Canadian title bout headlines Victoria fight card
Jason Heit is a multi-tasker when it comes to the fight game. This week had him preparing Terris Smith of Langford and seeing her off to the qualifying boxing tournament in Bangkok for the Paris Olympic Games, while also acting as promoter for tonight’s pro card at Pearkes Arena.
Heit has always maintained this is a good fight town — and he lives it. The local training work with Heit has been put in and national women’s 60-kilo champion Smith is in the Team Canada camp in Bangkok for the Paris Olympics qualifier beginning May 23, with Heit keeping in touch via Zoom.
Meanwhile, Heit is also busy setting the stage for tonight’s card, titled Champ Promotions Round 4, after Heit’s company he co-founded and which has successfully hosted three prior cards in town, including the previous one last year in the Victoria Conference Centre.
“The goal of our series is to go as big as we can with the cards, but to also have a good fit as to what the market can support,” said Heit.
The ideal scenario would be to eventually have cards big enough to rent out Save-onFoods Memorial Centre. It’s a process, said Heit, who represented Canada in the 1995 Pan Am Games in Argentina, missing the 1996 Atlanta Olympics by one spot, before turning pro in Los Angeles. Heit was 26-4 as an amateur and finished with a combined pro boxing, kick-boxing and MMA record of 42-5 with 34 knockouts in a pro career managed by Burt Young of Paulie fame from the Rocky franchise. After his fighting career, Heit worked as a bodyguard for actors Nicholas Cage,
David Duchoveny and Drew Barrymore. This is a guy who knows the fight game.
“It’s step-by-step in building up our cards in Victoria,” said Heit,
Tonight’s step isn’t a bad one. In fact, it can be considered significant. The main event will feature emerging Buneet Bisla of Surrey (9-1), who comes from Madison Square Garden where he fought American Khalil Coe last year in his only career loss, to Pearkes Arena to fight Devin Tomko (9-2) of Selkirk, Manitoba, for the vacant Canadian light-heavyweight title.
Bisla showed his grit by going seven gruelling rounds against Coe, who in 2018 beat 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Olympics goldmedallist Julio Cesar la Cruz of Cuba.
“Bisla has fought in MSG, the Mecca of boxing, and that was a great test for him on the road to this Canadian title bid [tonight] in Victoria,” said Heit, .
“Both Bisla and Tomko are big guys and hard punchers but both also skilled.”
Bisla is returning to B.C. after a three-week training camp in Miami under David Benavidez, the former WBC super-middleweight champion, who is preparing to fight Oleksandr Gvozdyk of Ukraine for the WBC lightheavyweight championship June 15 in Las Vegas.
“All it was eat, sleep, train. Eat, sleep, train,” the driven Bisla told Neil Davidson of the Canadian Press.
“I know if I fight him tomorrow, I can beat that guy [Coe]. I suffered that night but that’s all right because I learned a lot. It was a good learning experience for me [to] stay humble, stay grounded and work.”
The pro portion of the card begins at 6 p.m. with B.C. supermiddleweight-champion Alex Tribe of Victoria meeting Cody
Robertson of Vancouver in a scheduled four-rounder. Brandon Colantonio of Victoria, the former Canadian amateur silver medallist who is now the fourthranked heavyweight in Canada, will meet Jose Paredes Hernandez of Guadalajara, Mexico, in a scheduled six-rounder. The co-main event will set Sam Moses of Richmond (6-1 with five knockouts) up against Aman Aujla of Surrey (4-0 with three knockouts).
The amateur portion of the card begins at 3 p.m. and is highlighted by the superheavyweight main event of B.C.-champion and six-foot-five, 240-pound former hockey player Braydon Blazina of Victoria, the Canadian bronze medallist, fighting Alberta-champion and Canadian silver-medallist Daniel Ten Brienke of Edmonton.
Tickets are available at the door or online through Champ Promotions.