In the little over two years that I have been working on the MyBoxingCoach website, I’ve experienced many proud moments. In fact, there’s barely a week goes by that I don’t encounter something (or more usually somebody) that makes me say to myself “Now, that is why I started this thing.”
Whether it’s a young fighter like Mo who has used the website to augment his learning in the gym, and by the sounds of his comment against the Vasily Lomachenko article he’s doing very well thank you very much! Or whether it’s a friend of the site called James who has used the Boxing Training Foundation as a basis to create the very first boxing gym in the British Virgin Islands (and yes, I had to dig out a map to find out where the British Virgin Islands were).
Whether it’s seasoned coaches like Ric and Terry adding superb insights to articles that I produce (like the Cuban Warm up/cool down/warm down, depending on your viewpoint), or whether it’s bright boxing minds like Dave, Scott, Rich and Karl offering alternative opinions to mine in the results of the big fights, like Khan Vs Peterson, giving us all a much more rounded and qualified view of what happens on fight night.
Something happened this morning that has trumped all of those little weekly ‘pick me ups’ that help me to keep on working away at the site, trying to create a place on the Internet where boxing people congregate and provide a resource that makes a difference. Whether that difference is to competing boxers, coaches or indeed those who like boxing and want to understand more, I just want it to make that difference.
This morning though, I awoke to a message from a young man that I spent some years working with at our boxing club. You will remember Craig from the article How to Box at Long Range. Without going into too much detail, I rank Craig as the best I ever worked with, and I’ve worked with a few. I have always had great admiration for his skills, approach and general all round demeanor. In short, he’s a class act.
Craig is now based in Australia and will take part in his first professional fight in March. For my money, he’s going to be a highly successful fighter. I really do believe that he can become a world champion, no hype, no BS, I think it’s a dream that for him can become a reality.
As part of his preparation for his first professional outing, Craig has had his shorts made. As you can see above, Craig has taken the extremely flattering step of having the MyBoxingCoach.com emblem embroidered into his shorts. Craig’s motive for doing this is that he feels he owes people like me and John Jones (my fellow coach at the boxing club) a debt of gratitude for spending time coaching him. From our point of view, it’s very nice to be thanked but this is absolutely not necessary. Coaches like John, Ric, Dave, Rich and others who visit the site can testify to the fact that our reward is being around young fighters like Craig.
What makes me really, really proud is that a promising young professional fighter like Craig, along with his management team, is content to have him associated with the MyBoxingCoach website. It’s a pretty major step for them. A modern athlete needs to be managed in any number of ways, and the image of that athlete is foremost in the thoughts. Without this consideration the athlete’s potential to earn revenues aside from his fight purses could be negatively impacted. In short, a young fighter like Craig cannot afford to be associated with anything that is not in keeping with a professional image.
I know that in fights ahead a spot on the front of Craig’s fighting shorts will be highly prized by big companies. In his first fight though, Craig decided that MyBoxingCoach.com website was something that he felt was worthy. Nothing can ever change that.
A proud day indeed.
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