‘THE youth need to come on board and start up a boxing academies. It’s a good way to get kids off drugs and alcohol.’
This is the heartfelt plea of Empangeni’s former international boxing judge and referee, Ray Peyters (79).
Peyters was instrumental in boxing academies that produced the likes of former SA middleweight boxing champion Elijah ‘Tap Tap’ Makhathini, former two-time WBC super middleweight title holder Thulani ‘Sugar Boy’ Malinga and one of South Africa’s most gifted and beloved fighters in the 1970s and 80s, Maxwell Malinga.
Peyters said it’s important to establish sporting academies, especially boxing academies, because it instills discipline among troubled youngsters.
‘Thirty years ago every second town in this area had a boxing club. We would pull guys off the street and teach them the graceful art of boxing and how to be good citizens.
‘This would include boxers having to show academic improvements in their studies.’
Peyters, who was presented with the Boxing Premier Gold Medal Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, irritably noted that the youth of today have no desire for hard work and dedication to excel in sport.
‘Young men have become couch potatoes. A huge percentage of our young men in this town are not as active as they should be.’
With the likes of Freddie (Rafferty) Horn’s boxing academy in Richards Bay, Peyters urged someone with the necessary training or experience to start a boxing academy in Empangeni to promote the sport.
Although Peyters still has some sort of fight in him, he admits that he needs to impart his knowledge of the sport onto someone who is willing to learn and get off the ropes.
‘I have a lot of fists, but I am so-fist-icated enough,’ Peyters said jokingly.
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