Welsh star Lee Selby on how he’s trying to change lives
Ring icons inspiration for a new generation
deprived areas and the kids are quite bad. If it’s a PE teacher trying to talk to them and tell them how to play football, they’re not going to listen. But they look up to boxers.”
Macho
Mentors at t he gym use programmes named after some of boxing’s most famous names to deliver messages to the youngsters. Selby added: “Boxing is seen as a
struggled with the weight my whole career,” he said. “Once I’d won the world title in 2015 I should have moved up because after the first defence the snap just wasn’t there.
“Losing that last stone took it out of me. Some of the stuff I’ve done to make weight is not normal. I’d be chewing my food but not swallowing big, macho sport and we use that to break through to them.
“I come from a hard background and boxing definitely saved me and turned my life around.
“From the age of eight I started amateur boxing, but when I reached my teenage years I started hanging around with the wrong crowd, getting up to no good, smoking weed, drinking, taking drugs.
“There was a time I went off the path and with the boxing I got my
it, I wouldn’t tell my team. I’d have a bowl of salad, a tiny bit of white fish. Then I’d have another meal and spit it out – it was bad.
“Now, moving on, I will still have the boxing skills and extra sharpness because I won’t be struggling to make weight. I’ll be a different fighter.” focus and got back on track.
“Boxing changed my life, massively.”
Selby was 21 when his brother fell into a river and drowned. He said: “When n Michael passed away, that was my lightbulb moment. I turned ed pro and the rest is history.
Key
“People see me and think, k, ‘If he can do it, I can do it’.
“It’s easy to identify those se who come in to the gym and need d help, but there’s no single key to o help them, they’re all individuals. s.
“I’ve never been an outspoken spoken person, but the older I get, et, the more I open up to people.
“It’s very important to share re your feelings and the things s you’ve gone through, and that’s t’s what I tell them.” JACK JOHNSON, the first African-american world heavyweight champion, is one of the ring legends Empire Fighting Chance uses as inspiration.
Co-founder Jamie Sanigar said the way boxing icons like Johnson (below) behaved, both in and out of the ring, can teach disadvant disadvantaged kids valuable lessons.
He said: “We t tell them, ‘If you take a punch in the ring, it’s the boxe boxer who reacts in a calm and controlled way who beco becomes world class. If you react well to controll controlled situations you will grow and learn’.
“These are the subtle messages they can ta take into their lives – and we’re seeing very go good results.”
Th The charity began accidentally, when Sanigar a and Martin Bisp spotted a couple of youngst youngsters dealing drugs at their Bristol gym.
Bisp s said: “We got them into the gym and did pad ses sessions with them on a Friday night.
“Th “They came back on the Monday, first four of the them, then six, eight, 12, and we ended up with 5 50 kids coming, five days a week.
“On “One of them ended up getting kicked out of sch school and we couldn’t understand that, becau because he was always polite, yet at school he wa was turning tables over and walking out of les lessons swearing. When we asked what was g going on, he said, ‘I don’t get maths’.
“S “So we just did some basic numeracy with him to try to boost his confidence. It’s not u uncommon for those youngsters we see to have, say, a dad in prison and a mum who i is a substance user. We tell them we can’t change their situation but we can chan change the way they look at it.”