June 4th, 2007  Hometown Marauders  The first weekend in June saw two teams of Atlas boxers in action at two different shows, one here in Toronto and the other in Chatham, and all of this the weekend before our own home show.  The team headed to Chatham , near Windsor , in western Ontario was led by Adrian and Armand Teodorescu, with Mark Colucci and Kate Hall.  The team staying in Toronto at the Newsgirls Boxing Event in eastern downtown, an “all girls” boxing event, was led by Jonathan Bochner, Donnie Clarke Sr. and John “DJ” Laperle and featured two of our girls, Stefanie Gagliardi-Tedesco and Miranda Jollymore fighting against girls from the hosting boxing club.  The show in Toronto seemed to start and end much quicker than the one in Chatham, as both our girls were on in the first half of the show.  To add to the chaos of a lot of spectators jammed into a small space was the film crew documenting the first fight of our own Miranda Jollymore, who was ruthlessly shadowed by the cameras throughout the event.  With the pressure on, and a film crew documenting her every action, Miranda rose to the occasion, and with the help of Donnie and Jonathan was more than ready to fight her opponent, Cheryl ‘Surly’ Christensen, of the hosting Newsgirls boxing club.  According to the coaches in her corner, Miranda was able to put her skills and training together for a fast paced first round in which she was the faster and more aggressive fighter.  This continued into the second round as Miranda gave it all she had, perhaps too much, as she seemed to have expended everything before the fight was over, losing the third round clearly.  In the end what should have been scored a win for Miranda, for having won the first and second rounds clearly, turned into a disappointing and questionable loss.  Miranda showed great strength of character and determination to see her fight through and fight so well, despite all the distractions leading up to the fight.  Congratulations!  The highlight of the Newsgirls boxing event for our club came when young Stefanie Gagliardi-Tedesco took the ring against southpaw Amanda ‘Snakebite’ Gallimore also from Newsgirls, an opponent who had been previously defeated by our Laura Miller by decision.  Stefanie didn’t wait long to establish the left hook and straight right combo that she had been practicing for this fight, and when it started landing it seemed it never stopped.  Throughout the first round Stefanie was clearly in control, parrying her opponents punches and countering with her own and after the round she had energy to spare due to her hard training with DJ prior to this fight.  And at DJ’s encouragement in the corner Stefanie turned her intensity up in the 2nd round, and this led to a punishing barrage of left hook/straight right combos that had ‘Snakebite’ turning away from the action.  This led to two quick and much deserved eight-counts, coming off of vicious flurries launched by our girl meant to finish off her opponent, which ended the fight.  Stefanie won her fight by 2nd round RSC and put on an incredible showing of boxing skills and intensity.  Congratulations!  The long drive to Chatham wasn’t as long as one might have thought as everyone was able to stay entertained on both the ride there and back.  Victor Cuff was supposed to fight in this event as well, but had to pull out at the last minute due to chest pains from increased sparring and training activities in preparation for this fight, his first in over a year.  As such, Mark Colucci and Kate Hall were slated to fight, Mark in his third attempt to beat young, promising fighter Mohammed Awad of Tiller’s and Kate in the main event of the evening against Aimee Willimot of the hosting KAYO boxing club.  Previously, Mark had been shut out in an outclass loss to Mo Awad at the Ray McGibbon’s tournament, and later in a rematch on a club show Mark lost a unanimous decision.  This was his chance for revenge, and he’d been training hard and sparring with our top guys for just this reason:  to beat Mo Awad!  Mark started off the fight active and accurate with flurries to the head, about half way through the first round Mark caught Mo with a shot in the eye that disoriented Mo and led to an 8-count, but at the urging of his coach, Chris Tiller, he continued the fight.  Mark continued the barrage of punches into round two and started to switch his stance to further disorient Mo, and this worked wonders as he was able to switch up and drop a southpaw right hook/overhand left that legitimately floored Mo for another 8-count right at the end of the round.  The third round was a mess as Mo desperately tried to knock our boy out, but Mark avoided the big punches and landed some more of his own while Mo got warned for low blows, with a point coming off for that.  In the end it was a clear win for Mark, which the judges upheld in awarding him with the unanimous victory.  Congratulations!  In the Main Event of the evening, our lovely Kate Hall fought against all odds against hometown sweetheart Aimee Willimot.  And when I say ‘against all odds’, I really mean against all odds…  Kate just turned 40 yrs. of age, though you’d never think so, and her opponent was only 32 yrs. old…  Kate was upgraded to open class after only 6 fights so that she could fight Aimee who had 18 fights already…  Kate weighed in at 168 lbs. and Aimee at 178 lbs…  Not to mention the fact that Kate was the main event against a hometown favorite on a locally televised boxing event.  So the odds were against her, period.  But that didn’t faze our girl not one little bit, some of that was due to the fact that Adrian, her personal coach was there to get her ready and be in the corner as well as Armand.  After a somewhat tentative first minute of the first round that had Kate moving in and out with quick punches, Kate decided that she had nothing to fear from the sluggish Aimee who did very little punching, sometimes loading up a haymaker to throw at Kate.  Suffice it to say, that from the middle of the first round to the end of the fight Kate had Aimee up against the ropes relentlessly throwing punches that landed one in every three, and Kate threw close to 120 per round.  It was a clear win for our girl who pounded her opponent with punches from every angle almost non-stop for the whole fight.  Unfortunately the judges at ringside didn’t see the fight the way everyone else saw it, more than 30 people of that hometown crowd came up to congratulate Kate for winning the fight and console her for being robbed of the official victory.  Against all odds, Kate fought what would have undoubtedly been a TKO stoppage had the fight been a pro one, and it was a great display of the superior physical condition our Kate has achieved.  Congratulations to her as well, and congratulations again to all of our fighters and coaches for putting together an altogether successful fight weekend!