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Boxing champ Ali Greey visits the Nickel City

Over the years, Gord Apolloni has welcomed countless out-of-town boxers to Sudbury. Few, however, have combined the blend of raw athletic potential and unique thought-provoking character as one Ali (Alison) Greey.
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Ali Greey (second from left), a member of Canada's national boxing team, visited Top Glove Academy in Greater Sudbury last week. She's pictured with (from left) Dawn Rae Culgin, Gordon Apolloni and Jessica Brugess. Mary Spencer (not pictured) three-time World Champion and the first women to box for Canada at the Olympics also visited the gym last week. Supplied photo.

Over the years, Gord Apolloni has welcomed countless out-of-town boxers to Sudbury.


Few, however, have combined the blend of raw athletic potential and unique thought-provoking character as one Ali (Alison) Greey.

The 27-year-old Torontonian, and reigning Canadian Amateur Light Heavyweight champion, made a guest appearance, last week, at the Top Glove Boxing Academy on Regent Street.

Turns out Greey had worked closely with Apolloni while attending the Continental Championships in Mexico in September, an event at which she garnered a silver medal, despite entering only her third year in the ring, with all of 20 or so bouts under her belt.

Mind you, Greey brings an impressive athletic background to the mix. While studying conservation biology at the University of Toronto, Greey was named as the OUA East Rookie of the Year in women's volleyball in 2006.

In fact, her childhood was sprinkled with involvement in swimming, tennis, cross-country running, volleyball and badminton, and countless other athletic activities. So what helped her most when she first came to the sweet science in 2012?

"Contact improvisation dance," she said with a smile. "It's not a sport, but it's a movement discipline based on a non-violent point of contact between two independent dancers.

"It reminds me of a quote that I once heard. Boxing is like ballet, only the moves are not choreographed, and the boxers try and hit each other."

This would be an interview to remember.

The starting point should have been my first clue. Greey credits her discovery of the love of boxing to "a mix of existential crisis and chance." Can't say that I recall any other athlete somehow working the word "existential" into the answer of any of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of questions I have posed over the past decade or so.

But Greey is clearly not just any athlete. She encompasses a focus that is both driven, but also draws on the experience of her countless athletic endeavours over the span of 20 years or more.

"I just kind of happened upon boxing, but once I found it, it clicked," she explained. "Beyond the physical, there has just been so many hurdles that boxing has brought up for me, personally, emotionally, psychologically.

"The relationship between the boxing coach and the boxer," she added. "In all of my sporting involvement, I've never had a coach-athlete relationship that is even comparable."

This kindred connection, at the moment, is with one Adrian Teodorescu, coach at the Atlas Boxing & Fitness Club, one-time home to the likes of Lennox Lewis and Olympic silver-medallist Egerton Marcus.

Moving forward, the game plan for 2015 involves a meeting of the minds.

"I have two Canadian titles, I want a third," asserted Greey. "In which weight category will depend on how far along my coaches think I am.

"I need more international experience, need to get a lot more fights under my belt, polishing the skills, making them more automatic, sparring with great people."

While she stressed that her northern sojourn was targeting "learning new stuff and having fun," Greey did spend time at the health facilities of Laurentian University, undertaking some key testing for national team purposes.

The future, it seems, is bright for this gregarious and talkative athlete.

"The highlight, so far, is the silver medal at Continentals," she noted. "But the real highlight is yet to come."
 


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