From what I remember today as I am writing this on 16th January 1997 the property settlement went through on our premises 20/118 Queens Rd Five Dock. As with alot of the journey even the settlement didn’t go smoothly with my lawyer taking a holiday on the day we were supposed to settle. Eventually we got it done and an army of mostly karate students sanded and painted and built to form the skeleton of what we have today.
It was slow going in the beginning. We had brought around 35 people from our previous location in Chippendale mostly karate but a smattering of boxing and kickboxing students as well. I had a boxing and kickboxing program running from 1994 but at this time was not branded. Joe’s Boxing Club almost happened by accident. In those days before Google, Yellow Pages was the dominant way advertising was done and boy did they charge! I had made the decision to do a bigger advertising nowehere near the largest you could do and that cost me $13000 for a year. I never mourn the demise of Yellow Pages they were greedy and unethical especially on the way down, however if you had a sizeable ad they offered you a free single line listing in another section. I initially put it in Health and Fitness section which was a pain as i wasn’t a weights gym so inquiries did not convert into students. Frustrated I thought I have this little boxing/kickboxing program and because there was no kickboxing section and MMA wasn’t even a thing in 1999, I choose the “Clubs- Boxing” which had probably 10 entries compared to the more than 100 that were in the “Martial Arts” section.
The phone then started ringing and I was getting just as many calls for the one line ad in boxing than i was for the expensive Martial Arts advert. As it was just the company name in the description on the one-liner I decided I better brand and thought long and hard and came up with Joe’s Boxing Club Sydney. The logo was co-designed by good friends of mine Graeme Walker and Nick Kelly. Nick Kelly around the same time started a little clothing label called “Industrie”.
I had accidentally stumbled on the beginning of the ‘Fitness’ boxing craze however right from the beginning we included sparring which was really how it all started. In 1994 with being so close to the city in Chippendale we had a lot of travellers pass through with other martial arts experience such as other karate styles, kung fu, kickboxing and boxing. I started a sparring class where we could all exchange technique which was great for my own skills as well as providing some much needed income to pay the rent. I also started to do some PT for some security guys as well and did security myself from 1994-1997 which I am proud to say i didn’t hit anyone in the whole time relying instead on voice, presence and occassionally a little lifting of centre of balance from the floor of a punter who then found themselves outside the door before they knew it and then subsquently damaging my feelings with insults hurled from the safety of the footpath.
I fiddled with Tae Bo whose videos were a TV shopping craze, a kind of fitness karate kickboxing dance aerobics mix which rose and fell within a couple of years. Billy Blanks the author had fought my good friend Paul Williams from New York in many finals at karate tournaments in the USA. Thump Boxing then moved into unit 19 next to us and were very successful initially with classes of 40+ people doing only fitness boxing before moving into delivering fitness boxing courses for the fitness industry delivering CEC points to participants. Unfortunately the owner had a large rather aggressive ego and ended up overextending and had to sell the business and name before moving on to the next fad HIIT which again was relatively shortlived. I can thank him for making me decide to not be fitness boxing per say a decision that probably saw us survive when so many came and went and basically a whole lot more fun for me.
It was around 2005 that the concept of the Black Shirt Program was born and less than 10 people had been graded to Black Shirt when we ran our first fight night in 2008 by which time the karate had exited and we were boxing alone here. I had a student at the time that worked in the Adult entertainment business and another who was a very fit gym girl as ring card girls and set the stage for our annual Black Shirt fight nights which have run every year since (except for 2011). 2005 was also when Justann Crawford (2 time Olympian, 9 times Australian Amateur champion) started training here initially in karate for 6 months or so and then in a chance meeting in the street in 2008 when we became a team in our competition coaching which lasted 16 years.
Next year marks 30 years and it is my aim to write our complete history between now and then and create an anniversary book for the occasion.
Next chapter will be our entry into real competition 2009 – 2019