CARL Dickens, a former professional boxer from Redditch, hopes his recently-opened Wallop Boxing Gym can become one of the biggest in the Midlands.
Dickens retired from the sport in June 2018 with a 9-4 professional record only to suffer a severe neck injury later on which required surgery.
However, while Dickens was on the road to recovery, the Redditch fighter had an epiphany to open a gym in his hometown for children struggling with behavior problems and autism.
Dickens said: “It’s like a movie, I started late in the game and now I’m a former professional boxer and big ticket seller in Redditch and now I’ve got my own gym.
“I retired and had a freak injury, I had a herniated disc in my neck which shot back and put pressure on my spinal cord and resulted in an emergency spinal fusion operation.
“Usually that will happen in a horrific car accident or a nasty fall but I literally woke up with it, all the hits to my neck and years of being punched in the face for a living fast-tracked the process.
“It would have happened to me in later life but while I was in hospital I had an epiphany to open a gym for children who are struggling in my hometown.
“It took me a long time to change my lifestyle around until I found boxing, I rang up people I knew and, once I was I able to start walking again and got my balance back and made a full recovery, it just went from there.”
Dickens put every penny he had into the gym and already has 14 carded amateur boxers, with three of the fighters diagnosed with ADHD, competing across the country through the gym’s boxing club.
Dickens added: “A good friend of mine Joe Lockley and the Bright Star team in Shropshire mentored me to set me on the path that I’m on today and I opened the gym from scratch, it was just a shed of a building.
“I started off with hardly any money in the bank and bit-by-bit through sponsorship, grants from Sport England, the Open Foundation and every penny I had to my name I built Wallop Boxing Club.
“The gym was opened up specifically for children who are struggling with behaviour and SEN with an amateur boxing club on the side.
“I’ve only been open for five months but the growth has been mental, we’ve now got an amateur squad, the lads are already out fighting.”
And Wallop Boxing Club director and lead coach Dickens also wants to bring the sport to every school in Redditch to help children with behavior problems and special education needs (SEN).
He said: “I’ve had a meeting with the Abbey Stadium to hold the first amateur boxing show in Redditch in 10 years in April to bring the community together.
“I’ve also set up my own alternative provision using boxing, mentoring and education to send kids on the right path, kids like myself who were expelled.
“Our aim is to bring boxing back into every school in Redditch and help as many young children who are struggling as we can through boxing, mentoring and education.”
Dickens, along with experienced coach Daz Long, has big plans for the future and eventually hopes to have the first-ever stable of professional fighters from the town.
Dickens said: “I’m hoping to be one of the biggest amateur boxing club’s in the Midlands and I’m also doing my professional boxing badges, eventually I’ll have the first-ever professional boxing stable in Redditch.
“We want homegrown talent to go through the ranks competing on Sky Sports.
“Between me and Daz, we’ve had over 100 amateur and professional boxing bouts between us, we’ve got a hell of a lot of experience to pass onto these kids and a lot of patience, relatability and understanding to help them along the right path.
“My aim is to mentor as many kids as I can through my own experiences, if you work hard and stay positive then positive things will happen.
“I was in a dark place and I pulled myself out of it and this is what I’ve achieved, I never thought it was going to get this big and it’s only going to get bigger.”
For more information about Wallop Boxing Club, located in the heart of Redditch on Smallwood Street, visit: wallopboxingclub.co.uk
