Why and How I Started Boxing...Twice

 

    ENTRY 513| SEPTEMBER 29 /2023

Note about privacy: This blog contains the full names of some boxing coaches. Since this information is publicly available through Boxing Ontario, it is not considered a breach of privacy.

For the 500th entry of the blog, I could not think of anything special to write but this idea came to me recently after someone asked me about it, so consider this the."Belated 500th Entry".

THE BEGINNING

My quest to become a boxer began as early as 1982.

I lived in Hamilton at the time. I was a teenager and not very athletic and my dad knew someone from his work that was a trainer at a boxing gym, so he suggested that I try it.

That boxing gym was McGrory's Boxing Clun. At the time it was located at the Normanhurst Community Centre on Barton Street but has since moved.

Mr. McGrory owned the gym but only did a little coaching. Vinnie Ryan was the coach there and remained so for quite a long time, into the early 2000s.

I trained there for a few years but had to quit to concentrate on a post-secondary education.

Normanhurst Community Centre now, and in 2009 while McGrory's Boxing Club was still there:

[Google Street View]

RADIO KILLED THE RADIO STAR

I had to take some time away from boxing to concentrate on college.

I was interested in Broadcasting and Communications and had applied to several colleges to join their program. I had been accepted by most of them including Mohawk College in Hamilton and Humber College in Toronto. Those were the two that I was considering the most.

I really liked Humber's program. However, at the time I was still living in Hamilton and at that time Humber did not have a student residence so it would have meant commuting every day, I decided to go to Mohawk despite not having as extensive of a program.

I began by taking a college prep course. This class is intended to...well..prepare you for college, but it also concluded a college-level advanced English class. I never realized how complicated this language was until I took that class. Since then I have become a Grammar Snob, correcting grammar in advertising, on TV, in movies, in song lyrics, and my wife. She has the worst grammar in the world and absolutely hates it when I correct her. I can't help it. I am a Grammar Snob. Blame college.

After the prep course, I did three years of Broadcasting and Communications classes which included working as the programming manager at the college community cable TV station and producing and hosting programs on the college radio station (C-101.5).

I had produced many programs over the years including two talk shows, a classical music program, a jazz music program, and a heavy metal program. Most of those programs only lasted a year, but my longest-running radio program on the station was "Audio Tracks". I played music from films and TV shows and talked about them. The program ran for eight years straight from 1991 to 1999. Yes, I continued to work at the station after graduation.

During that time they had hired a new program director. For some reason, he brought in another person to host and produce a program called "Symphonic Suites From Movies". That was very similar to my show except that I played more contemporary music, but I could have played symphonic suites as well if Programming had asked, but they didn't and chose to bring in someone else instead. All the while they reduced my show from two hours to one hour so that they could "fit in more programming:.

The real kick in the head was that his show was on twice a week while mine was only on once. It was live and then repeated later. Guess when? Right after my show. They wanted me to play his program after mine so I would have to sit there and listen to his Shitshow before signing off the station. (At that time radio stations were allowed to sign off at night but that is no longer allowed in Canada.)

Oh yeah. Buddy would come into the control room during my show with his precious tape with this smug look that I just wanted to knock right the fuck off of his fat fucking face. 

I tell you, there were many times I wanted to "forget" to play that tape.

The following week I informed Programming that the following year would be the last year that I produced anything for that station, so 1999 was the last year "Audio Tracks" was broadcast on terrestrial radio. Although it was reincarnated a few years later as "Sounds From the Screen" on an Internet station.

Soon after my radio program finished at the college station, I moved to Toronto to further my career in Broadcasting where I was a camera operator for Rogers Media (Citytv, Omni,m Rogers TV) and I produced and wrote radio programs for Corus at Q107 and sister station 1010 CFRB. My ultimate goal was to become an on-air personality at either station but that did not happen.

The producer of a sports program on Rogers TV asked me to join the sports crew, which I happily accepted.  In one of my first assignments, I was asked to cover boxing, and that re-sparked my interest in the sport.

This huge poster in a Toronto subway station contains a blaring grammatical error that drives me crazy every time I see it.

Do you see it? 

If you don't, the answer will be in the next entry.

[PBP Photography]

RETURN TO THE RING

With a refound interest in boxing, I had to find somewhere to train, and fortunately, at the time there was a place less than a block away from my apartment.

Bloor Street Fitness and Boxing was right there so I just had to check it out.

Bloor Street Fitness.

[PBP Photography]

 

At the time Richard Soucé was the coach and I got to know him quite well, but he left Bloor Street Fitness and Boxing shortly after it became,e Bloor Street Fitness.

He went on to start his own boxing gym and I liked the way he coached so I just had to wait for his gym to open, but where do I train in the meantime?

I wanted a place that was inexpensive because I didn't rea;;y care much about anything else since I would not be there long.

I found a place that was $60 a month. It was called the Kingsway Boxing Club. It was owned by the now president of Boxing Ontario. Although it was a bit far away. All the way out on Jutland Road, it was cheap compared to other places at the time.

I was honestly not happy with the quality of coaching at Kingsway compared to Richard's coaching but it was only temporary.

After training the best I could for a couple of months at Kingsway, I had heard that Richard's gym was opening soon so I gave him a ring to get more information.

I went in the day before he officially opened. I was his first member and I even helped with his last-minute set-up. His gym was located on Ryding Avenue and was called Stockyards Boxing Gym. At the time of writing this entry, it is still operating.

BOXING ONTARIO FAIL AND THE DEMISE OF THE ONTARIO BOXING ASSOCIATION

I enjoyed my time at the Stockyards Boxing Gym initially, but it began to get popular, a bit too popular. It was a small gym and it got crowded very quickly. I don't like it when I don't have a lot of room to move while I am training.  Another peeve that I have and still do is the fact that the boxers did not get priority use of the floor. If there was a fitness class on, boxers were restricted to using only the ring as non-boxers were not allowed in the ring. That annoys me and I will tell you the reason. Boxers are the ones who bring money into the gym. People buy tickets to boxing cards and buy concessions during the cards. Nobody is buying tickets to watch fitness classes. Therefore, the boxers should always get priority use of anything in the gym.

Also, Richard hired other coaches and did not coach as much.. My new coach was William Santeros. He was not a bad coach but the overcrowding was getting to me.

I was looking for an alternate place to train but I was not yet ready to leave Richard's gym.

I found the Toronto Boxing Academy which was only a block away from the Stockyards Boxing Gym but there was one major difference. The Toronto Boing Academy at the time was sanctioned by the (now defunct) Ontario Boxing Association.  That meant that in order to train there I would have to join the OBA and that would mean having two simultaneous sanctions. 

It was not a big deal to me but it was a violation of Boxing Ontario rules, but how would they ever find out?

They did.

They had an absolute shit-fit. I was suspended from Boxing Ontario and was banned from all Boxing Ontario-sanctioned gyms and events. That meant that I would not be able to return to Stockyards, but I could. however remain at the Toronto Boxing Academy, until...

The Kathleen Wynn government at the time decided that they wanted to screw with combat sports in Ontario because they apparently had nothing better to do with their time.

In the process, they pulled the OBA's license because they wanted Boxing Ontario only to be in charge of the sport of boxing in Ontario.

Frustrated and also not totally happy with the quality of coaching at the Toronto Boxing Academy, I was once again looking for another boxing gyn, but it also meant crawling back to Boxing Ontario.

THE LOSER'S GYM

I had submitted a request to re-join Boxing Ontario but I was very afraid that they wouldn't allow me back because I broke one of their precious rules.

They did.

I was back in, but now I had to find another coach. How to do that? Attend a boxing show and monitor the coaches.

I went to the next boxing card at Stockyards not to watch the boxers, but to listen to how the coaches interacted with their athletes.

One bout in particular interested me because it was two of the gyms I was considering.

Peter, a boxer from the Cabbagetown Boxing Club versus Mike from Xtreme Couture.

Peter "The Heartbreaker" with Coach Rey.

[PBP Photography]

The coach in the Cabbagetown corner was Rey Morales and in the Xtreme corner was Billy Martin.

The end result was that the boxer from Xtreme was knocked right out by the boxer from Cabbagetown, so, great, I should go to Cabbagetown because that boxer won, right?

No.

During the round intermissions I was carefully monitoring what the coaches were saying to their boxers and I was not pleased when I heard Rey go off on his boxer. "Jesus Christ. For fuck sake. What the fuck are you doing?!"

(Coaches: be careful about how to speak to your athletes in public. You never know who might hear you.)

It turned me off of Cabbagetown so much that I decided to attend the loser's gym, not knowing that it would be a big mistake.

IT'S XTREME ALL RIGHT!

This gym was so bad that I canceled my membership right after the one-year contract. It was the only time I had even given a business a one-star rating and to this day to don't recommend Xtreme Couture to anyone.

The coach didn't want to coach diddly squat. Instead of informing his boxers of ways to improve, he would just say something like, "You're all over the place!"

Okay, but, that doesn't help at all.

In addition to that, I had prepaid for personal coaching sessions (I don't know why), and for most of them Billy didn't show up or was late but I never received a refund. All they ever cared about was the money.

Xtreme Couture really is the Loser's Gym.

Xtreme Couture on Kipling Avenue. Don't go there.

[Google Street View]

WAS IT A COINCIDENCE...OR FATE?

There I was once again looking for a coach.

At the time I was working as a security guard at a new low-rise condominium building at Woodbine and Lakeshore.

I was on night shift and I had been there for a few months but just a week after leaving Xtreme Couture the afternoon shift guard was moved to another building and a new afternoon guard was brought in. His last name was Bland. That name is very important as I will explain later.

On his first shift, we were shootin' the shit getting to know each other and at one point I mentioned that I was a boxer looking for a new gym. That is when he told me that his dad, Jim Bland was a coach at Cabbagetown and that I should try there.

That morning after work I emailed the gym and received a reply very soon after. I was advised to meet Johnny at 9 the following morning at the Cabbagetown Boxing Club. I was given the address but no directions.

I was anxious to meet the new coach so I wanted to vind the gym right away so that I wouldn't get lost in the morning, so that night I was off and I went to look for the gym.

I went to s strange neighbourhood at night to look for Lancaster Avenue. First of all, it was dark, and I was looking for a large roadway, an avenue. I walked along Parliament Street, Winchester Street, Rose Avenue, and Wellesley Street... Parliament Street, Winchester Street, Rose Avenue, and Wellesley Street...I did this four times. I could not for the life of me find anything resembling anything close to something called Lancaster Avenue.

Frustrated (again), and questioning if I was being fucked around, I went home pondering whether I should try again in the morning.

I did.

I found Lancaster Avenue. It was right there. I circled right around it. The problem was that Lancaster Avenue is not an avenue at all but a laneway. It should be called Lancaster Lane because that is what it is and it sounds better, too.

Lancaster Avenue. Can you imagine trying to find this at night?

[Google Street View]

They should have just told me to look for the Beer Store. As a Canadian, I have the knack to find a Beer Store anywhere. We all have an internal Beer Store radar.

I arrived at the Cabbagetown Boxing Club before 9 and Heather let us in (although I didn't know her name at the time).

I told her that I was there to see Johnny and she said that he should be in shortly.

('05 goes by and no Johnny. 9:10 goes by and still no Johnny. I was beginning to feel like I was being screwed so I had decided to wait until 9:15 and then leave.

At 9;15 I began to gather my things to leave when someone entered the gym. I decided to wait a bit longer because it may have been Johnny.

It was.

Although I have to say that between the way I heard Rey talk to his boxer and Johnny being 15 minutes late, my first impression of Cabbagetown Boxing was not a good one.

Fortunately, I waited because Johnny Kalbhenn turned out to be the best coach I had ever had. He had found a lot of bad habits in me that I had picked up from a previous (unnamed) gym.     

He told me one at a time what I was doing wrong instead of bombarding me with many things at once. When one thing was corrected he should move on to something else. He also made suggestions on how to fix each mistake which was very helpful, as opposed to just saying "You're all over the place!"

That is the reason why I travel across the city to attend the Cabbagetown Boxing Clun.

I have learned that a former coach for Stockyards has opened his own boxing gym. William Santeros is now head coach at The 15th Round Boxing which is located in the Stockyards area and I was thinking about giving it a try. 

However, after very little re-thinking I had decided that to leave Cabbagetown now would be a very big mistake.

Note: Next weekend is a holiday weekend (Canadian Thanksgiving)( so there will be no 'Comments from the Ring'.

NEXT ENTRY: October 13 /2023 

░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

ABOUT 'The Brick;

'The Brick' is a competitive boxer trained for over 12 years.

STATS:

9 bouts (Boxing Ontario) 

2 bouts (Ontario Boxing Association) 

1 bout (Florida State Athletic Commission) 

DIVISION:

Masters Novice

CURRENT WEIGHT:

73 kg (165 lbs.)  

 STANCE:

Orthodox (left lead)

TRAINING STATUS:

ACTIVE

TRAINING SCHEDULE:

Wed. 0900-1100

Thu. 1730-1930

Fri. 0900-1100

Holidays 0900-1030

COMPETITION STATUS:

 ACTIVE

NEXT SCHEDULED BOUTS:

November 11 (tentative)

@Cabbagetoown Boxing Clun

CURRENT TEAM/CLUB:

Cabbagetown Boxing Club

Toronto

COACH:

Johnny Kalbhenn