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The York Hall and how I learned to love boxing again

British boxer Anthony Joshua is the main man in boxing. (AFP / Justin Tallis)
Roar Pro
3rd May, 2017
1

Take the train to London Bridge station. Get off and walk under the shadow of the bashful Shard Tower.

Stroll all the way down and through the maze – like threads of old and newly rehabilitated streets.

Past the upmarket independent coffee shops, restaurants and boutiques. Then, finally, just as you are tired of all the self-satisfied gentrification, you will see it. Like a lighthouse beacon, calling the last of its flock home.

The place is called Manze’s. It sits on Tower Bridge Road and has done since 1913. It serves up pie, mash and eels. The pies come in one flavour and the mash in one lump. The pie is a traditional composite of pastry filled with a substantial block of minced beef.

The interior and a decent share of the patrons probably haven’t changed since King George V was on the throne. It holds time still and connects the present back to the past in a way that only the once ordinary and now special can.

When you have had your fill get yourself to the Central line and hop off at Bethnal Green. Depart the station and take a short march to the Dundee Arms. A faded old boozer with probably a million stories to tell – assuming you are willing to drink enough and are prepared to listen through the cracks in the walls.

Be sure to get your glass filled again and again with cutting edge craft beer and then carefully survey the scene.

Before you there are two factions undergoing a silent war or at least an uneasy truce. The greater majority of the punters being 20 something hipsters. They stand fully resplendent with seemingly bedraggled yet carefully coiffured beards. Their girlfriends preferring mock 1950s tea dance dresses.

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They are all exemplars of the new culturally edgy, arty East End.

Elsewhere, depleted and scattered, you will find the last threadbare flanks of a long diminished army. In single file they nail pints like shell shocked museum pieces. In an instant looking out of place and out of date like lost longshoreman at a beat poet convention.

I suppose, in time, if we hang around long enough, we must all become by virtue of our longevity an anachronism. The only other alternative being a pragmatic if absurd embracing of modernity.

If you were there last Saturday you would have seen me, leaving the Dundee Arms, six pints down. Carefully crossing Cambridge Heath Road onto Old Ford Road and a long awaited confrontation with the greyish white stone of the unbreakable York Hall.

The York Hall is a place I have wanted to visit since I was a kid. It is utterly synonymous with the proud and battered story of British Boxing. Anyone and everyone in the fight game has ultimately passed through its walls, since it opened its doors in 1929.

Threading my way through the queues I was met by an old school rent a bouncer, security guard. He asked me, airport security style, to ’empty my pockets and put the contents in the bag’. He followed it up with the comedic gambit of ‘If you’ve got any funny stuff… smoke it round the corner’. He has probably been trotting that line out twenty times a night for years.

On auto-pilot he didn’t even look up. If he had done he would have quickly realised that I wasn’t cool enough to be smoking weed and nowhere near hard enough to be concealing a blade or a shooter. But, I did at least appreciate the effort of his performance.

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Having had urgent business to attend to in the pub I entered a little before mid-way in the card. As, one would expect, of a 1,200-capacity venue, the card was a collection of debutants, inexperienced pro’s and unglamorous journeyman.

Nobody fits the role of proud journeyman like Curtis ‘The Entertainer’ Gargano (0-32-1). It was my good fortune to enter the Hall just as he began his Light-Heavyweight bout with the Ramsgate debutant Connor Gorham. Curtis is the son of the late old warhorse Des Gargano (32-87-3); a noble, tough as teak opponent, that took the likes of a young Naseem Hamed the distance.

Gorham, full of energy, unleashed multiple, fast handed combinations in the opening round. However, very little, if anything, actually got through Gargano’s steady defence. Gargano, himself barely throwing a shot in objection. As the fight progressed, Curtis stepped up his work rate a little and tried to land counters; mostly without success.

It was a good workout for the young Kentish lad against an experienced fighter that fully understood his role. Gorham won all the rounds on the referees card but Gargano was absolutely the star of the show. His solid defence, as it were, backed up by Sugar Ray Leonard style braying, Les Dawson gurning, and other showman antics.

At the end of the bout Gargano raised his arms aloft, and as well he might. He is a promoters dream. Solid, durable, entertaining and largely unthreatening to any new prospect that they may happen to match him with.

In the next bout, a Lightweight contest, 34-year-old Andy ‘Thunder’ Harris (3-44-1) played the Gargano role against another debutant, local boy Liam Dillon. It was a decent debut for Dillon who imposed himself from the first bell on the tough but limited Harris.

Although Harris was at times able to welcome the 21-year-old Chingford fighter to the pro-ranks with some well-timed individual shots. The referee scoring it 39-37 in favour of Dillon.

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The most closely fought bout of the night, was between Christos Ioannou (2-0) and Yorkshireman Craig Derbyshire (4-18-3). In what was a relatively ugly and spasmodic Super-Featherweight contest the 5’2 Derbyshire fought well against his bigger opponent. Ioannou, boxing out of Plumstead, had a dedicated and vocal local following. However, in the early rounds he was largely subdued by a fired up Derbyshire, who routinely bullied him around the ring.

Only in the final round – of this four rounder – did Christos finally break his self-imposed shackles and up his work-rate. Ioannou goes by the nickname of ‘Stos the Boss’. An alias that was shouted out in a repeat cycle by his loyal support. Hopefully he will aim to live up to this sobriquet by imposing himself more keenly in future contests.

Derbyshire, is a limited fighter as his record would testify. However, from the first bell he came forward gamely and deserved to take something from the bout. I had it scored as two rounds each on my beer mat score card. The referee begged to differ and gave it to Ioannou by a margin of 39-37.

The other notable contest concerned another debutant. This time it was another Kent lad, Lewis Syrett, with the opportunity to impress in a middleweight bout with Bulgarian Aleksander Chukaleyski (2-12-1).

Syrett started carefully and felt his way through the opening rounds. In the third he increased the tempo and began to trouble Chukaleyski with increasing frequency. As the round was reaching its conclusion he trapped the Bulgarian in his corner and tagged him with some well-timed shots.

The referee quickly intervened and handed the 28-year-old the first of what should be many victories in the pro-ranks.

As fast as Syrett’s hand was held aloft I was making my way to the exit. I have a firm belief that it is always wiser to beat the muggers to the tube station.

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On the way home, as the train rattled along, armed with one final overpriced can of lager, my mind cast its way back through the decades into stories of Dempsey, Tunney, Louis, Walcott, Ali, Frazier and Tyson.

Closer to home the legends of Ted ‘Kid’ Lewis, Jack ‘Kid’ Berg, Benny Lynch, Freddie Mills, Randolph Turpin, Ken Buchanan and all.

Tales I had learnt religiously as a boy but had allowed to lapse and die due to a general and lasting dissatisfaction with the sport of boxing. Tired of all the trash talk, corruption, alphabet titles and mismatches. For a long time now the sport only reflected itself to me in the past tense and the historical.

But, having now been to the York Hall I can see beyond doubt that boxing has a future. One that is tied unbreakably to its past.

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