Sports correspondent & historian with Sideline Sid

The Boxing New Zealand National Championships, to be held in Christchurch, October 2-5 2024, date back 122 years, to the first titles in Christchurch during September 1902.

Recently leafing through some of my old nationals programmes, I wondered out loud who I thought had had the most influence on our sport, in my near four decades in the boxing game.

After much thought I came up with Billy Graham. Born in the hardscrabble Hutt Valley suburb of Naenae, Billy went from a 9-year-old selling discarded record albums from the local dump, to boxing champion, to unique motivational speaker, before founding the Naenae Boxing Academy.

The reason for my final choice, was that Graham never lets an opportunity slip by to promote the sport of amateur boxing that changed his and so many other lives.

Billy Graham began life with few advantages and says on his website “I would have been born on the wrong side of the tracks, if my mates hadn’t stole the tracks first”.

Graham was taken to legendary trainer Dick Dunn Railways Boxing gym, by a Naenae police officer who was growing tired of the hyper-active tearaway.

Dick Dunn is entitled to be ranked as the country’s finest boxing coach. Dunn trained New Zealand’s first Empire (later Commonwealth) Games boxing champion Frank Creagh, and Commonwealth Games gold medalist Wally Coe, along with a myriad of national title holders.

The aspiring boxer took to the disciplines of the sport like a duck to water. Graham contested six New Zealand Light Welterweight finals, winning the national crown in 1964, 1966, 1967 and 1972.

To this day Billy Graham, is the only boxer to win the Boxing New Zealand three big prizes of the Jameson Belt (most scientific) Bill O’Connor Cup (youngest titleholder) and Parker Memorial trophy (gamest performance).

During 1967, the 19-year-old completed the remarkable feat of adding the Jameson Belt and Bill O’Connor Cup to his third Light Welterweight title, then going on to win the Australasian title.

I first met him in the early 1990s, when he arrived at the Tauranga Sports Boxing Club, as he toured the country demonstrating and selling “Billy’s Rope of Champions”.

The budding entrepreneur would take centre stage with his custom-made skipping ropes and perform at a million miles an hour.

What he was really selling was Billy Graham and boxing, with the skipping ropes then flying out the door.

Again, humble beginnings took Graham to new heights as a motivational speaker. He used his boxing and fitness background to deliver bold, humorous, and energetic performances on a worldwide stage.

In 2006, he established the Naenae Boxing Academy. The Naenae facility was set up to give back to the community the life-long values that Graham received from boxing in his youth.

From the first day that the Naenae Boxing Academy opened its doors, young people were welcomed into the same environment that helped Graham succeed in life, so many years earlier.

Today, Billy Graham, is living testament to the power of boxing to bring positive change in the communities of our country.