Wharton Journal

Issue date: 11/13/06 Section: Insider

Wharton students have been boxing for years, some purely for the sport's unparalleled physical conditioning aspects, and others because they enjoy the competitive aspects of sparring. And every spring Wharton students collaborate with their Law School compatriots to host "Philly Fight Night," a fantastically popular charity boxing exhibition in which students from the two schools box each other in front of a crowd of over a thousand of their classmates. Despite all of this, boxing has always been an underground, word-of-mouth activity at Wharton, to the point that many students do not even know this activity exists on campus.

This is changing. The WGA recently accepted a student proposal to establish an official Wharton Boxing Club (WBC). The WBC will hold three on-campus fitness/boxing basics trainings each week under the tutelage of a professional boxing and fitness coach, Clifton Johnson. WBC members who want to learn to spar will also be able to attend Coach Johnson's own boxing gym for sparring sessions. Coach Johnson, a former professional heavyweight fighter, has been training amateur boxers for over 15 years, and can boast that a number of his trainees have won prestigious Golden Gloves amateur boxing titles, so Wharton students who choose to participate will certainly be in experienced hands. All of this will cost WBC members only $50 in annual dues.

In the past, proposals to officially establish boxing at Wharton were met with opposition due to the widely-held misconception that boxing is an unusually dangerous sport. At a WGA meeting held on October 31, WBC Treasurer Karl Liebel (WG'07) presented a number of independent medical studies demonstrating that amateur boxing is safer than many other contact sports, including soccer and basketball. "Amateur boxing is nothing like the violent blood-sport that you see depicted in movies like Rocky and Million Dollar Baby. And safety measures like mandatory headgear differentiate this Olympic sport from the professional boxing bouts usually shown on TV," remarked Alex. Of course, safety is not an issue at all for the many Wharton boxers who do the sport entirely for fitness and do not participate in sparring.

Fight Night

For uninitiated readers, Fight Night is one of the most popular annual events held by Wharton students. Featuring 8-10 matches between Wharton students and Law students, and held in the same arena where Rocky was filmed, the event raises tens of thousands of dollars for local charities. Because many of the athletes featured are not exactly in world-class fighting shape, the emphasis of the night is as much on having a wild time as on competition. For example, each fighter is escorted into the ring by an entourage of costumed classmates, while his (or her) chosen theme music is blasted over the arena's sound system. These elaborate entrances and the ensuing introduction by the ringside MC often take as long as the fights themselves.

Currently, Fight Night organizers are remaining mute about who will be selected to represent Wharton at Fight Night '07, which will most likely be held in the last week of March.

They did, however, indicate that the final decisions will be made in early spring, meaning that aspiring pugilists still have the opportunity to make themselves known and get in shape - or learn the sport from scratch, if need be.

The decision as to whether the WBC will officially host and organize this year's Philly Fight Night event, or whether it will be run as a non-Wharton event as in years past, awaits further input from the WGA and administration.

Nevertheless, the WBC will definitely have an important support role in training and selecting the student-athletes who will represent Wharton at Fight Night. Grove, now President of the WBC, is charged with fighter recruitment, and the club's Coach Johnson will make final decisions as to who will participate in the event.

"Coach Johnson's priority is to make safe match-ups between evenly-matched athletes," explained Karen Li WG '07, the VP for Recruiting of the WBC. "For the safety of all participants, students who never train with Coach are not going to be included."

The WBC welcomes both male and female students of all fitness and skill levels. Students interested in boxing, whether for fitness purposes for competitive sparring, or with an eye to participating in Fight Night, can sign up to the wga-boxing email list on Spike, or contact Alex Grove directly at groveam@wharton.

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