Fighting Spirit 

Until now, I have only shared this wisdom with members of my club, and those who ask for help. This knowledge is rare, and I could’ve done with it when I started out, but there was no one willing to give it away. Some boxing coaches keep all their secrets to themselves. I agree with that, to a degree. We should keep our secrets for the benefit of our fighters, but the foundations of boxing are common knowledge, and the world needs our help in strengthening our people.

Boxing is essential for our societies, and for our mental, and physical health within our community. We need more boxers and warriors to step up and away from the snowflakes. Anyone saying people don’t need to learn how to fight are no doubt bullies who’re afraid of coming across warriors like me. Everyone needs to know how to fight.

In this Bible of Boxing you will learn how to punch like a pro, and get control of your body and mind. I’ve been in boxing gyms since eleven-years-old, and had my first fight at twelve, and the last one at twenty-eight. Turning pro was not something I found the passion for in the prime of my life. At sixteen-years-old, I joined the Royal Marine Commandos of Great Britain and led a life in and out of war. Since returning from Iraq in 2008, I have dedicated my life to professional boxing and the fitness industry. 

What I found over these last, almost four decades in the boxing world, is that it’s hard to get a coach’s attention to ask all the questions you need. Then, when you have the opportunity, you forget everything you wanted to ask. I wanted to sit with the trainers and coaches all day long, to listen, and watch what they do. In 2008, I did just that with at Fortitude Boxing Club in Brisbane, Australia.

When I joined the team, Jarrod Fletcher and Todd Kid were turning pro after amazing amateur careers. Both lads had just returned from the Beijing Olympics, so it was a great time to be there as a trainer. It gave me plenty of time to be a fly on the wall, picking up little tips here and there. Loads of boxers and their coaches would pass through the gym, and I would listen, study their pads, bag work, and all levels of sparring. Our stable was full of boxers, at amateur and professional levels, and the community of fitness enthusiasts. Those two years were my apprenticeship in the business of professional boxing.

Our new location opened in the Fortitude Valley, and we invited Joe Frazier and Aussie Joe Bugner, to the opening. I can’t tell you how cool it was to sit and chat with those two legends. Smokin’ Joe passed away the following year, so I feel even more blessed to have that experience. Rest in peace, Joe.

After moving away from Australia with my wife, we opened the Raw Art Warriors Boxing Club, on a small island in Thailand. We chose this place because of the climate, and there are a lot of warriors, who need to learn how to punch because the national sport is Muay Thai boxing,

I couldn’t find Queensbury rules boxing club, so, we thought, let’s open one and teach these guys how to fight with their fists. We’re still here ten years later. Boxers and clients fly in from all over the world to get away from the hustle and bustle of their gym back home. Our training camps offer one-on-one time for every boxer, and they come back year after year. 

In 2014, my career as a boxing coach took a nosedive when a firework exploded in my right hand and destroyed it. I almost lost my hand, and it took me the best part of a year to get the fingers moving. In the final part of rehab, my wife decided I needed motivation. So, she bought the two of us flights to Los Angeles, USA, and booked us for a two-month stay at an apartment in Hollywood. Her mission was to get me to Freddie Roaches gym to be around world champions so I could again dream of a future in boxing. I still couldn’t move my fingers, and my morale was low. At the time I had given up even thinking about being able to box or hold the pads again. Three of my five fingers wouldn’t respond from messages from my brain. Lisa was adamant that I was being a “dick” and needed to believe in the future. So, she bought me new boxing gloves and squeezed my hand right into it and laced me up and off I went and began the long, painful journey of punching my right hand back into shape.

Every day we were there at 0800hrs when it opened, and most days were the last to leave. Even though I was just tapping the bag’s light with that hand, I was moving again. Forty minutes on the speedball each day was doable because there was no pain in my hand, my just fingers didn’t bend. After three weeks, I was holding a fist inside the glove and getting some right cross power shots off. Our two-month training camp ended just before the Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight in May 2015, and my hand was working as good as new. We said our thank you and goodbye’s and headed back to our own boxing club with a renewed passion, experience, and a solid vision for the future.

Six years later, we are now ready to move forward and take our vision to the next level and share our knowledge and experience with the world. We believe that the mental and physical aspect of boxing training should be getting taught at home and in the schools in every nation.

Boxing is not just a sport for poor kid’s escaping the hardest challenges of their young life. Although there are many who are like that in gyms, plodding away, and improving body and mind each day with the dream of finding peace. Those who’ve taken the time to learn a combat sport as a child, or an adult understand this. We can overcome fear in the gym, and that makes us better people.

Boxers learn the arts of self-discipline, healthy living, overcoming fear and living a clean life with a healthy mind-set. Life has its ways of knocking the confidence out of us we gain in the gym. So, the art of getting back up and dusting yourself off becomes second nature. I’ve had more comebacks to the gym than anyone I know, but one thing is for sure. When I came back from the Iraq war in 2008, there was only one focus. Boxing. I was far too old to consider fighting, so I put all my money, time, and effort into being a coach.

I knew there was a high potential of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) taking hold of my mind. To conquer that, I thought being in the professional boxing business would keep my mind focussed on only positive outcomes. As the years past, the temptations and demons of those years became too strong. So, I left the business, the gym, promotions, and the competition so went travelling around the world teaching the art.

My passion for teaching the art, re-awoke in 2007, when I was training Iraqi bodyguards in how to best protect their clients in a hostile environment. I noticed they were all overweight and unfit. So, while planning the course, I slotted in six-days of boxing and fitness training each morning. Over the six-week course, the guys had halved in size and looked fresh and ready to protect not only their clients, but also their families and friends. 

On first impression, I could sense they didn’t trust me, but after our intro boxing session, we were all best friends. Each course same result. Boxing became my language, and I didn’t need a translator to do pads. Each time those guys punched, I could sense the warrior who lived within, and found it easy to motivate them into being the best they could ever imagine. 

By teaching them how to think and train like a boxer in the morning, I could get their blood flowing, not only into their bodies but, more important, their brains. There is so much to think about when you’re serious about learning the art of boxing. This focus took their minds off the war, the threats, and the fact they were in immediate danger every minute of the day. We all forgot that there was a horrific war going outside our compound for the hour and a half each morning. Man, we laughed. Boxing has always been a big part of my life, but in those days, it was, and has been since, my soul. I realized how the art of boxing brought healing, strength, courage, and compassion to men exhausted from years of war.

Since then, I have studied the body, mind, and spirit, and am fascinated with how every warrior has unique abilities and attributes. They’re body-shape, mind-set, attitude, confidence, and how the process information is different. But one thing remains the same. We bleed red, and the foundations of boxing never change, not in any nation. 

The Sport of Boxing Is Not for Everyone, But The Art Is

No matter whether you are three years old, or one hundred, the further you advance your experience in the art of boxing, you will overcome fear and intimidation. Reaction times improve and you will notice them, and the determination you learn in the gym will roll into your daily life. The courage that builds inside the hearts of warriors becomes their confidence. Earned the hard way through blood, sweat and conquering fears.

At our gym, we recognize the value of building trust, and supporting each other, during and after the sessions. We also watch out for each other outside the club, and those friendships have proven to last lifetimes.

When we feel inadequate because we cannot achieve something in the gym that an accomplished boxer makes look natural. We become humbled, not jealous. This is a quality the systems of the world should take heed of, and get boxing and sports combat training into the world’s school curriculums.

My Name is Coach Denny; I am a father, husband, a Royal Marine Commando veteran, and a man who has dedicated my life to boxing and empowering warriors. 

Welcome to the Bible of Boxing 

My Fighting Spirit

At the end of my military career in 2008, I was looking into a long-term lifestyle change as a civilian. My goal was to become an author and boxing trainer online. I was nervous and quite intimidated with civilian life in the beginning but faced my fears and put myself out there and focused on creating this book. 

Part of that journey was to create a YouTube channel and throw it out there and see what happened. Back in 2009 there were no online boxing coaches, so I thought it would be a waste of time. Day after day there were thousands of hits on all the videos, and I was receiving hundreds of emails asking for more. I was just back from Iraq so did not know what was happening and continued to focus on writing this training manual and a few other books on mind-set training. 

I never dreamed so many memories of my childhood would awaken. There was much to learn from all the people who were part of my education in the sweet science. As a child boxer growing up in Scotland, being around legends was something natural to us and was no real big deal. Unbeknown to me, who, like every child, takes things for granted, I was being coached by some of the best professional boxers and boxing trainers in the UK and Europe. 

My grandfather and two of his mates opened the first boxing gym in the area after they returned from WWII. Even though the sweet science was my grandfather's passion, it missed my dad’s generation, but became my obsession. My Grandad died when I was six, and I never found out he was a boxer until way after my military career. 

I drifted in and out of boxing because of my career in the marines and a mercenary, but each time I returned, it was with more passion and dedication. These days, as I fast approach my fifties, my desire to fight in the ring disappeared. However, the passion and devotion that lives in me is for those who want to fight. 

I wanted to be the World Champion when I started out as a kid. That was all I could focus on throughout my youth until I heard about the elite Royal Marine Commandos at fifteen years old. After that, I set my goals and ambitions into becoming a Royal Marine. The next year, at only sixteen, I began my journey to my green beret. There was something inside me that knew I would never fail.

Two weeks before I passed out as a Royal Marine Commando, I won the Corps boxing tournament and became the welterweight champ. I felt like I was on top of the world and earned a place on the Royal Marines’ boxing team and then the Royal Navy team after that. I intended to get out of boxing when I joined the Marines, but as I learned decades later. Boxing is my life.

Back in the 80s, money was tight, and boxing gyms didn’t receive funding in Scotland. All coaches were volunteers. Most facilities were old school with limited strength and conditioning facilities. The Royal Marines and Royal Navy boxing teams had funding by the Navy and housed state-of-the-art equipment and places to train. The Navy team, based in Portsmouth, England, had running tracks, Olympic size swimming pools, gymnasiums with more weights and machines than I’d ever seen. Being so young, it was difficult for me to appreciate how fortunate I was. But I am now aware how much those facilities cost and what a blessing it was to have them available.

In 1992 they tasked me to take thirty novice boxers from 40 Commando and win the Royal Marine Corps Championships. The Commando Unit hadn’t won for many years, and the Colonel was a big boxing fan and wanted the trophy. After six weeks of gruesome training, we entered fifteen boxers to fight for twelve titles. On that night we produced eight champions and brought the trophy home for the Colonel. I was only nineteen years old and realised coaching boxers is the best job in the world. 

In boxing we are all one family; we are warriors and support our culture of warriors, and do not look for enemies amongst each other. We strive to compete with respect and dignity.

Why Are YOU fighting?

Regardless of what you think, understanding how to fight is your duty and responsibility to your family, yourself, and your friends. They also have the same responsibility to you. We all should be able to defend ourselves, and anyone who tells you anything else is naïve. 

We should bow our heads and pray for that day where we don’t have to. But, in the meantime, it is important to keep our bodies and minds strong. It’s a tough, cruel world that changes all the time. Crime is never too far away from our doorstep, and there are many temptations that lead to pain and stress. Unemployment and depression, drug addiction, and alcoholism play a big part in the decline of our communities.

When you travel through most cities or towns, people don’t communicate with each other. In most cases, people will walk past you if you need help in case they may get hurt. On public transport, no one makes eye contact, and if you do, some people stare at you as if you are weird or going to hurt them. Our world is a mess and most people run around afraid of their own shadows. The world is full of damaged people who hurt others. As warriors, we have accepted this a long time ago. In the boxing gymnasium, all of that is none of anyone’s business. Our mission is to see who we are and how to become strong in body and mind as a boxer. Our job is to focus on building your body and mind to become the King, or Queen… of your world. 

We all have our own personal demons to defeat, but they cannot be our focus. To become a fighter who lives in the mind-set of a warrior; we must turn off everything that is not useful to our mission. Our minds can only focus on a few things at a time, so our focus must be on improving skills, knowledge, and fitness. 

There can be no distractions, but there will be plenty of temptations, regrets, and fears that come your way to knock you about. As I have said, there are enough problems in the world without bringing them into the gym. Stay focused on yourself and learn from those who have gone before you and who have mastered the Art of Boxing. 

I’ve been training all my life and have years and years of experience in many boxing gyms with thousands of coaching hours. I know some great coaches, and even though some of them have been in the game for sixty-years, they tell me they are still picking up new knowledge daily. With this insight, I know I am still young, and have the right attitude to continue to grow within this great art. 

Please teach your family, friends, and anyone willing to read the lessons found within the Bible of Boxing, and forever grow in your strength and unity as warriors. Fight for what you believe in, but not with your fist on people you might not like. Use your talents and knowledge so you can train like a professional and live your life as the champion. Know that because you are a boxer, you have limited the chances of being bullied or abused.

Be strong and fear nothing.