Greg Black named a Niagara Boxing Legend
Greg Black’s boxing career was short-lived.
The 69-year-old St. Catharines native was friends with boxers, Dennis McNeil, Sr. and Dennis McLeod, and decided to take up the sport when he was 30.
“I grew up watching Ali and I had an interest in it. I was hanging around with those guys and I trained with one of them a little and he showed me stuff at Davis Hall,” the Wainfleet resident said. “At 30, I thought it was now or never so I decided to try it and I did. I had a cup of coffee, I had four fights and I loved the sport.”
But there were too many other considerations for him to continue in the sport.
“At that time, I was married, I had three kids and I had a hobby farm with five horses. As much as I loved it, I couldn’t keep it up. I couldn’t burn the candle at both ends and I went into coaching.”
The retired General Motors coach started our coaching his sons, Michael and Jeffery, at Napper’s Boxing Club in Welland. Almost 40 years later, he is still at it and his dedication will be recognized at the Niagara Legends Boxing Show Friday, March 25 at the Merritton Community Centre.
He is stunned by the honour of being named a Niagara Boxing Legend.
“I don’t have any national champions,” he said. “It is not that I am not honoured and I am flattered but I don’t think I belong in there.”
Black helped coach prominent fighters Raymond Napper and Todd Napper, but he doesn’t consider himself the second coming of Angelo Dundee.
“I am a coach. I don’t measure success in national champions or provincial champions or Olympians, You don’t get many of those and most of those are born and not made,” he said. “I have had a lot of kids who have become open fighters and had 15-20 fights, done really well and accomplished a lot. It has changed them and made them better and that is what is important. It is nice to hang a shingle and say that you have two Canadian champions but I don’t. I haven’t and I am getting to the age where I might never. But that isn’t why I do it.”
He is still at the club three or four nights a week.
“I love it. I don’t know if our club is just fortunate or if boxers in general are like this but they are fun to be with. When you coach a boxer, it is not like a hockey team. It is one-on-one and you become friends. I am not their father but I care for them and I am not going to let them get beat up. There is nothing else like it and I find it really rewarding. It keeps you young because you are out all the time and you are with young people.”
Black has loved how the sport has changed over time.
“Thirty years ago I might have been one of the biggest rednecks going saying there was no room in boxing for women and it wasn’t for girls,” he said. “And now, I enjoy coaching young women and girls because they don’t want to do it to be macho. They come and they are like sponges They are not looking to be bullies. They’re boxers and they can punch they can do it all and every bit as good as a guy but they are ladies. I think that is so cool.”
Black is hard-pressed to come up with his most memorable moment as a coach, but relishes all the memories and the friends he has made.
“I have kids up until this day that when I see them they run up to me and shake my hand or come hug me. It’s gratifying. I must I have done something or they would have ducked out and gone the other way.”
He has no plans to retire from coaching any time soon.
“I plan on doing it for as long as I can and for as long as I enjoy it,” Black said. “I enjoy it immensely and I think I get way more out of it than what I put into it.”
