By Graham Cook
Photos by Graham Cook
Money raised at Woodwards for Downtown Eastside boxing gym
Punches were thrown for a good cause Wednesday night in the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. The event, Restaurant Rumble 2012, was put on by newly formed group Aprons for Gloves, and benefited the creation of a boxing gym in East Vancouver which will exist, in part, to keep at-risk youth off the street and in organized sport.
The competition saw service sector employees from all over the lower mainland spend the past three months in training and trying out for the chance to fight in front of the sold out theatre. To compete, each person had to fill a quota of $2,000 in donations. Finally, 28 competitors were chosen, and literally traded their aprons for gloves on fight night.
The event featured 14 fights, the first eight of which were undercard fights consisting of three one-minute rounds with fighters wearing protective headgear and winners being presented with medallions. The next two bouts were in the same format, except with rounds last twice as long and were recognized as sanctioned amateur fights. Finally, there were four main event fights for the Aprons for Gloves championship “of the world” in different weight classes. Due Combsport, British Columbia Combative Sports Association, rules, these fighters were allowed to take place without protective headgear and had a “professional” feel.
These co-featured events had fighters doing full-length ring walks accompanied with music, an entourage, and various theatrics. One fighter went as far as having one of his backers dress up as infamous boxing promoter Don King, complete with crazy hair and gold chain. Though each bout brought huge responses from the capacity crowd, these main events were fan favourites.
In the first title fight, “Sugar” Shay Washburn took on Kaitlin Daur in a women’s junior lightweight bout, with Washburn taking the victory by way of unanimous decision. This was followed by a super featherweight bout between Chris Cho and Romano Castillo, which ended with the judges awarding Cho a victory. Cho proceeded to announce that he was dedicating the fight to his friend, Nick Hamilton, who had died in a car accident two years earlier. Chen-Wei Lee then fought Kristofer Betts at middleweight, and though the decision was originally read as Betts being the winner, the error was corrected with Lee taking home the belt. In the final fight of the evening Simon Kaulback took on Chris Dzaka at light heavyweight. With the crowd cheering to near-deafening levels, fan favourite Kaulback knocked out Dzaka in the third round. Though there was brutality in the ring, all fights ended with a sportsmanlike handshake, usually accompanied by an exhausted hug.
After the event had ended, coach Jordan Bowers commented to The Peak that it was “one of the best boxing events [he] had ever seen, even for pro fights . . . one of the sleekest productions.” Fighter Steve Da Cruz, between being congratulated for his effort despite his loss, described the experience as a positive experience and added that he would continue on boxing. Conversely, just minutes after their fight against each other, fighters Dennis Brock and Matt Lautsch took a moment to announce their retirement from competition to The Peak. They were in good spirits with each other despite a few instances where they hit each other after the bell, which was cleared up as Brock explained that neither of them “had heard a bell all fight, start or end” due to the adrenaline and volume of the crowd.
A referee and judge for the evening Dale Walters, who took home a bronze medal for Canada at the 1984 Olympics and is most known professionally for his 1986 bought against Tony Pep, stated, “I thought it was awesome, the fights were great. . . . Some of the fighters didn’t have a lot of experience and you could see that but they were still great fights.” He went on to say that, “it was great to see a little bit of a boxing comeback.”
Though Dave Schuck, the head trainer for the new gym, could not be reached for comment, he seemed to be in good spirits throughout the event. During training, he reinforced the importance of organized sports in a young person’s life. He added that he was much more concerned about what kind of people his young charges would become rather than what kind of fighters they would be. If a youth is unable to pay for the low fees that the non-profit charges, he runs a chores program where they can work off the debt in order to demonstrate that something can not be gained for nothing.
The event was deemed so successful by the City of Vancouver, that Mayor Gregor Robertson proclaimed July 25 as the official Aprons for Gloves Day.
