Remembering Jimmy Neill and Larry Darbyson
Boxing coaches Jimmy Neill, pictured above, and Larry Darbyson, will be remembered at a fight card Friday at the Merritton Community Centre.
Two Niagara boxing coaching legends will be honoured this Friday when the St. Catharines Boxing Club hosts its 28th Annual McGibbon Gloves Friday at the Merritton Community Centre.
The night will include a dedication to former coaches Jimmy Neill and Larry Darbyson who both recently passed away.
Neill, who started boxing in his native Ireland and competed for the British Army, had more than 350 amateur fights and boxed until he was almost 40.
When his boxing career was over, he started the Port Dalhousie Boxing Club. He found a space above the Port Dalhousie Legion and received permission to run a boxing club there.
He coached for more than 20 years at the club and produced several outstanding boxers, including Frenchy Langlois, Dave Morris, Eddie O’Brien, Mike Gorman, Danny Barber, Danny Fionne and Jerry Friesen.
Neill also shared his boxing knowledge with other clubs in Niagara.
“You always went out and helped out other clubs. That’s boxing,” he said in a 2018 interview with BPSN. “I used to come to here (St. Catharines club) to help fighters and work out with them.”
Neill loved everything about the sport and how it shaped young people.
“It makes a man out of you,” he said. “You don’t go around beating up people. Someone wants to fight you in the street bring them up to the boxing club. I would let them get in that ring and I guarantee they wouldn’t come back again.”
Neill, who was inducted as a Niagara Boxing Legend in 2016, coached Morris from 1975 until 1984.
“He was a great coach,” Morris said. “He was more than a coach, he was there for us. He was phenomenal and he was a man with integrity.”
His coaching skills were legendary.
“He took Jerry Friesen and in two years had him fighting for a Canadian title.”
Morris also remembers Neill coaching Mark Timoteo, who had a physical handicap.
“He got him to the gym and he could barely walk and he started running with him slowly every night. Months and months went by and before you knew it Mark was running a marathon.”
Wherever Morris fought in North America, people would ask who taught him how to box and everyone knew Neill’s name when he said it.
“He was technically unbelievable and everywhere I went they praised him for who he was and the talent that he had. And he shared it with us. He never held it back.”
Darbyson, a Hamilton native who lived in St. Catharines, coached out of the Port Dalhousie Boxing Club from 1980 until 2004. He trained Steve Gallinger, Danny Thomson, Rob Metsala and Paul and Willie Benard to name a few.
His career highlight was watching Gallinger winning the senior national championships for the first time.
“It was a well-fought, hard fight and he fought a boy from Welland,” he said in a 2015 interview prior to his induction as a Niagara Boxing Legend. “It was a great moment.”
Boxing was a lifelong passion for Darbyson.
“I love the technical aspect, the discipline involved, the trust that a coach and boxer develop and I had a lot of fun going to boxing events.”
Darbyson’s boxing trips to the northern part of the province were always related to fishing.
“We used to always fish our way up and fish our way back and make a weekend out of it.”
Gallinger loved Darbyson as a coach.
“My best memory of Larry is he believed in his fighters more than we believed in ourselves. He would always put us in fights where we didn’t think we stood a chance and we would win.”
Darbyson coached Gallinger from the ages of 15 to around 20, including when he won a silver medal at the under-19 world championships in 1992.
“He was awesome. Larry was the best and he loved everybody. He was like a father to us. He had patience, he invested so much time in us, he took us on trips and every other weekend we were in Sudbury, Thunder Bay or down in the States,” Gallinger said. “He invested time in training camps up north and he probably even had some troubles back home with that because he spent so much time with us.”
He described Darbyson as the epitome of an athletic coach.
“I think he had a soft spot for a lot of the boys because a lot of the fighters came from broken homes or they were angry kids. Larry embraced those kinds of kids and gave them the affection they weren’t getting at home.”
Doors for the Oct. 20 boxing card open at 6:30 p.m. and boxing starts at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. For more information, call 905-988-1244.
Featured fights are: Pat Ryan vs. Terry Maisonneuve; Cam McGean vs. Brett Merker; Stephanie Gicante vs. Megan Reynolds; and, Laurenn Landry vs. Maddy Derosa.
Also featured on the card are Dylan Maisonneuve, Gavin Freel, Steven Dwyer, North Toms, Charlie Ryan, Marcel Baptiste, Aashir Raja, Josh Erb, Mark Ryan, Bobby Haynes and Riley Willis.
