateur champion emerged at the 1958 Hastings National Championships, when Gerald Simms dispatched a Wellington boxer in the semifinals to make the heavyweight title decider.
Simms pushed aside provincial hometown support to beat Henry Bristowe from Hawke’s Bay in the heavyweight division final.
Two years later Tauranga light middleweight David Black brought the national crown back to the Western Bay of Plenty, after beating Lex Ashton (Timaru) in his third fight of the 1960 Auckland nationals.
It would be 31 years before the Denny Enright trained lightweight Daryll Leabourn would hold aloft the Parisian Cup in triumph in a hometown victory.
The arrival of Chris Walker in the region in the early 2000s brought a new dimension to Western Bay national championship title success.
Walker set up the (new) Tauranga Boxing Club at the Wharepai Domain, before establishing TGA Box at the start of Waihi Rd.
Leading the list of Walker’s senior national champions are Commonwealth Games representatives Dave Aloua and ‘Ants’ Taylor, while Arianne Nicholson, Justin Potter and Kelly Woolrich also enjoyed international competition success.
Win or lose at the Porirua pinnacle event - the Western Bay of Plenty contingent of boxers will return home richer for the experience and likely to treasure the memory forever.