26 brave (or maybe stupid) students, including OUSA President Caitlin Barlow-Groome, trained for two months and raised thousands of dollars for charity to fight each other in OUSA’s inaugural Charity Fight Night.
The goal was to make a “flashy high production new event,” said OUSA Events Co-Ordinator Scotty Godsall. The event, hosted by former Highlanders prop Kees Meeuws, was black tie and the fighters walked out to the ring through vertical smoke machines with an entourage of two friends and a thirty second song of their choice. Tickets ranged from $35 to $55 and there were around 250 attendees. Each fight consisted of three two-minute rounds.
Making it a “flashy” event was a priority for OUSA so that fighters “get a really rewarding experience for the journey they’ve undergone”. The fight was sanctioned by New Zealand Boxing as an official match, with all the safety considerations that entails.
Godsall said he was happy the event wasn’t “male-dominated,” with seven female fights and six male fights.
The fighters underwent eight weeks of training with NZ Fight and Fitness. One fighter, Tom “The Tank Engine” Tremewan, said that before this event he'd never picked up a boxing glove in his life.
“Training has been incredibly fun though, and I look forward to it every day. The flip-side to that is that training for two to three hours every day for eight weeks straight takes a serious physical toll on you. I've put on 5kg since the first bootcamp started, but being so tired all the time has made me late for work for about two months straight now.”
All this training is, of course, for charity. Each fighter chose a charity that has personal meaning for them and had a minimum fundraising goal of $500. The fighters put “heaps of effort” into fundraising, said Godsall, with three of the female fighters pledged to get matching tattoos if they each hit $1500.
“The goal was to allow fighters to undergo personal physical and mental growth. It’s not all about punching each other in the head, but about building friendships and relationships. Some walked in never having boxed before, but now they can stand tall and walk out in front of a crowd of people.”
Laura “Crusher” Cairns is splitting her donations between Rape Crisis Dunedin and the Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust. As of print, she’d raised close to $900. Laura said choosing those two charities was “a no brainer.”
“Sexual violence is a massive problem in our community; both charities run life-changing and often life-saving support services”.
Alongside fundraising, Laura signed up because she wanted to get fit again. She used to be in the army and “it is super awkward when people hear you were a soldier and assume that you are fit and strong when you are actually nowadays horrendously lazy. I needed something like this to kick my butt back into it. Turns out the thought of being punched in the head in front of 300 people is a pretty good motivator.”
Tom “The Tank Engine” Tremewan also entered the fight for personal reasons. “After a long history of struggling with alcohol abuse, at the start of 2018 I decided to give up drinking for good. As part of trying to keep myself sober and not bored out of my skull, I've been doing a lot of sport and exercise. Boxing is something I'd always wanted to try, and I thought that entering this event would be a great opportunity to motivate me to undertake a physical and mental challenge while raising money for a great cause.”
He raised over $1800 for Rape Crisis Dunedin. “Working within the music industry, sexism and misogyny is sadly something you see every day, and I think the onus is on all of us to be proactive in stopping it. Run by a number of extremely dedicated workers and volunteers, Rape Crisis Dunedin are severely underfunded. It's my hope that raising some money will help an incredible organisation continue their life-saving work in our community.”