Sometimes lower back in the late 1970s, future Toronto Sun sports creator Steve Buffery and his pal Steve Chalmers had been striking out at a boxing gymnasium in Rexdale, Ont., goofing around in the ring. Suddenly, they had been unceremoniously ordered out. Nobody desired to look at an untalented hack paw at every different for three rounds. But mainly, they have been tossed because a younger kid, who it stated had heaps of promise, came back from Kitchener, and the gymnasium’s owner wanted to see what the kid seemed like. The youngster appeared raw, however immensely gifted.
So much so that everyone stopped what they had been doing to look at it. The child became Lennox Lewis, who grew as much as an Olympic gold medallist and heavyweight champion. Buffery grew up a boxing wannabe. However, after becoming a member of the Sun in 1985, he did get to cowl some of Lewis’ largest bouts, as well as prizefights offering Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Floyd Mayweather, and Manny Pacquiao. He turned there for Mike Tyson’s clash with Evander Holyfield for the heavyweight name on June 28, 1997, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, while Tyson bit a part of Holyfield’s ear off.
He became there for most of Shawn O’Sullivan’s seasoned fights. In contrast, Scgh’s Willie Featherstone fought Virgil Hill for the arena mild-heavyweight title on Nov. 11, November, in Bismarck, N.D., and when Featherstone fought his archrival Roddy MacDonald, for the Canadian title in 1986.
After the combat, MacDonald’s father chased Featherstone’s manager, the late Ray Rutter, across the Varsity Arena ring, all the at the same time as Rutter screaming that the senior MacDonald was going to kill him.
Buffery also included boxing at the Olympic, Pan Am, and Commonwealth Games.
One memory of the beginner recreation that sticks out was when Nova Scotia’s Ray Downey, a bronze medallist in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, fought Hendrik Simangunsong of Indonesia in the commencing round of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Everybody thought Downey turned into a slam dunk for a medal. Still, after losing a selection, he broke down in tears, asking Canadians to forgive him, choking up even the most difficult-boiled of journalists in attendance. Buffy’s love for boxing came from his father.
Norm fought as a beginner and endured while he started out covering playing cards in the 1980s at Winchester Public School, a towel’s throw from the Cabbagetown Boxing Club, along with Neil Davidson of the Canadian Press. For years, Buffery and his Sun colleague Steve Simmons took turns documenting all of the global heavyweights’ identified bouts. The equal for the Olympic and Pan Am Games.
The boxing venue became the place to be at major Games because of a few of the quality tales. Now, 34 years after beginning on the Sun, Buffery is being inducted into the Ontario Boxing Hall of Fame alongside most of the fighters who wrote approximately, including Mark Simmons, Remo DiCarlo, Barrington Francis, Asif Dar, Syd Vanderpool, Adam Trupish, and his accurate friend Mike Strange, now a Niagara Falls town councilor.
