boxing club.qxp_Layout 1 22/10/2021 17:59 Page 2
LOCAL | SPORTS
A training session at Twerton Park
I feel community boxing can do and can really benefit the city.” The gym is a completely separate operation from the club, with Sullivan securing space in a room there back in August. A carpenter by trade during the day, he certainly puts in a proper shift throughout the week to run the place, which operates three nights as a boxing gym, with junior (eight-14-year-olds) and senior sessions (15–36), and two nights as a fitness club; there’s also an open training session on Saturday mornings. It’s hard work, but Sullivan’s dedication is slowly paying off – “we have a good solid base and it’s been a big jump (moving to Twerton Park)” – but he admits funding is always an issue. Although the gym gets some sponsorship from two local businesses, S&J Roofing and the Trinity Inn, and has had grants from the sports charity Sported and England Boxing, “The biggest stumbling
Darren Sullivan spars with Daisy Allinson, who enjoys the competitive nature of the sport
block is affordability,” says Sullivan” – both to keep the club going and to ensure that members can afford the fees, which are impressively low: £2.50 for kids for an hour’s session and a fiver for the older boxers for an hour and a half. Proof that funding can work at the highest level is in the fact that since being funded by UK Sport at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the medal haul in the sport has improved. But it’s at grassroots level that the need for funding is greatest. The boxing promoter Eddie Hearn last year lamented the fact that boxing was excluded from a £300-million government rescue package for spectator sports. “At an elite level we have had to overcome great difficulties during the pandemic but we will ride it out – the local community clubs simply cannot.” Sullivan has been in the game a long time and clearly loves the sport. He started boxing
aged eight and more so when he became increasingly independent around 16. He finished boxing as a lightweight when he was 29 – he’s now 54 – and in 2004 began coaching at the Frome Amateur Boxing Club before moving to Paddy John’s Gym in Bristol seven years later where he spent a further seven as an amateur and professional boxing coach; he received his pro license eight years ago. I ask which coaches he has looked up to over the years and he cites Cus D’Amto (who trained Mike Tyson) and Emanuel Steward (trainer of Thomas Hearns and Lennox Lewis) as among the best. As for the boxers at the club, Sullivan is clearly someone they admire, a mentor, known for being firm but fair, “I think most of them when they walk into a boxing gym will behave and I won’t have no messing,” he adds. The Roman Boxing Gym makes a good fit at Twerton Park, a relationship which Sullivan hopes will continue whenever the redevelopment of the ground is given the green light. More than that, though, the club performs an important and much-needed role in the city. Who knows, one day it might produce a future Olympic medalist, or even a world champion? n romanboxing.co.uk
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