Sports The Prince George Citizen - Thursday, March 1,1990 - 13 Don Schaffer Sports editor Phone 562-2441 Local 517 Boxing card hits national calibre Top talent here for show Stories by KYLE STOREY Citizen Staff Residents of Prince George and even some of the participants might not realize it, but they’re in for a national-cali-bre show. The Prince George Citizen’s Champions for Children amateur boxing card will be a night to remember. The 10-bout card will feature 20 champions. Each fighter is at the least a provincial champion. Included among the boxers are a former Olympic team member and a current member of the national B team. Kai Yip, a former coach at the Spruce Capital Boxing Club and currently coach of the Lethbridge club, sees the event as one of the major cards of the year. “This should be one of the top cards in Canada. I can tell you, you're getting some of the best boxers in Alberta to this fight.” Yip, an international boxer with a distinguished reputation, suggested the event was close to national-level competition. “It should be called the Tournament of Champions.” The card, whiich starts at 8 p.m. Saturday at Duchess Park Secondary School, will feature Duchess Park student Allan Bayne in the main event. Bayne will be up against Edmonton’s Ron Pasek. Bayne and Pasek are the current bronze medal holders from the Canadian championships. This fight is for bragging rights as the No. 1 contender to the Canadian crown. The current No. 1 contender, Ron Paskie of Hamilton, suffered a serious injury at the championships and is not expected to box again. Pasek is a hard-hitting brawler who started fighting late in life. “He only has about 25 fights but he’s a really good boxer. He likes to get inside and pound,” said his coach Ray Higgins. Higgins said Bayne’s style is similar to Pasek’s and he expects “a great fight.” Bayne is also a brawler, in the best sense of the word, and will be expected to work inside as much as he can. Both Allan and his father Boyd, expect the fight “to be a war”. Boyd said Allan will “take the fight to him. If Allan’s going to win, he’s going to have to bang him and stay in his face,” said Boyd Bayne. Local favorite Todd Hatley, 23, may have the toughest fight on the card. Hatley has been around the Spruce Capital club longer than probably even he cares to admit. He began with the club as a 50-pounder and now weighs in at 156 pounds. Hatley doesn't have as many fights as one would expect, considering his tenure with the club, but he has won the gold medal at the 1989 Diamond Belt championships. He also picked up a gold at the 1987 B.C. Winter Games and the gold at the SIN (Senior, Intermediate, Novice) tounament. His sparring experience is considerable, having gone at it with the best the local club has to offer. In his opponent, Curtis Hatch, however, Hatley will be facing a member of the national B team. Yip, Hatch’s coach, says his 19-year-old boxer is “very tough” and will throw a lot of punches. “He’s a real crowd pleaser. Hatch is basically an inside fighter and would be a tough fight going up against anybody in the country.” Yip said Hatch will attempt to keep the pressure on, but is expecting a tough fight from Hatley. “Todd is more mature than Curtis. He might not have a lot of fights, but I know he has a lot of experience from sparring in that club,” said Yip. One of the Dowe twins, James, will go up against a former silver medalist at the national level. Edmonton’s Kelly Crowell is a six-foot-two, classic style boxer who will be looking to jab and weave. Higgins said Crowell’s fights tend to be won on the judges’ cards, rahter than by a knockout. James Dowe has a number of achievements to his credit including the gold medal at the 1989 Tacoma Gold Gloves championship. He is also a former gold medalist at the Emerald Gloves and B.C. Winter Games and a former silver medalist at the national championships. John Flewin will return to Prince Go-erge to fight in the heavyweight event. Flewin is originally from here, but is currently living in Vancouver and training out of the Astoria Boxing Club. Flewin is the bronze medalist from this year’s Canadian championships and is also a gold medal winner at the 1989 Western Canadian championships. He was a silver medal winner at the nationals the same year. Like the other Prince George boxers mentioned above, he is also a gold medal winner form the B.C. Winter Games. His opponent will be the reigning Alberta Gold Gloves Champion, Peter Pet-rik, another Yip protege. Yip says Pet-rik is a strong boxer just coming out of retirement. His last fight, at the Alberta Golden Gloves, saw him win the gold with a knockout at 32 seconds of the first round. “I wanted to see him go a little longer, but Flewin will be a good tuneup to get Peter back into condition,” said Yip. On most other cards, Vancouver’s Manny Sobrol would be the headliner. On this card, he is relegated to the last fight prior to the intermission. Sobrol represented Canada at the 1988 Olympics in South Korea and beat both the Russian and Cuban champions in a pre-Olympic tournament. His opponent will be Cory Stephens of Edmonton. One of the top fights on the card will feature Vancouver’s Joe Morgado going up against Stuart McGrandle. McGrandle is the son of the legendary Billy “The Kid” McGrandle who was the Canadian featherweight champion about 20 years ago. Billy is coaching his son and Billy was also coached by his father, Scotty. This is now the third generation of fighting McGandles. Morgado is the one fighter Boyd Bayne says he would pay to see fight. “Morgado is just a little fighting machine, a big puncher, he reminds me a lot of (Prince Geprge 1960s star) Harold Handlen,” said Boyd Baine. “You’ll just love what you see. You can hit him with what you want and you’re not going to stop this boy.” John Dowe is probably the happiest local boxer on the card. Dowe has had trouble getting fights in the recent past but will be on this card. “John’s only had five fights, but he pays attention and works hard. I’m looking at possibility of dropping him down to 132 and fighting him in the open class. Nobody wants to fight him as a novice fighter, they all think he should be in the open class,” said Bayne. Dowe will fight Brian Conrad from Grande Prairie. Conrad is 25 years old and is 3-1. He is also a novice Alberta champion. Bruno Saligari, the last of the local boxers, will meet Grande Prairie’s Todd Reum. Saligari hasn’t fought for two years but has trained hard for this bout and appears to be ready. Saligari has won both the Emerald Gloves and the SIN tournament and picked up a silver in the B.C. Winter Games and the Silver Gloves. Reum has an 8-0 record and won the Alberta Golden Gloves senior novice title this year. The two other fights on the card feature James Carr of Kamloops against Cam Strachan of Edmonton in the opener and Paul Liddy of Kamloops against Edmonton’s Tom Tansem. The Spruce Capital Boxing Club, led by Todd Hatley (above), James Dowe (right) and Allan Bayne, is set to take on the best fighters Alberta can produce Saturday night at 8 at Duchess Park Secondary School. In total, six local boxers will take part in the 10-bout card. Citizen photo by Lisa Murdoch Local club joins big boys The Spruce Capital Boxing Club is in with the heavyweights Saturday night at the Prince George Citizen’s Champions for Children boxing card. The local club will be up against the Cougar Boxing Club of Edmonton, Vancouver’s Astoria Boxing Club and the Lethbridge Boxing Club. The Big Three will be joined by boxing clubs from Grande Prairie and Kamloops, in providing competition for the Prince George boxers. Of all the clubs, the Astoria Boxing Club is probably the best known. Ringleader George Angelomatis, a prominent Vancouver lawyer, has been involved with the club since 1977. Prior to that, Angelomatis was a Lower Mainland boxer of some repute. Angelomatis said he has had "too many provincial champions to count” but could remember the Canadian champions to come from his club. The list (Kevin Howard, three times; Dale Walters, four times; Geronimo Bie, twice; Manny Sobrol, twice; and once each for Randy Galler, Lawrence Rolfe, Willie Curry, Jim Worrall, Tony Duffy, Wayne Welsh and Glen Quocksister) reads like a recent who’s who of Canadian boxing. “I think part of the reason (for the club’s success) is the boxers know a Canadian championship is not out reach. The tradition of the club plays a part, and so does the sparring they get. If you spar with a champion, you can’t help but get better.” Angelomatis see the boxing card as a superb event. “It’s going to be a real good show. You’ve got all the Alberta tough guys and some of the best from B.C.” While singing the event’s praises, Angelomatis was reluctant to go too far. “I don’t want to say this card is going to be better than the Golden Gloves, ’cause that would pan our event, but I like matched fights better.” Notables’ quotable quotes Saturday’s Champions for Children boxing card has elicited a number of quotable quotes from the participants. Here is a list of some of the more notable: Edmonton coach Ray Higgins on the Bayne-Pasek bout — “It’s a great fight for a main event. You’ve got guys on this card who will be nine or 10 fights better (than the pros) you see on TV. . . . Outside of the nationals we’ve never been involved in a card the calibre of this one. I really think this card is comparable to the nationals.” Card promoter Doug Martin — “I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect to have a fighter on the 1992 Olympic team. Prince George has had a person on the Olympic boxing team every year since 1964, and I don’t see the next Olympics as being any different. “With that in mind we’re going to give these local boxers the best competition we can find. In the process we also hope to put on one of the best boxing cards Prince george has seen. “Our athletes in all sports have a long way to travel for competition, but for boxers it’s particularly bad. In other sports, the athletes at least get some home games. Our local boxers almost never get the opportunity to fight in front of the home crowd.” Boxer Todd Hatley — “It’s been six years since I fought in my home town. “I don’t care what it takes, I’ll go to war or I’ll box. ... I guess what I’m saying is I’ll do whatever it takes to win.” Coach Boyd Bayne — “This is shaping up to be an excellent card. What more can I say.” On Joe Morgado — “Joe is certainly one to watch. He’s a fighting machine. He always comes to fight so this should be one bout to watch. “Every fighter is a champion in his own right. Every boxer on this card has won a provincial level championship at least.” On what fans will see — “Punchers. All our kids can punch.” Prince George coach Todd Alain — “Our guys are ready. There’s been some pretty rough sparring (lately). Allan (Bayne) doesn’t know the meaning of the word backwards. And we can’t even put the Dowe twins in the ring together. They’ll just try to kill each other. “The Dowe twins couldn’t even walk straight when they showed up at the gym about three years ago. It's amazing that James went to the nationals after only two years boxing. I still can’t believe how much he’s improved.” Coach George Angelomatis (Astoria Boxing Club) — “I don’t want to say this (card) is going to be better than the Golden Gloves (at Astoria), ’cause that would pan our event, but I like matched fights better (than the provincial championships).” Citizen continues tradition The Prince George Citizen is breaking new ground and continuing a long tradition at the same time. The Citizen’s Champions for Children boxing card slated for Saturday night at 8 at Duchess Park Secondary School is a first for the newspaper, but continues a tradition dating to the turn of the century. Amateur boxing’s premier event, the Golden Gloves, began as a newspaper-sponsored event. The Chicago Tribune first involved itself with boxing near the turn of the century, when the paper instituted a newsboys tournament. Back in the days when newsboys had to fight for their street comer, a boxing match pitting Chicago’s cream of young manhood was the logical extension. From there, the tournament became open to the best amateur boxer around, and the Golden Gloves were formed. The Tribune remained involved for more than forty years. B.C.’s Golden Gloves started with virtually the same newspaper involvement. The Vancouver Sun was a major sponsor of the B.C. Golden Gloves from as early as 1938. In promoting Champions for Children, the Citizen is not only helping to promote some of this city’s best athletes, but also lending a helping hand to charity. “I’m really proud of our staff,” said Citizen publisher A1 McNair. "Everybody from the pressroom, to the circulation department, to the business office, to composing, to adverstising and editorial has donated their free time to help make this an event we can be proud of and be of benefit to the Child Development Centre.” McNair said projects like this is what "make the Citizen a great community newspaper.” One of the reasons the Citizen got involved in promoting boxing was the lack of recognition the local athletes were receiving. “These kids (boxers) were not getting the support they deserved from anywhere else. We’ve got top athletes here and we saw this as a way the Citizen could help,” said McNair. McNair said he saw the Citizen’s role, "whether it be boxing or the Iceman, or the Barracudas, or baseball or hockey” as giving all the athletes of Prince George "the opportunity to achieve a higher profile.” Duchess Park Secondary School Saturday, 8 p.m. RED CORNER WEIGHT BLUE CORNER Bout 1 James Carr 156 Cam Strachan Kamloops Edmonton Bout 2 Bruno Saligari 165 Todd Reum Prince George Grande Prairie Bout 3 Paul Liddy 147 Tom Tansem Kamloops Edmonton Bout 4 John Dowe 139 Brian Conrad Prince George Grande Prairie Bout 5 Joe Morgado 125 Stuart McGrandle Vancouver Edmonton Bout 6 Manny Sobrol 156 Cory Stephens Vancouver Edmonton Bout 7 INTERMISSION John Flewin 200 Peter Petrik Prince George Lethbridge Bout 8 James Dowe 139 Kelly Crowell Prince George Edmonton Bout 9 Todd Hatley 156 Curtis Hatch Prince George Lethbridge Bout 10 Allan Bayne 147 Ron Pasek Prince George Edmonton