After unlocking his pub on a recent weekday morning, boxer Mike Strange pulls out a photocopied picture of the Canadian team from a 1989 tour of Africa.
Half the fighters in the photo are now dead, missing, drug addicts or ex-cons.
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A couple of years ago, John Stevenson, a former Canadian junior team boxer from Newfoundland, stopped by the Highland Tap to visit his old teammate Strange, a three-time Olympian at his Niagara Falls pub.
“We were telling stories and laughing when he said, ‘Did you hear that Geronimo’s dead?’ ” Strange said.
Strange was taken aback.
TO CONTINUE GO TO – http://www.torontosun.com/2011/09/01/fighting-drugs-and-death
As in September, I once again ran out of gas in the 10th & 11th championship rounds of October & November with this column, but I recovered to complete them and will unleash a few more flurries to close out the 12th and final round.
In the first week of October, Hassan N’Dam won a UD over Curtis Stevens in an eliminator for the right to challenge Jermaine Taylor who defeated aging Sam Soliman to regain the IBF Middleweight title. How Taylor even earned this title shot is another story altogether, but it is all irrelevant as he is now the champion. However he will not have too much time to savor his victory as he has assault and battery charges pending against him and an upcoming court fight that may turn out to be the toughest fight of his life, just when things started to look up for him in boxing, we wish him luck.
