For 39-year-old Ryan Pickard, writer and director of Learning the Ropes, its lore as a hard-edged classical gym is both Repton’s superpower and its flaw. “Repton Boxing Club is a gym that’s for competition only,” he says. “You’re either game for competition, or you’re not welcome.” This is a philosophy Pickard railed against when he created his own 12×3 Boxing Club, which opened in Aldgate in 2018. Unlike Repton, 12×3 accommodates everyone. But there was something in Repton’s unyielding character that stayed with Pickard, who joined the club at age seven and competed until he was 23, compelling him to document the infamous gym in all its glory (and guts).
Repton Boxing Club evolved from Repton Boys Club, which the Repton School in Derbyshire created to help underprivileged young men at the school to defend themselves. In time, it became an egalitarian training facility with a low-cost barrier to entry. Most of the boxing community, including him, says Pickard, is from working class backgrounds.
By 13, the Waltham Abbey native was a national champion and selected for the England team, for whom he fought for over a decade. He won a junior world silver medal at age 17 in Romania, a commonwealth gold medal in Australia, a European bronze in Hungary, and was captain of team England multiple times. At the helm of his success was the one and only coach Tony Burns, who, if you ask Pickard, was Repton.
“I knew him intimately. He was like family to me,” says Pickard, who centred the brusque coach in Learning the Ropes. “He didn’t give away love easily, but that’s just down to perception.”