Melissa O’Flynn and Chris Heaton may have come up short in their sanctioned boxing debuts at Griffins 63 in North Vancouver a couple weeks ago (Feb 9) but they both put on terrific performances and learned some important lessons.
Five members of the 2 Rivers Boxing team drove down to the coast on February 9 to take part in the card..
Coaches Wally Doern and Cam Tetreault accompanied the aforementioned fighters as well as young veteran Brittyn Carter, who was scheduled to compete but had her bout cancelled when her opponent from Seattle got stuck in a snow storm.
Heaton, who has had countless bouts cancelled on him last minute, took a fight against talented, young up-and-comer Taylor Joseph from Kelowna Boxing Club at 199 pounds.
“Chris was just a little bit outclassed,” says head coach Doern, “[His opponent] is 26-years-old and the skies the limit.
“He was good and we knew that anyway but we took it.
“Chris was tired of the cancellations and just wanted to do it anyway. He was in [the fight] but the other fella just had a little bit too much experience.”
Heaton was exuberant for days after the fight.
He has been training for years to get into the ring and due to a string of bad luck has never been able to get that first fight.
At Griffins 63, the local fighter, who is in his late thirties, was rocketed into the co-main event.
“The whole time I didn’t believe it was going to happen,” he says.
“I’ve just been there so many times, where for some reason or another my opponent pulls out. But the lights started flashing and they started announcing my name and he was standing across the ring from me, so I was like, I guess this is actually happening.”
As exciting as getting to fulfill his dream of fighting was, Heaton’s rival did not take it easy on him.
“As far as opponents go, he was probably the best, toughest fight I could possibly get and that’s what I wanted. The biggest challenge,” he says.
“I feel as if I was game throughout the entire fight but he was a lot bigger than I expected, so that kind of threw me off a bit.
“He was a head and a neck bigger than me and had tremendously long arms, even for how tall he was.”
While Heaton’s not a small man by any measure, he is around 5’8, so is used to having to use movement to get inside on his taller foes.
“He played a game where he kept his lead hand out there for jabs and hooks and it was really tough for me to work on as he knew I was coming around it,” he says.
“If I slipped to the outside he had that left hook ready to go and if I slipped on the inside, he had that straight right.
“So basically I figured out that I had to work off of two slips and come underneath to get off punches.”
It took the Quesnel fighter some time to find his bearings however and before he knew it, the fight was over and the decision was handed to Taylor.
“I couldn’t had asked for a bigger challenge and a better stage,” Heaton says, “I feel great about that even though I didn’t get the outcome I was really hoping for.”
O’Flynn had an even closer fight, losing a split decision to Leisha Auyeung from Rebel’s Boxing Club in Surrey, in a match contested at 120 pounds.
Doern says the fight could have gone either way.
“[O’Flynn] was the aggressive one but her opponent managed to score just enough to get the nod.”
The first-time fighter says she had a little trouble figuring out her adversary to start that fight.
“I left the first round thinking, ‘what the heck is going on,'” she says.
“So I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to do something different.’
“I let go of all the thought process and started going, and it felt so much better.
“The second and third round felt like no problem.”
O’Flynn felt she had done enough to win the last two rounds, but when the result is left in the hands of the judges, it is difficult to control the outcome.
Lessons were learned that can be applied to future bouts however.
“I’ve got to work on blocking my face a little better,” she says. “I keep my hands down at my cheek bones and I’ve got to keep them up by my eyes a little better.”
She came away from the bout with a shiner on her left eye as a reminder.
Punches to the mid-section were working for her against Auyeung, so she hopes to keep them in her repertoire
“I got her a couple times with body shots and I noticed those brought her arms down a lot and then her face was wide open, so I was working on the body shots a bit before throwing a couple hooks to the head and it worked better for me that way.
O’Flynn says she could not have performed as well without her coach.
“He was amazing,” she says. “Especially after the first round. I came back and was like, ‘What did I do wrong Wally?’ and he just said to keep my guard up higher and start throwing those jabs out and I’ll be good.
As soon as I left from his pep talk, I felt so much better.”
Assistant coach Tetreault thought O’Flynn performed well in her first throw-down.
“With more experience she’ll come to figure out her rhythm in the ring.
“I thin she held back a little bit as she was unsure of herself but now looking back she knows she had it in her.”
As for Heaton, he says the match-up was a tough one.
“Chris unfortunately didn’t have the reach for his counters and that was his biggest obstacle,” he says.
“When he got inside he was able to really fluster the guy and got some good head points.
“He did very well for facing a person of that calibre with the ability to push people back with his jabs.
“What we went down there for was experience,” he says of the big picture. “To be able to figure out what’s working for us and what’s not working for us, so we can come back and train accordingly.”
READ MORE: Quesnel scrapper gets in ring for first time
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