Politicians duke it out for cancer
Urbane, pedigreed, to-the-manor-born, reed-thin Justin Trudeau, a down-and-dirty scrapper? A fighter, with the moxie to go toe-totoe with an adversary, with all the world watching and nothing to rely on but his own grit, heart, lungs, wits and fists? Nonsense. Laughable. But not to him.
Lost in the footnotes of last week’s brouhaha over Trudeau’s hypothetical curtsy to separatism on a Quebec radio show, was this curious fact: The young Dauphin, heir apparent to the Liberal party and often touted as a possible future prime minister, is training, hard, for a March 31 charity boxing match with Conservative Sen. Patrick Brazeau.
They’ll go three two-minute rounds in a sanctioned amateur fight, Olympic rules: That means headgear, mouth guards, 10-ounce gloves, nothing below the belt, nothing to the back, no kicks, gouges or biting. Within that narrow rubric, these two parliamentarians — each representing a quite distinct political philosophy and each a standard-bearer for a new generation in their respective parties — will try to knock each other senseless.
For both men, the cause — raising money for the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation — is personal: Brazeau lost his mother to lung cancer. Trudeau lost his father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, to complications related to prostate cancer. But also for both, the fundraising has in some respects been superseded by the fight. “He’s planning on knocking me out,” Trudeau says matter-of-factly. “Word has gotten back to me, that’s what he’s been telling his colleagues. My colleagues just want me not to die.”
This will be the fifth year running that Final Round Boxing in Ottawa has staged the Fight for a Cure fundraiser. Last year the event raised $150,000 in total. This year, boxing coach and organizer Matt Whitteker says, the goal is to raise $200,000. The card features four standard amateur bouts, interspersed with three so-called “whitecollar bouts,” featuring wellknown professionals or, in this case, politicians.
The first two events, in 2008 and 2009, were celebrity exhibitions, with 16-ounce gloves, no scoring, winners or losers. It quickly became clear that wasn’t working.
“It turns out that when you get two high-level execs or business owners with that mindset, in the ring in front of all their peers, that (the lighthearted stunt) doesn’t really happen,” Whitteker laughs. The combatants insisted on fighting for real.
The solution was novel: Rather than cancelling, organizers upped the ante, reducing the glove size to 10 ounces, introducing scoring, and requiring the fighters to be licensed by Boxing Ontario. The result has been growing visibility — and increasing intensity.
“There’s no difference between this and someone competing for a gold level at nationals,” Whitteker says. “Except people competing for gold at nationals don’t have friends, peers, business partners and in this case the whole country watching. This is as real as it gets.”
Trudeau and Brazeau both have training at Final Round for the past six months. Both have been receiving intensive personal coaching, done road and other dry-land work, and sparred routinely with other amateur fighters, specially selected for their physiques.
“We’ve been matching them with sparring part- ners to emulate their opponent,” Whitteker says. “For Pat we’ve been getting taller, lankier guys, for Justin shorter, stockier guys.”
Physically and as boxers, the two are polar opposites — a technician versus a puncher. Trudeau is six feet, two inches tall and 175 pounds — on the lean side. He’ll rely on the length of his reach, speed and technique. The senator, by contrast, is five feet, 10 inches and 183 pounds. That makes him likely the more powerful of the two. Brazeau will try to hammer the body.
“Justin’s got the reach but Patrick has the angles,” says Walter Robinson, former director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an avid amateur boxer and a veteran of four Fight for the Cure fundraising bouts. “Justin’s stick and move and Patrick is angles and inside body shots, get in, get out. They’re going to be evenly matched.”
The two are a complementary set outside the ring too. Brazeau is a former model, known for his earrings and ponytail. Trudeau is a onetime drama teacher celebrated, and sometimes derided, for his movie star looks. Both are younger than most of their peers. And, each appears to have something to prove.
“HE’S PLANNING ON KNOCKING ME OUT.” JUSTIN TRUDEAU
Why, I ask Trudeau, would you choose to expose yourself to the pain, and the potential humiliation, of boxing?
“That applies equally to running for office,” he says, without missing a beat. “This how I’m programmed. I’m a competitor. ... I push myself to the limits of what I can do.”
Trudeau is frequently confronted with comparisons to his father. Often he waves them away. Other times, as he did during his apology last December to Environment Minister Peter Kent, after he called him a “piece of s---” in the House, he’ll draw the comparison himself. “This was no ‘fuddle duddle’ moment,” Trudeau said at the time. “This is a different generation.”
One t heme recurs: Trudeau is driven to show there’s more to him than a celebrated name. He made his first approach to a gym, Club Champion in Montreal, using his mother’s maiden name, Justin Sinclair, he says. “I wanted this to be mine, a guy learning how to box — no special treatment.”
When he moved west he boxed at a gym in Vancouver. During a winter in Whistler, in his mid-twenties, he worked as a bouncer, he says.
“I had two very large friends who worked with me” he is quick to point out. “I was the talker. I wasn’t particularly physically imposing but I was diplomatic — and unintimidatable.”
Brazeau, for his part, has battled a perception that he was elevated to the Senate at the extraordinarily young age of 34 merely because, as an aboriginal man with strong conservative leanings, he was convenient to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s agenda. Brazeau has said in television interviews that his political views have some- times caused other native Canadians to brand him a “red apple” — red on the outside, white on the inside. Following his appointment three years ago he was initially dogged by allegations of misuse of funds, stemming from his time as head of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. He strongly denied any wrongdoing, suggesting instead that he was a victim of a witch-hunt by the “native establishment.”
Though he stresses raising funds for cancer is his paramount motivation in this fight, Brazeau makes no secret of his opinion of his foe.
“I have a level of respect for him because he’s a parliamentarian, he’s elected, and he’s the son of a prime minister,” Brazeau says of Trudeau. “That said, as this week has shown, this is a person who will try to do anything to gain media attention, positive or negative. I’m not sure that’s the best thing in politics. But be that as it may, we’ll try and settle things on March 31st.”
Brazeau comes into this the odds- on favourite. That’s partly because, where boxers are relatively inexperienced, strength and conditioning tend to win. Brazeau is likely the more powerful of the two, and may be physically tougher.
The caveat: In the ring a fighter is utterly alone. There are no advantages conferred by name, race, class or reputation. And there are no pedigrees. There are physical stats, and there are results. Trudeau, as the underdog, has nearly everything to gain. His goal, he has already said, is to “acquit myself honourably,” regardless of the outcome. That puts him at a clear advantage, if not in the fight, then politically. For if Trudeau gives as good as he gets, he wins a moral victory. But if he wins outright — well, then he’s a hero.
“I do know that he’s very much focused on beating me and everyone is expecting him to beat me,” Trudeau says. “If he does, good for him. If he doesn’t, how very embarrassing it will be for him.”
All of which suggests that, win or lose, he may be more his father’s son — when it comes to strategy, at least — than some have given him credit for.