Skipping Ropes, sweat and hard graft

By Dave Green
As soon as you enter the newly repainted Islington Boxing Club on Hazellville Road, you are greeted by a soundtrack that feels oddly familiar: skipping ropes flicking, bags being pounded and pain being endured.

That, and the smell of sweat and hard graft.

The odour has had a good 25 years to settle into the mats, during which time boxing luminaries such as Commonwealth gold medallist Courtney Fry, WBU titleholder Colin Dunne and Olympic gold medallist Audley Harrison have graced the club’s floors.


Yet, as the cliché goes, you’re only as good as you’re last fight, and they have all had theirs, whatever the noises emanating from the Harrison camp about a proposed comeback.

Garv Krasniqi is the future, and the board that sits next to the gym’s practice ring suggests that at 16 years old he is “ready” to fight.

On April 1st at Bethnal Green’s York Hall arena, Krasniqi will fight in the ABA London Championships, with an eye on progressing to the national finals if he wins both his quarter and semi-final.

Krasniqi trains every day, three nights, a week at the Islington club, and Tuesday evenings at the Angel Amateur Boxing Club, with the other days filled with running and gym work.

He does all this while attending La Swap Sixth Form College.

Asked when he gets time to do the normal things people of his age do, Krasniqi smiles wryly – “I guess in the afternoons I have time to watch films, listen to music and play football, but most of my free time I spend here.”

It’s obvious that his coach, Paul McMahon, has instilled the right ethos of discipline and ambition in the youngman’s mind. Watching Krasniqi train is like watching a big cat on the hunt, he moves from bag-to-bag with a grace and power remarkable for one so young, and his eyes retain a palpable hunger as he works his routine.

“I started boxing to get fit but then moved onto contact. Boxing is good for your self-respect and for learning to respect your elders and other people. I’m one of the youngest here, the others are a bit older, 18-20, but the age goes up to 30.”

Oner Avara, the 34-year-old coordinator of the club, says “He’s got a good chance of progressing. From our experience, when you look into their eyes you can more or less tell straight away if they will box, if they will keep coming and the effort they will make when training.”

Krasniqi has been training with Avara for two years and it’s a long process to get someone newly through the door into the ring and boxing competitively.

“We start them out running and then do a bit more pad work before moving onto sparring. Once they do the sparring that’s when they realise whether they will box or not,” says Avara.

Now the club has three amateurs it considers ready to get in the ring out of a roster of 31 seniors: Krasniqi, Reece Shagourie and Carlos Moreno, all youngsters based in the area around the club.

Krasniqi says “Islington is a good club. It’s got good coaches who are friendly and do a good job of training you hard.”

Even though Krasniqi will be the only one actually boxing on April 1st, Avara is insistent that the rest of the club will be at York Hall to support him.

“These guys have been working hard for this and of course all the other kids will go down to support. It encourages others to compete when they see their mate doing so well and getting so much attention.”

Yet boxing is about more than being the best and keeping fit. Avara stresses the other aspects of the sport. “In terms of self-discipline, this is the best sport I have ever seen. Because you don’t want to get hurt you don’t need anyone to tell you to go training, you don’t want to lose. Life is full of competition and this is a smaller scale competition that will help you prepare for the rest of your life, when you go outside you know how to compete with other people and not lose your self-control.”

Krasniqi will see how much self-control he can retain when he steps in the ring on April 1st.