 Portland Boxing Club Fighters have been doing very well in the early rounds of the USA New England Boxing Championships. Bobby Russo, the club's president and head coach, talked with Leslie McVane about what to look for when the club hosts the tournament final on Thanksgiving weekend. Hi Bobby, how are you? Good, you Leslie. Great, you've got an important event coming up, but before we talk about that, just let our viewers know that Portland Boxing is really more than about boxing, it's about building character, building people's lives. Yep, it is. You know, it's just a very tough sport for one thing, and we tend to, the kids that come from the toughest backgrounds tend to gravitate towards boxing. So, I mean just in that, you know, not all of them of course, we have a lot of kids that come from regular families. Yeah. But, I mean, actually the ones in a lot of cases that do the best come from the toughest background almost that makes their character almost tougher. So, it's, you know, it's challenging, the kids are somewhat challenging, but you know, it just seems they, it's something that they really respond to. And they do well, there's a lot of discipline involved. Yeah, discipline and structure, which is probably missing in their lives in other areas. So, you've taken that and embraced it. We have, you know, a lot of these kids, they don't participate in regular sports, and for some, one reason or another, but we, we are, even though it's an individual sport, we do, we're a team. Yeah. And we're a support system. Yeah. And, you know, we're a non-profit group and we spend a lot of money on the kids, we've sent kids to college. I think it's wonderful. And, and through that program over the years, you've built an incredible boxing team that has gone all the way to the Nationals. Yes. And it starts right here at Portland Boxing and coming up is, is a huge event. It's the New England finals. It is. And you've got all kinds of people going to this. I think we have seven in the finals. It's all various levels of experience. There's some kids that are just starting, but it's a sub-novice, novice and open class. We have a 14 bout scheduled that night and so Portland has half of them. Wow. And, you know, the open class, those winners will advance on to the national championships. And if you win there, you're number one in the country and you'd be boxing on the U.S. boxing team. Which means you travel internationally as well as within the country. Internationally and it's also the team that becomes the Olympic team. Now you're hosting this finals. Is that unusual for Maine? I've had it actually the last five years. Oh. And, but it's something that you bid on and you get it. And I've won the bid the past five years. That's great. And we've, you know, we've done the best job with it. We really have. And I think that the U.S.A. New England's association wants us to have it. Because they appreciate what you've done. We do. We make it a really special event. Now it's Thanksgiving weekend. Yes. So that means Friday, Saturday. It's Saturday. It's just Saturday. Just Saturday night. And where is it going to be held? This will be at the Stevens Avenue Armory. Oh, okay. So you set up a boxing ring there and all sorts of things. Yeah, we had a couple thousand people there last year. Each year we bring in a celebrity that, you know, we've had the heavyweight champion, Busta Douglas there, Mickey Ward. This year it's Vinny Paz. Vinny Paz, the ends of the five-time world champion from Rhode Island. And he's known as Paz. Yeah, Vinny Paz. Yeah. So he's five times champion? He's a five-time world champion. Wow. So will he do a demonstration or will he just talk? No, he'll sign autographs and talk to the people and take pictures and that kind of stuff. And they have a movie coming out about his life. They do. They have a book on him. He's a great story. These, like Mickey Ward was there last year who's got a movie. Yeah. And Vinny is got an equally good story. I can't wait. He got in a car accident. They said he'd never box again. He won two world titles after that. Well, it shows you what determination and willpower can do. Now, if people want to get tickets, how do they go about doing that? They're on sale at Bruno's restaurant. And this is the only, we do two shows at the club earlier. And there's no reserve seating. You just bring it. But he had this reserve seating, the ringside seating and so on. So we can accommodate a lot of people there. And they just would call you if they want more information or email you? Yep, they can. Or they can go to our website, PortlandBoxandClub.org. And all the information is on there. Well, it sounds exciting. And I know there'll be some of your alumni coming back to enjoy this as well. And I thank you for being here and for doing this. Thank you. It's becoming like a Thanksgiving weekend tradition. Yeah, great. Just like the Portland Deering Game, huh? We're going to steal that from them. Okay. Thanks, Bobby. Thank you.