Welcome to the first edition of the Canberra Boxing Bulletin. It will be distributed monthly to share information about amateur boxing news, events and issues. See page 4 for more information.

Canberra PCYC has in the past hosted a tournament at least once a year, as part of the NSWABA Southern Districts regional competition.

PCYC boxers from the clubs at Tuggeranong and Turner travel to compete in other towns and this year achieved excellent results in the regional competition.

In the Southern Districts titles in August, Darren Summerrell won the Junior open 48 kg, the Senior novice middleweight (75 kg) was won by Simon Mitchell, the Senior novice light-heavy (81 kg) by Clayton Tidbury, the Senior open light-heavy (81 kg) by Mick Ninnes, and the Senior novice super-heavy (over 91 kg) by Rod Djokic. Darren and Mick also won the best junior and senior open boxer awards respectively.

At the NSW state titles in October, Gerard O’Mahoney, Simon Mitchell, Darren Summerrell and Mick Ninnes turned in strong performances against very capable opponents. This experience of state title boxing should provide a good foundation for even better results in 1999. Adam Lovelock was unfortunate in being unable to be matched at the titles.

The November "Clash of the Titans" karate championship held at the Hellenic Club was attended by a large crowd. A boxing exhibition formed part of the evening, with five Turner club boxers involved. This was well received and was good experience of performing in a large audience situation.

The Australian Medical Association recently launched another campaign to try to destroy boxing (including kick-boxing) in this country (which is their stated objective).

As one facet of that campaign, they are currently attempting to convince governments to outlaw boxing for anyone under the age of 18.

This tactic, if successful, will be followed by other campaigns designed to achieve a total ban on boxing. That might even include a law against sparring or coaching.

The New South Wales Minister for Sport has aligned herself with the AMA’s position and has already initiated a ban on under-14 boxers from competition in NSW. State & territory sports ministers at a November meeting in Canberra agreed to form a working group to examine the matter further, with the reported aim of banning all boxing competition for people under 18 years of age.

The AMA campaign (more of that below) may well persuade MPs in the Territory to start imposing unwarranted controls on our freedom to box. Lobbying of ACT politicians has begun, to ensure that MPs are given facts instead of the AMA’s fictions, and to reinforce to MPs that we do not intend to be ignored.

The average person would assume that because the AMA is against boxing, then boxing must pose a significant risk of brain damage, and that the AMA want to save people from injury or death. But that assumption would be very wrong. Medical studies have found no link between amateur boxing and brain damage.

The AMA opposition to boxing has nothing to do with health or safety. That rhetoric is just a smokescreen. The AMA is opposed to boxing because they consider it is barbaric, degrading and uncivilised.

They are of course entitled to their particular prejudice against the sport. But they want to impose their viewpoint on the whole society, and they have chosen to dress up their irrational and emotional prejudice in the disguise of medical concern.

If you asked the average Aussie whether boxing should be banned because it was barbaric, he or she would say that boxers are entitled to do what they want without interference by government. But if you inferred (falsely) that thousands of people would be permanently brain-damaged by boxing, your average citizen would start thinking that the doctors had a point.

There is a risk that people will believe the AMA campaign, because a prestigious medical body would be assumed to be objective and honest in its pronouncements.

The facts are that there is no link between amateur boxing and brain injury; and that several other sports incur much greater serious injury rates than boxing. Yet these other sports are not of concern to the AMA, since they wage their campaign against boxing for entirely ideological reasons, not for reasons of health or safety. That’s dishonesty in the extreme.

The AMA are campaigning for a ban on boxing by people under 18. No case has been made to substantiate this idea. It is a marketing tactic by the AMA to try to win their holy war by a process of attrition. If they can stop junior boxing, they hope that senior boxing will dry up because young people will have been diverted to other sports by the time they turn 18.

People who think boxing is uncivilised will complain that it’s wrong to let "children" box. The issue is whether the community should allow these personal prejudices to dictate the choices that other citizens can make.

If the anti-boxing lobby succeeds, which sport will be next to go?

The New South Wales Cabinet has approved a proposal from their Sports Minister Gabrielle Harrison to prohibit competition-level boxing or kickboxing for boys under 14. Girls and women are already totally prohibited from competition in these sports (and the ALP government has shown no signs of removing this unjustifiable restriction on women’s choice of sport).

Youths are considered responsible enough to have sex and be a parent at age 16, but the AMA and Ms Harrison claim you are not responsible enough to box till 18.

The NSW under-14 ban would not apply to coaching, learning or sparring, according to the Minister’s office. However, competition tournaments would be forbidden to allow bouts between boys under 14.

Governments have a responsibility to make decisions based on facts rather than prejudices, and should be consulting with affected parties.

But we can expect to be ignored unless we make our presence felt.

The State/Territory Sports Ministers meeting on 20 November reportedly resolved to "work towards a ban on children under 18 taking part in competitive boxing", and Victorian Premier Kennett is planning to ban women’s boxing altogether.

Further, the meeting of Sports Ministers agreed to "review the regulation of combat sports including boxing and karate".

This opens up a real risk of zealots trying to persuade Governments to ban a number of sports, or to impose such restrictions as to make them unworkable.

Sports bodies need to convince government that we are entitled to play a significant and pivotal part in any proposals that impact upon our sports. That means lobbying of MPs is essential, and the meeting called for Dec 8^th at the PCYC is intended to mobilise ACT boxers to do that (see details on page 1).

If the boxing community in Australia sits on their hands instead of fighting the anti-boxing lobby, we will see junior boxing (under 18) banned in 1999 and amateur boxing will disappear altogether by the time of the Sydney Olympics.

The ACT Boxing Control Act provides that no boxing match or demonstration is permitted unless approved by the Minister or exempted from that process by regulation.

There are no age limits in the legislation, but anyone participating in a boxing match must be a member of a body affiliated with the Amateur Boxing Association of Australia (ABUA)

Since the ABUA’s state bodies won’t register female boxers or boxers over 34 years old, this effectively prohibits men over 34 and all women from taking part in a boxing competition, or even a demonstration bout. This an un-justifiable and arbitrary restriction, begging to be challenged.

The scientific research to date has not found any link between amateur boxing and brain damage.

People who want to believe that boxing is dangerous will do so despite the lack of evidence to support their viewpoint. The Australian Medical Association’s campaign against boxing is not based on medical evidence, but on innuendo and fear. The AMA know that if they repeat a lie often enough, some people will believe it; their entire campaign is intellectually and morally dishonest.

Canberra sports physicians Mark Porter and Peter Fricker published the results of a study of amateur boxers in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine in 1996. Their research compared the neurological function of active experienced amateur boxers against an age-matched control group of men who were training in a boxing gym but not sparring or competing.

The average age of the subjects of the research was 20.5 years, and they were tested over a period of 15-18 months. At the start of the research, the average number of bouts for the boxers was 77.

The results of the study agreed with other controlled research which has consistently failed to find any relationship between amateur boxing and brain injury.

Some research evidence suggests long-term damage for professional boxers. There are major differences between the amateur and pro sports; longer rounds, greater number of rounds per bout, and the absence of the "standing 8 count" rule in most professional competitions could be expected to significantly alter the relative risk of brain injury. But the evidence even for professional boxing is far from clear.

A fundamental weakness in a lot of past research studies is that the subjects of the study were not tested and retested over time. If a boxer has a poor result on a particular type of test, you need to know whether that result represents a deterioration over time or whether the person would always have tested poorly irrespective of their boxing experience. That requires testing and re-testing over a period of time, preferably several years, which allows the researcher to eliminate the confounding effect of natural differences in individuals’ abilities.

Jockey Australia have chosen to market their "Great Aussie Jocks" range using sports personalities. The packaging features Kostya Tszyu, over the caption "the boxers boxers wear". Nice to see some positive imagery of boxing champions on an Aussie product.

The national titles for the Amateur Boxing Union of Australia (ABUA) were held in Perth at the end of October.

Results for the Seniors were as follows (winners on left):

Best overall boxer: Paul Miller (Queensland)

Best state team: Tasmania

If you have Internet access, check out the year’s amateur boxing calendar, contact addresses, links, rules, gyms, etc at the Amateur Boxing in Australia website at http://www2.dynamite.com.au/phoenix/ and bookmark it in your browser

The present editor is Tony Whelan, who relies on other people (like you) to provide news, views, and opinions.

The bulletin is focused on people in the Canberra area involved with or interested in amateur boxing.

The bulletin aims to share information about amateur boxing. Material about professional boxing, kickboxing and martial arts is also welcome, preferably with a local slant. Material considered by the editor to be defamatory or offensive, or lacking relevance, will not be printed.

Material for publication needs to get to the Editor by about the 21^st of the month. Publication is the 1^st day of each month.

Or leave material marked for attention Canberra Boxing Bulletin, at the PCYC offices in Turner or Tuggeranong.

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