BLACK tie dinner boxing is to return to l’Horizon Hotel after an absence of three years.

This positive news follows the blow the sport suffered in losing the regular venue for boxing competitions following the change of ownership of the Royal Hotel, David Place.

A new club, the Jersey Dinner Boxing Club, has been established to encourage Jersey to have its own prestigious boxing squad, initially with bouts against UK regional sides and then, eventually, against boxers from as far away as America.

President Mark Dunlop explained: ‘Our first tournament is on 19 November when a Jersey side will take on a Midlands select.

There hasn’t been a black tie dinner boxing event at l’Horizon in recent years, and already, within the last week, we have sold 70 tickets – the maximum the hotel can take is 184.

‘Any surplus money we make we want to put towards the development of junior boxers.

There is a lot of potential in the Island, and we want to look to the future.’ Dunlop, who last boxed competitively at middlewight ten years ago, also hopes, eventually, to raise enough money top send some of those young junior boxers to fight in the UK.

He also looks forward to the day when there can be an inter-insular black-tie dinner boxing event, not least because Guernsey already has its own black-tie dinner boxing association.

‘We’re putting on two shows this season, the first in November, the second on 26 February, 2006,’ he said.

‘And for what we’re charging, I think anyone who wants a good night out is getting a bargain.’ ‘I’d like to think that we can attract ladies as well as men and we have already had some corporate interest,’ he said, ‘but we’d also like new members – or perhaps some of the old members, who belonged to the Jersey Dinner Boxing Sporting Club to contact us.; Full report in today’s JEP.