Bay Street Armoury tradition carries on
Sixty-six years ago, 2,500 fight fans jammed the Bay Street Armoury to see the great Joe Louis dust his boxing opponent Bob Frazier.
According to reports in Victoria’s daily paper on Dec. 11, 1945, Louis needed only one hand to defeat Frazier in a fight titled Veterans of France, Dec. 10. Both Louis and Frazier fought in the Second World War.
The armoury has a history of hosting prize fighting and on July 16 the historic courtyard will open its doors for Summer Slugfest V.
“This is downtown, an exciting return to the (inner) city,” promoter and kickboxing trainer Stan Peterec said.
“The past few years we’ve been on the West Shore with Western Speedway and we’ve been in Saanich (Velox Rugby Club), but there’s nothing like having it in the heart of the city.”
Peterec has held events in the armoury before, “but its been about 15 years.”
Since then he’s fine-tuned the Slugfest series as Victoria’s premier annual fighting event for amateur boxing, kickboxing and mixed martial arts (the local Armageddon Fighting Championship is a professional, MMA platform only).
And Peterec has tweaked Slugfest’s format once more by bringing back the King of the Ring tournament format among a card of regular Muay Thai and boxing fights.
“There’ll be eight kickboxers with the finalists doing up to three fights. It’s not just fan friendly, the fighters love it too,” he said.
That group includes Victoria’s Karl Bergen, who won his MMA match at AFC 6 on June 18.
Alex Tribe, a rising Muay Thai kickboxing star from Victoria, is also on the Slugfest card.
Tickets are available at SportsTraders, 250-383-6443, for more info call 250-389-6166.