South Moreton Boxing Club

Our own Costa “The Bear” Sapavolov boxes on a Real Fight Club show in
London this Thursday the 28th. He has an experienced opponent, but has
been looking very sharp in the gym of late, so should be a good bout.
There are 10 other bouts on the show, which is at The Village
Underground EC2.

We will be leaving the club at 4:30pm on Thursday. If you fancy coming
up, give me a shout.

A friend of mine is putting on an evening with two Ring Legends, Arturo “Thunder” Gatti and “Irish” Mickey Ward, at The DeVere Hotel Swindon on Thursday 24th of April.

Tickets are £70 per person, to include a three course meal and photo and autograph opportunities. Should be a great night, mini-bus will leave the club at 6:30pm, returning about 12pm.

We have hired the back room at The Bear for Saturday the 8th of March.

The big screen will be showing the full boxing bill from the O2 Arena, culminating in the fascinating showdown between Enzo Maccarinelli and David Haye. We will lay on a buffet about 9pm. All club members,
friends and family welcome.

A friend of mine, Rob Pilger, has just launched a site called BoxingPerformance.com The site is a fantastic resource for anybody interested in boxing training, coaching and conditioning.

Rob has pulled together a wide variety of experts from around the world on the site, to provide top insights, not only on boxing training, but also on strength conditioning, nutrition, cardio
training and a wide diversity of health and fitness tips. This is really cutting edge stuff, and truly chimes in with our clubs philosophy of Sports Science Meets The Noble Art.

I have contributed a number of articles and will continue to
contribute as the site grows.

Well worth checking out.

All the figures are in now from The Rumble II, and I’m pleased to say we raised more than last time out. In an amazingly generous move Total Employment, the main sponsor of The Rumble II, have stepped in and said they will match all the money we raised! This has enabled us to make the following donations: British Red Cross £5,000, Diabetes UK £3,000, Helen and Douglas House £2,500 and All Our Children £2,500. It is tremendous to be able to make this level of donation, particularly at this time of year, and thanks again to all who attended or took part in The Rumble II. This brings the total the club has donated to charity this year to £17,400. Lets hope we can top this next year!

We will be having a Premire of the Rumble II DVD this Sunday (23rd) at The Bear from 4pm onwards. Buffet and drinks, all club members, friends and family welcome. Hope to see you down there.

Well, what a fantastic night of entertainment and boxing Rumble II turned out to be. Once again a sell out crowd, and a great atmosphere, and thanks to all of you who attended, sponsored or took part in the event. Special congratulations to Sholto “Both Barrels” Brotherton Radcliffe on winning the Best Boxer award and Jon “The Sweeny” Pennycook and Dene “Stitch Em Up” Taylor for giving a thrilling display to win Fight of the Night. Rumble III coming up on June the 14th!

Mickey Steeds is with us again this Saturday (24th) and is available to do 1-2-1 training sessions between 9am and 3pm. As most of you will know, Mickey was Southern Area Heavyweight Champion and has now dropped to Cruiserweight and is soon to challenge for the British Title. So if you want to pick up some tips from the Pro’s, drop me a line and book yourself in.

The New York Trip over the weekend of 8th – 12th November was a great success, the Cotto V Mosley fight at Madision Square Gardens was exiting, and the whole show was fantastic. Six of us went in the end. Highlight for me was meeting legendary trainer Emanual Stewart and IBF World Welterweight Champion Kermit Cintron after the fight. Lots of other great characters as well. Looking forward to the next trip already…

A friend of mine is putting on an evening with the legendary Roberto “Hands of Stone” Duran on Saturday 6th October at the Premier Club in Swindon.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Roberto compiled a professional record of 103 (70 KOs) wins and 16 losses in a career which started in 1967 and ended in 2002. During that time he won world titles at Lightweight, Welterweight, Light-Middleweight and Middleweight. His duels with Sugar-Ray Leonard, Thomas “Hitman” Hearns and Marvelous Marvin Hagler during the 1980′s are the stuff of Ring legend.

Roberto will be joined by ex-opponents Ken Buchanan (ex-WBA Lightweight Champion) and Jimmy Batten (ex- British Light-Middleweight Champion). The evening will be hosted by Mark Peters, and will include a 3 course meal, auction, raffle and photo and autograph opportunities. Tickets are £75 per person.

We will be leaving from the club at 6:30pm that evening and returning about 12pm. Let me know if you would like me to reserve you a ticket.

The club has given away £4,400 to six Oxfordshire charities in the last few months. Representatives from the charities came in yesterday
to take part in a photo-op for the local paper, I’ve attached the picture.

We gave £1000 to Helen and Douglas House, £1000 to kids Enjoy Exercise Now, £1,200 to AFC Wallingford, £500 to South Moreton Church, £500 to South Moreton School and £200 to Marie Curie Cancer Research (this was to help sponsor Natalie Jenkins to climb Mount Kilamanjaro, her and her team went on to raise over 164K in the sponsored climb).

The money came from our charity dinner in November and The Rumble in March. Many thanks to all of you who helped us in this, and particularly to all the guys who boxed on The Rumble.

Massive thanks also to Charlie Paine and his company Total Employment. Their sponsorship of both events made a lot of it possible.

Should be raising a lot more money over this year, raising the last lot was great fun!