Unstoppable a Summer Success! Our club was happy to hold our second amateur boxing event of 2007 on Saturday, June 9th at our historic Hungarian House Arpad Hall and this promised to be the largest show we’ve had in a long time as all the scheduled fights held true with nary a cancellation.  Thank you to all the clubs who were true to their word and attended the event and had to stay long into the night to fight their boxers!  And thank you to the Boxing Ontario officials, as well as all of our volunteers, coaching staff and fighters for making the night a huge success.  The night of action featured 18 bouts with 12 Atlas boxers participating in three periods of Olympic-style boxing action. Although we have DVDs available of all of the fights our boxers had that night I will still go into a brief synopsis of all of our fighters in action at this event.  The night started off for our club as newly arrived to Atlas, Georgios Filtsos, took on former Atlas product, Shae Bertrand, now of the Triumph boxing club in Peterborough in a heavyweight battle between two fighters who had not fought in a long while.  In the rust match of the night both fighters battered each other with haymakers and they became more and more reckless and less and less defensive as the fight wore on.  With Donnie Clarke Sr. in his corner Georgios was able to make a decent fight of it despite only training for a couple of weeks, but in the end he lost by a split decision.  Congratulations to Georgios for being determined to get into a fight and getting into a good one too! Next up for us was David “the Fighting Fossil” Booth, who took a rematch with the one and only man remaining in Ontario willing and able to take him on, Jim Dimitrowski of the Motor City boxing club in a rematch.  Previously both these combatants had squared off against one-another and Dave was able to pull out the close victory over Jim, who frustrated Dave before by holding him and pushing.  Expecting the same tactics this time around Dave was prepared and able to keep Jim off of him for the most part and land one or two good punches before he was smothered by Jim trying to hold on.  The fight wasn’t particularly pretty, but was a clear and definitive win for Dave who improved his record to 5 wins, 1 loss (at the 2006 Ringside Championship) and remain undefeated in Ontario and Canada .  Congratulations to the Fighting Fossil for another determined win! In the last fight before the first of two intermissions featured for the first time on an Atlas event the determined Mark “the Mantis” Colucci who worked his way toward fighting on our show by scoring a determined victory over Mohammed Awad of Tiller’s on the KAYO boxing event in Chatham recently.  Mark was in for another rematch as he climbed the ropes into the ring aginst Mike Brock of the Steeltown boxing club in Hamilton, an opponent he had clearly beaten in their first bout.  To the credit of Brock and his coaching staff at Steeltown they came prepared for Mark and didn’t make it easy for him.  Even though Brock tried to stand with Mark and exchange punches he quickly began to fall behind in punches landed and Mark was able to keep up a fast pace for the whole fight.  Mark took the rematch in another clear unanimous decision victory.  Congratulations! The first fight after the intermission had our hard-working and greatly improved Priscilla Trompowsky facing off against Renall Minot of the Newsgirls boxing club in her fourth fight of her career and hoping to pull out her first win.  In the first round Priscilla established herself with straight punches, of which a blistering right hand would land again and again on Minot who’s only answer was to swipe at Priscilla with a slapping left hook.  The fight went on for only a round and a half which saw Priscilla’s attacks being foiled only by that massive slapping left hook that would throw her off balance, but that was also too obviously a slap for the referee not to notice.  By the middle of the 2nd round Minot had already had two points taken off as warning not to slap, so when she did it again the ref had no choice but to disqualify Minot.  Not the most satisfying first victory for Priscilla, but her first win nonetheless and a reason to keep training hard and improving her skills.  Congratulations! Next to step up for Atlas, and in his first amateur fight ever, young Daniel Livshits took on Mohammed Asghar of the Bramalea boxing club, who had had his first two fights just recently and entering his third.  Daniel didn’t let anything faze him as he quickly established his whipping left hook, that didn’t seem to miss every time Asghar tried to come in.  In that first round Daniel looked very impressive as he dominated his opponent with boxing skills that his opponent didn’t possess.  Unfortunately, due to school obligations, exams and projects for the end of the year Daniel didn’t have a chance to train as much as I would have liked for this fight, but because he wanted this fight so very bad and did everything in his power to train and study at the same time he more than deserved his chance.  So in the second round this lack of conditioning started to show as the fight went from a display of boxing skills to a slugfest as both boxers started to stand and throw more and more.  In the second round Daniel took an undeserved 8-count from the referee which served to fire him up for the end of the round, before which he gave Asghar an 8-count of his own to avenge himself.  The third round was a sloppy one for Daniel as he had very little left in him except to survive but his conditioning couldn’t get him to the end of the round as the ref called a halt to the bout near the end of the last round.  Daniel has great boxing skills and now looks to add the conditioning necessary to keep using them for a whole fight, look for better and brighter things from this up-and-coming young lightweight. In his second fight after losing by disqualification in his first fight at the past tournament Christian Arambulo entered the ring against the fiery Christopher Hall of the Sully’s boxing club.  The fight was a mess from the beginning as Christian tried to evade the wild haymakers thrown by Hall, who right away started getting frustrated by missing and only turned up the intensity.  With a wild fighter like this Christian had to strike after the miss and use his boxing skills to put him in the right place to counter-attack, but in only his second fight this didn’t work out quite as often as I would have expected.  And with a bad attitude during clinches and breaks Hall didn’t endear himself to anyone and proved himself to be a wild slugger, but was able to be much more aggressive than Christian and somewhat busier throughout the fight.  Christian was never hurt or in any trouble during the fight, but was too busy trying to stay away from the haymakers to mount much of an offense and after three rounds the judges declared Hall the winner.  Christian was back in the gym right away and working hard to improve his skill and reaction, we expect to see more and more good things from this young and promising fighter. The last match before the 2nd intermission featured Atlas sweetheart Laura Miller, who has been training hard every day, often twice a day, with head coach Adrian Teodorescu, in a rematch against the tough Amanda Gallimore of the Newsgirls boxing club.  Much like the first time thru Laura was able to dominate the action, but to her credit Amanda came to fight and never backed off even when she was losing the exchanges.  Laura was able to get off her punches and land regularly, but sometimes had to do it moving backwards, and was able to clearly win every round.  Laura won by unanimous decision and improved her unbeaten record to 3 wins and 1 Exhibion and is looking to move down in weight to increase her chance of fighting.  Congratulations! The first Main Event of the evening featured our own “Crazy” Dan Caron who has been working hard as a personal trainer at the Dunfield Club at Yonge&Eglinton and has become a coach in his own right faced off against canny Russian veteran Eugene Biloumenfield of the European boxing club, who is rumored to have more than one hundred amateur fights, but is now part of the Masters category having already turned 35 yrs. of age.  The three round fight was close from the beginning as Eugene tried to use boxing skills to stave off the determined attacks that Dan launched.  The first two rounds were close with Dan putting together good combinations, but being a little off balance when lunging with his punches and wasn’t always able to keep Eugene from scoring with one or two clear punches in the aftermath.  The third round started off with a bang as Dan landed a massive uppercut at the end of a combo, but then got over-anxious to throw another one and lunged right into a solid overhand right that put him down on the canvas.  To his credit he got up right away and continued the fight and was able to stay out of harms way for the rest of the round, but definitely didn’t win that one or the fight as he lost by unanimous decision.  Dan has had to assume many roles to survive as a boxer and personal trainer and has to find consistency in his boxing training that has been lacking.  Dan will be training hard this summer to be ready for the fall boxing season and we look to see an improvement in his overall skills and training. Atlas also had a female boxer in the Main Events of the evening by the name of Katherine Hall, who also has been training hard with Adrian and ready to avenge her robbery loss a couple of weeks ago at the KAYO boxing event in Chatham against Aimee Willimot of the KAYO boxing club, in a rematch on Atlas home turf.  Much like the first fight Kate was relentless, she kept punching for nearly the whole fight, sometimes even to her detriment.  Aimee had more than twice as many fights as Kate and her experience did help her to try to adapt to Kate’s attack a little, she wasn’t quite as overwhelmed as the first time.  But only in the first round could you say the fight was close, Kate couldn’t hit as hard as Aimee and it showed, after all the only punches that landed on Kate were haymakers that were exchanged for two or three punches on the way in.  Kate was the more aggressive fighter, threw many more punches and landed more than twice as much as Aimee, who could only respond with wild haymakers that got slower and weaker as the rounds progressed.  In the end, Kate scored her first victory in front of an Atlas crowd after being robbed here before and avenged her last two losses with a determined victory.  Congratulations! In an open class exhibition rematch between our Paul Keeler-Lavin and Koosha Nikaeen of the Whip boxing club in Waterloo the two combatants put on a great display of boxing skill and tactics.  Having won the first time around, Paul was ready and willing to try some new things and did a good job of bullying the other fighter when he needed to, while boxing the rest of the time.  Paul did a good job at staying busy and making a fight out of an exhibition, we look forward to seeing this bright young boxer continue to perform at a high level.  And thank you to Fitz Vanderpool who was generous enough to wait so long into the evening just to give our Pauly a chance to fight in front of the home crowd. The second Main Event of the night featured our Ron Makovoz, formerly three-time national cadet champion of Israel and now residing in Toronto and training at our club, in yet another rematch, against Steven Wilcox of the Steeltown boxing club in Hamilton, and a two-time Canadian cadet champion himself.  The first time these fighters fought it was one of the first times that Ron had fought in Canada and at Steeltown in Hamilton and won a split decision on Wilcox home turf.  The second time they fought was earlier this year at the Brampton Cup where they met in the finals match of the 57 Kg Junior category and Rony scored an impressive victory on points.  This time we did it on Atlas home turf to continue the saga, and these two are destined to meet again as they continue to be two of the best lightweights in Canada .  The three round bout saw Rony using his speed and skill to outmaneuver Steven, who’s only answer was to try and over power our guy.  To their credit at Steeltown, this was the best that Steven was able to do against Rony and the fight was closer than at the Brampton Cup, but still pretty clearly a victory for Ron at the end of the night.  Congratulations to Rony for his victory.  Congratulations!  Rony looks to take on the very best that the world has to offer as he applies to attend the 2007 Cadet World Championships in Baku , Azerbaijan at the beginning of September.  Help us to raise the money needed to send our one-man Canadian team to this championship, the cost will not be funded by Canadian Amateur Boxing, we need your donations to make this happen. In the final Main Event of the night our 2006 Canadian Light Welterweight champion and six-time Ontario champion, took on “Gorgeous” Andre Gorges of the Border City boxing club, also a multiple time Ontario champion and several time Silver medalist at the National championships.  These two warriors had previously fought each other on two occasions, both more than two years ago and both times Jonathan got the nod over Andre, so both were excited to fight again and see what had changed.  Both fighters had the experience of over 130 fights each to draw upon for this fight and for four rounds they went back and forth with flurries of combinations, displays of tactics and technical skills and mature determination to win.  As usual Jonathan was the relentless attacker that he has come to be known as and pressed the attack at every opportunity, as the fight wore on Jonathan was more and more successful with his attacks and in the end was able to get the victory on points after yet another high performance battle for our long-standing Atlas warrior, Jonathan Bochner.  Congratulations!