Boxer Clyde tapped for Hall of Recognition
Former Montreal boxer Ian Clyde is among the 2015 inductees into the Pointe-St-Charles Hall of Recognition.
Clyde, a three-time Olympian and nine-time national champion, heads a list of inductees that includes Geraldine Clahane, Charlie Mell, Dan Doyle Sr. and John Coutts.
The 12th annual breakfast/induction ceremony takes place Saturday at the Pointe-St-Charles YMCA. Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre will be the keynote speaker and broadcaster Chantal Desjardins will serve as MC.
“It’s a great honour and I’m deeply touched that I was even considered for induction,” said the 59-year-old Clyde, who learned to box as a youth at the Boys and Girls Club and the Shamrock Boxing Club, then based out of the YMCA where the induction ceremony will take place.
“That’s where it all began, right in that hall,” said Clyde. “So it’s very emotional for me.”
Clyde’s rise to prominence as a pugilist in the blue-collar Pointe was an improbable one considering he was diagnosed with a hip disorder at the age of 3.
“I was a crippled child,” he said. “I had Legg-Calve-Perthes, which was a bone disease of the hip.
“It confines you to a steel leg brace for a number of years. The doctors gave me a 50-50 chance of walking again.”
After his leg braces were removed, Clyde, then a grade schooler, was introduced to the “sweet science” by his father Bill Clyde, a native of the Pointe who had boxed while serving in the navy during the Second World War.
“My dad thought boxing would be a form of rehabilitation because my leg had atrophied so much. And I was lacking in confidence so he thought boxing would help.
“I took to it like a duck to water,” remarked Clyde.
As an amateur boxer, the 5-foot4, 112-pound Clyde reigned as Canadian flyweight champion from 1972 to 1980. “Shotgun” Clyde also won a silver medal at the 1978 Commonwealth Games and a bronze at the 1979 Pan American Games, but his biggest thrill was representing Canada at the 1976 Summer Olympics in his hometown of Montreal.
“As a crippled kid I was told I would never play sports. I was told just to hope that I could walk some day without braces and crutches. So my most memorable moment was marching into the Olympic Stadium here in Montreal. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.”
Clyde lost in the quarterfinals. “I was one fight away from a medal at the 1976 Olympics,” he said.
Canada’s boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics couldn’t have come at a worse time for Clyde, who was boxing team captain and a gold-medal favourite.
After turning pro, and with the legendary trainer Angelo Dundee in his corner, Clyde lost a world title fight to Korean fighter Soon-Chun Kwon in 1984.
Hall of Recognition chairman Kevin Figsby said Clyde is a worthy inductee.
“Ian’s a guy who symbolizes perseverance,” Figsby said. “Hopefully the induction ceremony will bring him back to his glory days because he certainly deserves it.”
“He grew up in Verdun but there was no boxing club there, so he was kind of adopted by the Point.”