How we can punch above our weight

Mar 26 2008 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

Glenn McCrory’s ambition is to make a North East gym home to the world’s best boxers. It seems unlikely but, says Stuart Rayner, he has done it before

AS a goal, it sounds pretty fanciful. “My ambition’s to make sure my club’s the best in the world.” But then, when you have gone from training above a fruit shop in Catchgate to be champion of the world, you are bound to believe in fairytales.

Glenn McCrory has already written one, when he outpointed Patrick Lumumba on June 3, 1989, in Stanley. Now the 43-year-old is investing in local youth to produce a sequel.

As the North East’s only world champion, the former IBF belt-holder knows how difficult it is for a youngster from this part of the country to reach boxing’s pinnacle. More importantly, he also knows it can be done.

Since opening his International School of Boxing in Newbiggin Hall, Newcastle, 15 months ago, McCrory has already started to churn out fighters from a city which should have produced plenty but has not. Mark Clauzel, a 23-year-old from Newcastle, has graduated into Frank Maloney’s stable and McCrory believes plenty more will follow. So successful has his operation been that Chevyside has been earmarked as a training venue for 2012 Olympians, and a second gym is planned to open in Gateshead before the year is out, along with offices in the west end of Newcastle.

It all adds to the picture of a man restless for success a decade and a half after hanging up his gloves. “I’m determined to make sure Newcastle becomes the number one place for boxing in Britain. It’ll happen,” he says. “My ambition is to be the best in the world, it has been since I was a kid. My ambition’s to make sure my club’s the best in the world and what we do is the best in the world. There’s lots going on. I’m doing best to try and make sure we bring faces and names here.”

Most of those names and faces have come from Latin America and particularly Cuba, the country which dominates Olympic boxing podiums every four years. Cubans Alberto Gonzales and Alberto Perez were recruited as coaches from the start and the flow of talent has not stopped since.

“I’ve already got Mexico, Colombia, Cuba interested in coming to the North East for the 2012 Olympic Games so as far as boxing’s concerned it’s going to be a very much Latin American feel,” McCrory says. “Already we’re getting great inroads with those countries. The Cubans are part of Newcastle, Cuba only deals with Newcastle.

“It’s very important for me to see other kids doing well but what’s really important is that my kids are up against them. We asked the best to train the best and that’s what happens. It will work. We will have kids from the North East at Beijing (for this summer’s Olympics), which I think we’ve had something to do with through the publicity and helping generate stuff in the North East. Most of the kids on the 2012 team will be from Northumbria.”

Another famous name to aid McCrory’s cause is fellow former world champion, Steve Collins. The “Celtic Warrior”, who defeated Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank during a golden era for British boxing, brought a team of Irish amateurs to fight McCrory’s Northumbria in Gosforth this month.

The Dubliner admits he is equally bemused as to why Newcastle has not produced more champions.

“I don’t know why boxing has never taken off here because there’s so many good fighters from Newcastle,” he says. “It’s got the boxing mentality. It’s a good town, a tough town in the right way. In football they play hard, rugby they play hard and boxing they play hard. It’s a really down-to-earth city, which is the type boxing usually thrives in. They keep producing good fighters but they should produce more. Maybe they are and we’re just not hearing about them.”

Collins is impressed, if not surprised, by McCrory’s work and expects his early products to head a conveyor belt of talent produced by his friend from Annfield Plain.

“Glenn has done so much for the game,” he says. “Because he’s Glenn McCrory, because of what he’s done, he has the respect of everybody.

“He has the knowledge and he knows what it takes and what it is that makes this game work. What he’s done here is fantastic.

“Glenn’s producing young contenders already. It is a great sign of success and hard work. Glenn’s working hard and succeeding. It doesn’t stop when these kids come through. There’s kids coming and going all the time and in five years’ time he’ll have a new batch.”

If their mentor could do it from a pokey little gym with no toilet or shower, the odds have got to be on McCrory’s protegés writing another fairytale for him.