Boxing Canada has its eyes on Thunder Innis and Kenny Lally.
Innis and Lally – fighter and coach respectively with Inner City Boxing PG – are two of the invitees to a national training camp that starts Thursday in Montreal. Innis is one of nine B.C. boxers who will be in attendance, and Lally will serve as B.C.’s head coach.
The camp will be held over the course of six days at Boxing Canada’s national training centre. It’s for fighters in the under-23 age category and is part of the organization’s identification process for boxers who have the potential to represent Canada in the near future.
“This is going to be an amazing opportunity for Thunder, and it’s a cool honour for me,” Lally said.
“At first I thought maybe Team Canada is getting ready for an international meet and they’re trying to get the team ready, but this is a testing camp,” Lally added. “So this is really big for us. There’s a new category called being a prospect, so if Thunder is a prospect it means he is on Boxing Canada’s radar and without being a national champion they will give him some attention and maybe even send him to some international invitationals.”
Innis has been making a name for himself ever since he started boxing at Inner City three years ago. At his first national championship tournament in March in Calgary, he nearly beat two-time Canadian champ Josue Kouie of Quebec and finished with a bronze medal in the 80-kilogram class for under-19 fighters. His performance earned him the invitation to this camp.
“It’s such a privilege to get this opportunity, to know that I did get something from nationals,” said the 17-year-old Innis, a proud member of the Key First Nation in Saskatchewan. “Fighting Josue Kouie, it was a good fight but he got the better of me. Coming away from that, it was hard trying to get something good from that experience, and all these months later I find out I impressed someone there. It’s so cool that someone’s finally seeing my potential. And so getting this opportunity, and just me and coach Kenny going, it’s unbelievable.
“I’m looking to go there and solidify my name. I’m going to leave my mark on this camp and on everyone who’s there.”
Innis carried an 8-1 record into that national tournament. The Boxing Canada camp comes at the perfect time because he’s fresh off an Inner City high-performance camp that helped him further sharpen his already impressive skills.
“Everything’s coming together for me,” Innis said. “I’m always looking to get better and asking coaches what I can improve on, and so far they’ve been telling me to just keep doing what I’m doing. For me, that’s the greatest feeling, for my coaches to tell me I’m on the right path. It’s getting to the point where it’s minute, minute details. I’m so pleased that I’ve gotten to this level. It’s very, very cool.”
At Inner City, Lally coaches alongside longtime training partner and friend Jag Seehra. Both are past members of Team Canada. With that perspective in mind, Lally says this national camp is a “huge” milestone for Innis.
“When Jag and Thunder and I sat down and started this journey, we laid it down and told him the path to get to the national team, and he’s done every single task so far,” Lally said. “We’re at the end of year three, and Inner City Boxing is heading to a national training camp.
“I think he’ll impress with the shape that he’s in, and how ready he is for this camp, because he just got off our camp. As I was as an athlete, lots of times you take the summer off and you’re not training as hard so we’re hoping that Thunder might have the edge on some of these guys – that they’re just coming off the summer, while he’s been training since Aug. 1. We’re looking for Thunder to do some big things, for sure.”
The camp will include physical testing, partner work and lots of action inside the ring.
“He’ll be sparring high-level guys from across the nation,” Lally said. “It’s going to be wicked for him.”
Lally, meanwhile, is looking forward to providing guidance and motivation to the B.C. fighters at the camp. In his role, he’ll be teaming up with Naseem Bains of Surrey’s Mendoza Boxing Club.
“I’ve never worked with her but I’m super excited,” he said. “They asked Jag and I both but Jag has other obligations right now, so for sure I hopped on the opportunity. I’m excited to work with some high-level athletes, especially coming off the camp here. Just like we planned for Thunder to get here, Jag and I also planned our way to try and get on Team B.C. and help these athletes get to the national team so everything’s coming together. We’ve had some roadblocks for sure, but like our coach Bob Pegues taught us, you’ve just got to keep pushing through the hard times.”