Is boxing in B.C. finally down and out for the count?
Internal rifts, rise of other options means Golden Gloves glory days are likely over
In boxing’s glory days, crowds used to go mad as the fighters pummelled each other in sold-out matches that kept Vancouver riveted for three or four nights in a row.
Thousands poured into the Agrodome or the PNE Gardens for Golden Gloves tournaments.
Richard Findlay, now 69, was the first boxer to be named “golden boy,” or the best boxer in a Golden Gloves tournament, for two years running in 1966 and 1967.
The crowd roared through some of his matches, especially when he went against a fiery little redhead named Freddy Fuller.
“We got standing ovations every time we fought,” said Findlay. “One write-up said it went on for a full minute.”
Now the lights have dimmed, the seats have emptied. A silence has settled over the sport.
The Golden Gloves tournament, started by The Vancouver Sun in 1939, is 75 today.
But there’s hardly a whisper of celebration. The sport has fallen out of favour so quietly that nobody waved goodbye. According to longtime boxing insiders, Boxing B.C., which would be the sanctioning body for a Golden Gloves tournament, couldn’t rustle up enough boxers for a 75th anniversary event.
Boxing B.C. did not return phone calls.
Boxing here has been knocked flat largely thanks to fighting between two sanctioning bodies. Other culprits include everything from a lack of boxing giants like Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali, to concerns over sports-related concussions, the rise of MMA, computer scoring of boxing at the Olympics (which has now been abandoned) and a big set of choices for kids and parents that didn’t exist back in Findlay’s day.
Much of the blame for the sport’s decline is being placed on the split between Boxing B.C. and Combsport, which was started by Dave Allison of Langley City Boxing, with much of the action at the Cascades Casino there.
“It’s in chaos,” said Manny Sobral, who went to the 1988 Olympics and now runs the North Burnaby Boxing Club that is aligned with Combsport.
The only solution, as far as he can see, is the emergence of an unbiased person with a love of the sport to knit the two factions together. “There’s not enough boxers to go around for one organization, never mind two.”
He feels it would help, too, if another Ali or Louis would bound into the ring somewhere with spellbinding jabs and counter-punches to captivate audiences.
Dale Walters knows firsthand the magic of a boxing legend. A bronze medallist at the 1984 Olympics, he operates a bar and restaurant attached to a boxing conditioning gym in downtown Vancouver.
In 1972, when Ali fought George Chuvalo at the Pacific Coliseum, Walters was a scrawny 10-year-old fighting a friend named Barry Blatter on the undercard.
Someone grabbed him and took him to Ali’s dressing room before the fight. The dressing room was packed.
“I just sort of got pushed through these people toward Muhammad Ali. He grabbed me and picked me up and put me on his knee. He stuck his fist underneath my chin and he says, ‘What’s yo name, boy? What’s yo name?’ ”
Walters, who was shaking in his boots, replied in a tremulous voice, “It’s Dale.”
“Are you going to be the next champ? Are you going to be the next champion of the world, boy?” “I-I-I think so.” “You might be the next champion of the world, but you’ll never be as pretty as me.”
Everybody in the room laughed. It was vintage Ali.
Walters has won many trophies over the years.
He has thrown all of them out except for the one presented to him by Ali that night.
His story reflects the golden era of boxing in B. C. that stretched from the Golden Gloves inception in 1939 to the 1980s.
Everyone who was anyone in boxing, including Olympians Sobral and Walters, fought in those tournaments.
Walters contrasts his Ali experience with a recent meetand-greet in Vancouver with Donny Lalonde, former light heavyweight champion of the world. “There was only me and six or seven other people who showed up.”
Walters now acts as a referee but even this is dicey. After judging some matches for Combsport, he suspects he is being blackballed by Boxing B.C. Like Sobral, he feels the two rival bodies have to patch up their differences and start getting along.
He has seen some excellent matches in Langley and out in the valley, but few people know about them. He suspects a lack of promotion is part of the problem.
Terry Cooke, who boxed in the 1940s and 1950s and is now 84, still coaches, now in the boxing club in the dim, grungy basement of the Astoria Hotel which reeks of so much character, it could have been plucked from the set of one of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky movies.
Cooke has no idea what would revive boxing. “I wouldn’t keep it a secret if I knew.”
He added, “There has always been lots of unrest but it’s worse now.”
Much has changed since 1939 when the first Golden Gloves tournament was held in B.C. Then called The Vancouver Sun Golden Gloves, it was such a big deal that the Province newspaper stole it from under the Sun’s nose. The Sun made a comeback by drumming up something called the Sun Diamond Belt, a two-night extravaganza that drew in 4,000 to 5,000 people into the Garden Auditorium on the PNE grounds. The Sun is now into promoting literacy and running.
Similarly, parents of today are busy hiking their kids off to taekwondo, to drama workshops and violin camps.
Boxing seems to have fallen out of favour with them, too.
But some say the sweet sport will never die.
Sobral said it ebbs and flows. He pointed out that it is practised in just about every country.
So like that boxer who rallies at the last minute after staggering hopelessly against the ropes, he is hoping the sport can rebound. For him and others, it can’t happen too soon.