Boxer follows in footsteps of city’s giants
Wyatt readies for WBO world junior welterweight championship
Where it all starts — but where you end up — is a sum total of all of your choices.
When I started boxing in 1980, I joined the Renfrew Boys and Girls Club under the watch of the late Art Pollitt.
At that time in Calgary, there was the Dover Boxing Gym headed by the late Gerry Burton, Inglewood Boxing headed by the late Ken Billinghurst (remember the sign that remained for years under the bridge on Macleod Trail?) and the National Boxing Club run by the late Mansoor Esmail (Olympic trainer of Willie deWit) and Kevin McDermott.
The National was in the former Calgary Herald building downtown and is now called the Calgary Boxing Club and still run by McDermott, but at a new location.
The National was even home to Mike Miles Muay Thai for a while. The Renfrew Boxing Club was a part-time gym, where every Monday and Wednesday evening and Saturday morning, we showed up and erected our equipment. Posts went into the gym floor, ropes hung on them to form the ring, bag-stands swung out from the wall and heavy bags put up, as were speed bags. Gloves, ropes and lacrosse balls for footwork drills came out. And we trained.
The regular roster there had names like Shultzy, Curt Kleinschmidt, Sean and Gerard Heron, Lorne Hetchlor, Billy Chong and the two Yates brothers, David and Scott. The Yates brothers’ dad was Uncle Nicky’s Carpets (remember the TV commercials, “Why buy carpet from a stranger when you can get it from your Uncle Nicky?”).
Even with the three Biedermann boys, their family owned and still run Supreme Men’s Wear downtown. On their store wall is a quote from Muhammad Ali that also was on the wall at Renfrew: “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room on earth.”
Also part of Renfrew were the two Brown brothers, Rick and Dale.
We were all just regular kids, having fun through sport, travelling, developing our life paths and chasing dreams. At the time no one could tell who would end up where and to what level of success we were bound for.
Dale Brown went the furthest out of any Calgary boxer in decades. He competed at an Olympics and went to the highest level of the sport by fighting for the world professional championship three times. He even fought a semi-main event to Oscar De La Hoya at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. He came up short in all three attempts. Long since retired, he still gives into the sport as a part-time coach. So with Calgary’s deep history of professional boxing with names like Brown, deWit, and even going way back to the 1940s and ’50s, with George Dunn, who was a top-five world-rated fighter, we’ve never had a world champion come out of this great sports city.
This young lady has been mentioned before on Sportsnet and in this publication, but now it’s time to really pay attention ...
So, Calgary ... meet Kandi Wyatt. Wyatt was eight years old when she first stumbled upon boxing. Enrolled in the gymnastics club in Rocky Mountain House that shared its location with the Rocky Titans Boxing Club, she found herself more interested in the kids across the floor punching bags, skipping, and sparring in the ring than the trampoline and balance beams. After a brief chat with the coach and having asked her parents if she could try it out, Wyatt made a life-changing choice to become a member of the boxing club and was ready for the first training session.
For the next 10 years, she trained out of Rocky and Rimbey with coach Mike Smith.
Wyatt moved to Edmonton in 2010 to continue training and work toward qualifying for the 2012 Olympics, the inaugural Games for women’s boxing. After failing to qualify for London, she remained an amateur boxer for another year and then decided to make the move to the pros in 2014.
Since then, Wyatt has set up shop in Calgary for living and training and signed a promotional deal with Dekada.
Five days per week, she can mix you a latte at Cadence Coffee Shop in Bowness where she works.
And six days per week, she’s putting in the gym work at the Calgary Boxing Club under the tutelage of McDermott and assistance of Brown.
During her 15-year amateur career, she earned a record of 49-7, as well as multiple provincial, national and international titles, such as:
10-time provincial champion
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Six-time national champion
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Four-time Ringside World Tournament ■ champion
2010 Continental champion
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2010 national team member
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2010 Boxing Canada rookie of ■ the year
2010 Alberta Boxing female athlete ■ of the year
On March 24, local unbeaten professional female fighter and promoted by Dekada, Wyatt heads off to hostile territory in Athens, Greece, to take on Christina Linardatou for the vacant WBO world junior welterweight championship.
Will this be Calgary’s first world boxing championship?
I’ve stated before that there’s a lot more going on in this city besides hockey and football, and now with professional boxing supremacy within the grasp of one of Dekada’s own fighters, Wyatt’s doing her own part to “Making boxing a thing in Calgary!”
In the meantime and in between time, that’s it, another edition of Mr. Boxing YYC.