Royal Guard strengthening UK boxing ties

TDT | Manama

Email: mail@newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain’s Royal Guard are exploring a showdown with the London Fire Brigade in Britain, with a return fixture in the kingdom also under consideration.

Royal Guard director of boxing Tony Davis is in London with members of the organisation’s leadership, with talks over the proposed events forming a key part of the visit.

The delegation also attended a boxing showcase at Parliament yesterday, which Davis described as the launch for a major London Fire Brigade charity event planned for November.

The fundraiser will use boxing to raise money for causes connected to the Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed 72 lives in west London in 2017.

Davis told The Daily Tribune that the trip follows a series of previous boxing engagements with the British military.

“We’ve done two with the SAS, three with the British Army at the Infantry Training Centre in Catterick, and then we’ve done four Royal Rumbles with various British units,” he said.

The Special Air Service (SAS) is an elite special forces unit of the British Army, while Catterick is a major British Army training centre in northern England.

Talks with the London Fire Brigade are now expected to focus on taking that relationship into a new area.

“We will sit with the London Fire Brigade and hopefully come up with a fixture that the Royal Guard could box the London Fire Brigade in London,” Davis said.

“Then maybe do the return in Bahrain later in the year.”

The visit to Parliament also brought Davis back to the place where his connection with Bahrain first began almost a decade ago.

The former British serviceman rushed to help victims during the Westminster terrorist attack in March 2017, with his actions later coming to the attention of His Highness Shaikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa.

That ultimately led Davis to Bahrain, where he spent seven years as the kingdom’s national boxing head coach before stepping down from the role.

Almost a decade later, Davis has returned to Parliament in his new role with the Royal Guard.

He is also overseeing the development of the newly formed Royal Guard Boxing Association, with selections for a full-time team due to begin later this month alongside referees and judges and Level One coaching courses.

“This will sort of build to identifying a full-time team,” Davis said.

The plans will then move towards another landmark in February, when the Royal Guard are set to stage their first inter-battalion boxing championships, something Davis said has never previously been held in the organisation’s history.