Page 8 - Boxing News Magazine (January 2020)

THE BUNCE DIARIES

A NEW YEAR IN AN OLD PLA

Photos courtesy of: ALL STARS BOXING GYM

LIFE AND SOUL:
Akay [inset] will
forever be the godfather
of the All Stars gym

Lessons to T feels like the the shoulder of a fighter that nobody to stop his opponent. Sure, it’s old,
eternal smiling in the gym can remember. Chip and blurred by grime, but it is Akay and the
learn on the spirit of Mr Akay Colin, with me for the wander along unmistakeable face of Forbes. It could
storied walls I still walks the stairs, the walls, both shake their heads. The be the divisional championships that
kid is beaming, glorious in the All Stars
ring and the floor
year, possibly a hall in Tottenham, the
of the All at the old church red strip, a 10-inch plastic gold trophy year being 1983 and it being ‘that’ year
Stars gym in Harrow Road gripped by the red gloves he is still because Forbes was, from nowhere,
Akay’s first ABA champion. It was
where the club
wearing. No fancy shorts, boots or vest –
he had to build kit straight out of the club’s travel bag, a big news in our tiny amateur boxing
from ignorance night straight from the eighties. There are universe.
opened its doors dozens like that, pictures of boxing at a Akay would know what fight it was,
for another year. level that is too easily ignored or lost. but he died last summer and left behind
He is not the only There is even a picture of Akay a monument in that old church on that
dearly departed without his obligatory baseball cap, throwback road with the red door in a
Steve boxing soul in dressed all in white like a trainer tiny pocket of London that resists too
Bunce the hundreds of from the fifties, leaving the ring as his much change. That’s Akay’s place, make
@BigDaddyBunce
pictures on the middleweight Tyrone Forbes stands up. no mistake, the old church, the old ways
Voice of boxing walls at the All Stars I know Akay and it looks like Forbes in a road where buildings have been
gym. has just had a bollocking, perhaps made magic and now cost millions.
In one faded and curling colour told that winning the next round is Forbes won the club’s first title, but in
photograph there is Akay Isola, hand on not enough, perhaps told that he has 1987 Akay had two winners in Michael

8 O BOXING NEWS O JANUARY 9, 2020 w w w . b o x i n g n e w s o n l i n e . n e t