About Us
WEST COAST BOXING RE-ENTERS THE RING
After lying dormant for a number of years, WCB is relaunching. WCB is owned by Donald R. Dinkins (aka BOXING DON ) and his wife, Avis R. Dinkins of Lancaster, Ca.
I’m originally from the the Philadelphia area (Willow Grove, to be exact) and am a life long boxing fan. I spent countless hours in the Philly gyms, back in the days of Smokin’ Joe Frazier, (who was one of my daughter’s Godfather) and my dear friend. I remember well, watching some of Philly’s finest, tough guys like, Gypsy Joe Harris, Stanley (kitten) Hayward, Bennie Briscoe, Charley Scott, Len Matthews, etc. I actually got my early training in tha’ game from Yank Durham and Willie Reddish, the handlers of Frazier. I was even offered a share of the Cloverlay Group sponsoring Frazier, for $250 a share. At that time Ali was champ and Joe was just out of the Olympics and I didn’t ever see Joe beating Ali, and I refused to buy in. STUPID DON.
I moved to LA in January of 1970 and located the Famed Hoover St. Gym and Main Street gyms in South LA. Those were the days of Eddie (Bossman) Jones, Hedgemon Lewis, Andy (the Hawk) Price, George (Scrap Iron) Johnson, etc. I started training fighters at the Hoover St. Gym around 1974 and KNEW I’d found my calling. I then, went on to run the amateur boxing program for the city of Inglewood for a dozen years. I attended all the fights at the Fabulous Forum and noticed that the undercard fighters that trained just as long and hard as the headliners, got no love print-wise. My wife and I decided to do something about it, especially, some of my guys were on the undercard.
We started putting together a 4 page newsletter focus mainly on the pre-lims and distributed them at the Forum on fight nights. From there, things change rapidly. The reactions we got from the boxing community was overwhelming, to say the least. After creating the news letter in ’99, we progressed our mag and started to branch out further than just the Southern Ca. area. I am proud to say, we met some great people in the boxing world, and not just the fighters. By the mid 2000’s we were granted press passes and sitting ringside at the MGM grand, Mandalay Bay, Caesar’s Palace, etc. This was indeed the high point in our careers.
Things got pretty rough economy-wise and people loved the magazine but just didn’t have the funds to take out ads to sustain us and we had to put things on hold. For so many years later, everytime I’d visit the gyms, people would ask, “Don, when are you guys gonna’ start up that magazine”? Well, the time is NOW and we’re back, only as a website, this time. We have already gotten a lot of support. One of the unique features about OUR site, is that we don’t have ‘professional writers’, per se, instead, we’re reaching out to the average boxing fans that love the game, know a lot about it and are seeking to have their expertise displayed on the internet. I visit a lot of the sites and really enjoy going back and forth with the ‘experts’ and even though some talked about me badly, we’re gonna’ give them the opportunity to contribute to WCB. Now, they can suffer the verbal abuse, as I have..