A GALA OF BOXING
Inspirational event is set for November 25 at the Tottenham Community Sports Centre, writes John Dennen
ON Saturday November 25 a gala of female boxing is taking place at the Tottenham Community Sports Centre, 759 High Road, London, N17 8AD. The boxing starts at 2pm.
The event, which has a mammoth 30 bouts expected, brings teams together from different regions across the country to give female boxers competitive opportunity. The inaugural ‘This Girl Can Box’ show took place last year and the hope is to make it an annual occurrence. “Girls are hard to match, it’s like having a flyweight or a superheavyweight in your gym, you’ve got to do a little bit more to travel and get them the bouts that they need,” said organiser Terri Kelly. “This gives them a fantastic opportunity to get on the same show.”
“We needed to link up round the country and help each other for development,” she continued. “It’s up to us to create more opportunities to box. You need to box to develop your skills. So I thought I’d match it and do it. This time I’m hoping to raise a bit of revenue. If we can do it and raise some funds and try and get some sponsors, maybe next time what we could do is invite a team from Ireland or a team from Sweden, if we had the money there to put them up in a hotel, so it’s not a burden for one club.”
On the show there will be a Southern Area title belt bout between Haringey’s Amy Andrew and Charlie Hamm from Kent Gloves. Deayndre Allen has moved up from 64kgs to welterweight and will box Laura Stevens, from Far Cotton. Ramla Ali, Nemesis, is due to box Nikki Arthur from Manx and Sarah Dunne will box Xian Blackman Prince.
“It ranges. There’s a few skills bouts on there, Development bouts, Elites who don’t box enough,” Terri said. “As they have more and more bouts it gets harder to match them and I don’t want them just sitting around.”
“The idea is that each region has squads, it’s supposed to encourage that,” she added. “It’s much nicer if it’s got a squad feel about it.
“It’s to make it more of a celebration or a gala of boxing. It has a really nice feeling about it and just have some inspirational women there as well.
“There’s not enough happening. We can’t keep sitting and waiting. I’ve never been one to sit and wait for anything. We’re all quite proactive and thinking what can we do. That’s fed through to this as well. What can we do, rather than keep moaning.
“People really enjoy it. The whole day’s a nice atmosphere and there’s nothing more inspirational than seeing 60 other female boxers all doing what you love doing.”
‘WE CAN’T KEEP SITTING AND WAITING. WE’RE QUITE PROACTIVE, THINKING WHAT CAN WE DO’