There’s something very satisfying about watching people try to beat the living daylights out of each other. If that sentence seems contentious, you may want to come down and see it with your own two eyes. You haven’t really lived until you’ve seen – or been – attendees milling around in suits and evening dresses, holding champagne flutes and devouring hot dogs, as two boxers beat each other bloody in the ring five feet away.
The latest edition of OUABC’s Town v Gown featured bouts of three rounds of two minutes each. With the sports hall of Iffley Road transformed into a spotlight-strewn ring and crackling with good-natured anticipation, fighters walked out to blaring anthems like Shakira’s ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ and Charli XCX’s ‘I Don’t Care’, which rapidly dispelled any pretensions of seriousness about the event.
Haobai Chen began by securing a win over Tushar Grover in the wide-open, evenly matched middleweight bout, with Constantine Deng falling to Gareth Tan, who sealed a unanimous victory in the welterweight bout when he knocked Deng to the floor. Deng staggered back up immediately, but the damage had been done.
The last all-Oxford bout saw Barnaby Carter go up against Reuben Meller: not only did Carter have the longer reach, he also had the support of what seemed like a quarter of the crowd, who rose to their feet applauding when he hopped into the ring. By the time two standing counts had been called for Meller, who was now meeting Carter’s manic, predatory focus with the dazed wince of someone who’s been hit in the face one too many times, the referee’s decision to stop the contest seemed merciful.
The first match against external opposition came when Diego Dolgetta-Garcia (Oxford) stepped into the ring to face Pho Van An (UCL) to raucous cheers and an incredibly enthusiastic rendition of ‘Bella Ciao’ from the home supporters. Though Pho and Dolgetta-Garcia seemed evenly matched in the first round, with each fighter dishing out as much as they took, Dolgetta-Garcia had Pho on the ropes by round two after a vicious flurry of blows that Pho only dodged the worst of by clinching him. The fight came to an abrupt end when the referee deemed Pho too injured to continue; Dolgetta-Garcia raised his arms in elation as the hall once again exploded into chants of “ciao, ciao, ciao”.
A series of local derbies followed, with Lukasz Gawrys (Oxford) winning decisively over Joseph Lucas (Oxford Brookes) in the 69kg bout after a ref-stops-contest decision late in the second round. Even before the next fighter, Jonelle “JJ” Domingo (Oxford), took to the ring to face his opponent Vladislav Davis (Oxford Brookes), supporters brandished a massive Philippines flag and made their support well and truly heard. The fight would prove to be one of the better ones of the night: when Domingo nailed Davis with a precise, powerful hook inside the first few seconds to a delighted roar from the crowd, it seemed over before it really began.
Davis, however, had well and truly turned the tide by the third round, picking opportune moments to step inside Domingo’s reach and land blows that were sparse but costly. To the joy of the Brookes contingent, the bell rang on a victory for Davis as the court turned dark red with pulsing bass and a reluctant round of applause.
In an unexpected departure from the programme, the final match featured last-minute replacement Aiden Faulkner (Yeovil ABC), who had agreed the night before to the match, stepping up against Tom Wise, OUABC Men’s Vice-Captain, who had just triumphed at BUCS Boxing Championships the week before.
It’s an age-old adage to save the best for last, but it paid off for OUABC. From the second that Faulkner and Wise began to circle each other, it was apparent to even a complete amateur like me that they were a level above everyone who had gone before. They darted in and out of reach at double-time speed; somehow, still, there was a frighteningly clean weight behind every swing, even the missed ones.
By the end of the second round Wise was sending Faulkner into the ropes more often than not; before the bell rang on the end of the third the audience was leaping to their feet with the satisfied roar of a crowd who had just seen their prized horse triumph in unquestionable fashion. Despite Wise’s unanimous win, it has to be said that Faulkner was by no means bad, and in fact the match would have been worse if he was. He was very good: Wise was simply better.
But it was ironically the first fight of the night that encapsulated it all: beyond the brutality, what makes a fight great is showmanship. The lightweight matchup between Pratul Ramesh (Oxford) and Kai Smith (Oxford) resembled that between a bird and a bear more than anything else. Light on his feet, Ramesh bobbed and weaved around Smith, eventually dodging his wild blows with such ease that he barely looked like he was trying. Ramesh ducked a massive hook, and as Smith staggered forward, carried by his momentum, Ramesh did a little pelvic shimmy, a come-hither, a really-now that drew a rising murmur of appreciation from the audience, that inside six amateur minutes you could still find time for showboating.
Again Smith swung; again Ramesh dodged; again he danced. Arrogance is timeless. I found myself leaning forward in my seat. That’s what Town v Gown promised, and that’s what it delivered: a damn good show.
