Top, young U.K fighters

Jennings is 30 btw. He's a good little boxer though but he's a bit light on the boxer, and of course he's a welter so he'd be totally outclassed if he stepped up to world level.

 

I think the truth is it's gonna be weak in a few years time but after that Britain have got virtually a full team at the Olympics instead of the usual handfull. So maybe that's the place to look....

 

Theres a 20 year old super-bantamweight called Josh Wale who is very exciting. Throws more punches per round than Joe Calzaghe and punches like a welterweight.

 

We've had this on another thread and the fact is that most people in the UK couldn't give a f**k about John Duddy but he is from Northern Ireland and therefore is actually from the UK.

 

Rendall is a really decent bloke. Here's the original intvw he did with his local rag...

Rendall Munroe’s the boxing binman with a European title belt. But, he tells Cat Turnell, he’s just a normal Leicester lad...who dreams of becoming a world champion.


At Sugar’s Fitness Gym, Rendall Munroe’s gold tooth catches the light. "You’ve got to have a dream," says the 28-year-old boxing binman, gently.

"I want to put across to kids that the biggest thing is you’ve got to have a dream in life. My dream was always boxing."

At the bodybuilding honeypot, with its weights, pills, and fading posters of mulleted beefcake Arnold Schwarzenegger, Leicester’s European super-bantamweight champ is in training.

The easygoing city son - nine stone of sprung bone and muscle - has a title defence on Friday. With three weeks leave, Biffa’s biffer is building up his "strength work". Well, he will be, just as soon as the Mercury’s gone.

"I think it’s good we’re having an interview now," admits Rendall, "I’m starting to get my name known, but I want people to know I’m still the same humble Leicester lad and I always will be."

Rendall "2-Tone" Munroe’s arrival in the big league comes 14 years after he smacked his first punch bag at the Old Robin Hood, now a derelict pub in Northgate. It was where his uncle, Dave "Sticky" Pratt, was head coach.

"My uncle used to say to my mum all the time `send him down here, he looks like a boxer’, but I was always more football and athletics. "One day I had an argument with my mum, and I went down to the gym and I let a bit of anger out on the bags, it went from there."

Rendall’s single-minded graft paid off in March, when he beat Kiko Martinez, the former European champ. Having defended his title in May, the Northfields dad-of-two is now a bonafide boxing name.

How big? International promoter Frank Maloney thinks he’s "one of the few British fighters who can emerge as a superstar over the next 18 months".

What’s more, Ricky Hatton, the champion welterweight, has even given him a few words of advice, and handed over his nutritionist’s phone number.

"I’ve said to my bosses at Biffa I could be the first world champion emptying bins," he laughs lightly. "My dad always tells me you’re champion of half the world, and I try and keep things real, I’m just a humble guy."

Brought up in Belgrave and Beaumont Leys, with his younger brother Aaron, Rendall's dad Allan and mum Helen split up when he was a kid.

Allan, a Jamaican, and a handy boxer in his day, gave up the ring to become a parent. Today, unsurprisingly, he’s one of his son’s biggest supporters and most constructive critics.

In respect, Rendall, a man not shy of tattoos, has one of his dad’s many mantras inked on his left arm "Those who try succeed". There’s another tat of a little boxing man under his nickname 2-Tone. Incidentally, it’s not a doff to his music taste. It’s because Rendall’s neither black or white - he’s both.

"My next tattoo is going to be my motto "Pain is just weakness leaving the body"," he smiles.

Ranked eighth by the International Boxing Federation, his ascendancy and multiplying fan base has seen Sky Sports bump his bouts on to the telly. And it’s easy to spot his supporters in the crowd: clusters of fluorescent yellow high visibility jackets are hard to miss.

Mention of this raises a grin: many of his fans empty bins for Biffa.

"That idea came from my driver Pete Hibbett," smiles the boxer.

Rendall left English Martyrs, where he excelled at football and athletics, aged 16, to work at a printers. He then made Doc Martens boots in Whetstone for five years before everyone was made redundant.

As it turns out, he used to work with one of Kasabian there, but doesn’t know which one.

"We’ve got mutual friends and one of them keeps saying `ask Rendall if he remembers working with me?’, but I don’t," he laughs, "I don’t remember what happened last week."

Living in a two-bed semi in Northfields, with his girlfriend Annaelisha and sons Tiela (7) and Tierell (1), his gloves and medals are mounting up to the point the couple are going to get a display cabinet.

At home, he adds, their youngest is currently teething. Rendall’s been forced to sleep in his eldest lad’s room and bed as the title defence approaches. As a result, Tiela, who’s just been signed up by Leicester City Football Academy, is kipping on a mattress on the floor.

"I’m going to dedicate this fight to him," smiles Rendall.

Like many sporty types, the boxer isn’t without his rituals: He keeps his kit in a polythene bag he got from an IT shop in Belvoir Street that has long since closed

"You can imagine what state it’s in. Even though I’ve got myself a proper bag, I always put everything in it."

Then there are his Playboy socks, a present from Annaelisha. And, before he gets in the ring, he scoffs a cheese and potato pie made by his "mother in law". Finally, his uncle Simeon will give him a cold glass of Irish moss: a boiled seaweed milkshake with brown sugar.

"It’s nicer than it sounds."

Come the Saturday morning after the fight, Rendall and mates Pike and Nugget will go for a traditional cooked breakfast at the cafe in Narborough Road, opposite The Huntsman.

"I’ve been dieting for so many weeks, I’ve not had any fried food, I’m going to have two full Englishes on a plate. After that, if Leicester are at home, we’ll go to the football. Pete won’t, he’s a Sheffield United fan. Then after, we’ll probably go out on a lad’s night out."

It’s an opportunity, he says, for his mates to bring up his legendary penny-counting. "They always take the mick, saying I’m the tightest bloke going."

Are you?

"Yeah, I’m always haggling in shops."

When he’s out he only drinks Redbull - two pints of lager is enough to send him home in a taxi.

"One guy was asking me what am I thinking about when I leave boxing," he finishes, as the interview winds up. "You know, whether I become world champion or not, I want to be just a name to be recognised, as a boxer from Leicester. No-one forgets Sibo, no-one forgets Pyatt, I want to be a name like that. I want to be the respected boxer who was always down to earth and always be the type of guy you’d like to talk to."

"On September 5, I go out there to win, because of my family, for my dad. I’m just going to go out there and do my best," he says with a shrug of his bumpy shoulders, "you can’t do no more."



*Rendall defends his European super-bantamweight title at Nottingham’s Harvey Hadden Leisure Centre on Friday, when he takes on Armenian Arsen Martirosian. You can watch the fight on Sky Sports 1 from 10pm.

 

and you bumped this why?

 

For those of you including John Duddy, he is Irish, not british.

 

world gold medalist frankie gavin