Boxing: And chip butties would cap it off well

By CHRIS RATTUE at the Games

The way to soak up the atmosphere of Wythenshawe, where they've held the boxing preliminaries, is to take in its shopping mall.

There you can join in the local customs: maybe place a bet, stroll on super-slow and chat on super-high, drop a bit of litter, or purchase from the One Pound Shop.

Wythenshawe wins the prize as the most real venue for a Games event that you could imagine.

Boxing has grander plans in mind when it goes into the final rounds. For starters though, it has been in the hands of the battling little flyweight from south Manchester, aka the Forum Centre.

"I thought it would be more massive," said Auckland light-middleweight Kahukura Bentson, surveying the centre after his defeat by Junior Greenidge, from Barbados.

And the quietly spoken 23-year-old is hardly some smart city slicker, as he hails from dot-on-the-map Broadwood in the Far North.

Yet here he was at the apex of his 61-fight career, and it looked like your average Northland Town Hall.

Wythenshawe is a soccer-loving Labour area built around huge, brick estate housing, with the employment advantage of being near the Manchester Airport. Boxing is right at home.

None of your fancy High Street stores here.

The butcher cheekily haggles over the price of meat or chicken, as some of his products sunbathe on a table in the mall. He also sells hot chips, of course.

The humour is British to the core.

The fish shop entices customers with a placard stabbed through a bit of cod, pleading "Come on Girls."

No one bothered with any of that false tarting up of the Forum Centre either. The main event on the sandwhich shop menu is a sausage or bacon barm.

If it's good enough for the folks of Wythenshawe, it's good enough for the rest of the Commonwealth.

Robbie Williams and the dear old Queen (as in the band), warm up the crowd, in a boxing auditorium the size of a school gymnasium.

All this doesn't really matter to the amazing mix of nationalities who officiate, box and watch; and certainly not to any of locals perched on the foldaway chairs who managed to get into the sellout.

Outside, a character who looks straight ahead and talks via the side of his mouth, asks passersby if they've got spare tickets. A nice authentic touch of dodginess that.

Bentson says: "It's all the same to me. I never notice the surroundings or who's watching before I fight anyway.

"I'm just proud to be here."

So it's only after losing a fight he thought he had won that Bentson can take in the bright orange-painted girders which break up the monotony of brick.

Back outside, Wythenshawe is still eating barms and aiming badly at the rubbish bins.

But the Games boxing heads to a 9000-capacity arena soon.

Wythenshawe didn't sully its appearance with boxing adverts in the first place, which gets rid of the bother of taking them all down.

It won't take long to get back to the norm.

Full coverage:
nzherald.co.nz/manchester2002

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