Birtley has fight fever at the Gee Bees

BIRTLEY are amateur boxing’s kingmakers without question.

The little club on the Tyne has risen to override the established southern aristocrats when it comes to producing champions.

Another three have just been crowned at the European Under-22 Championships in Helsinki.

The Gee Bee Tournament, with 99 boxers from 15 nations taking part, was massively significant with this year marking a milestone in the international calendar as the countdown to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games begins.

So to have a trio of golden champions in the McCormack twins Pat and Lukeand Mark Dickinson – from the famed family headed by former British cruiser champion Jon-Lewis Dickinson – is quite an achievement.

Luke McCormack also took best technical boxer at the tournament to move out of the considerable shadow of his super-twin Pat, who similarly struck gold of course.

Luke dominated his fights in the light welterweight division (64kg) and overcame Russia’s Youth Olympic Games winner and EUBC European youth champion Ilia Popov in the final.

Pat, like Luke, claimed a silver medal in the Kharkiv 2017 European Confederation Championships but since then he won almost all of his contests at welterweight (69kg).

The Commonwealth Games winner knocked down rival Dinesh Dagar three times before his Indian opponent’s corner abandoned an unequal fight.

Dickinson claimed gold at the 2017 European Confederation Youth Championships but had moved up to middleweight (75kg) in recent months.

England’s latest sensation, who is still only 19, eliminated Kazakhstan’s youth world champion Nurbek Oralbay in the semi-final before beating Russia’s Vadim Tukov in the gold-medal bout.

Three more top of the podium, three more Birtley blitzers.