Wairoa was denied a permit last week<\/a>, with police citing a heightened risk of gang-related violence.<\/p>\nGisborne Fight for Life promoter Kim-Maree Larby said the event was “bigger than just a couple of people”, and making sure it was allowed to happen was the main priority.<\/p>\n
“All we look for is for our club to make a little bit of money, for the community to have a great night out, and for fighters to enjoy a journey that they’ve been on for the last 13 weeks,” Larby said.<\/p>\n
Police had told her that there were “some concerns” with a few people on the fight card.<\/p>\n
“If they remained on our event then the event possibly wouldn’t go through. So I just removed them from the event.”<\/p>\n
Fighters understood that police had the final say over who was allowed to take part, she said.<\/p>\n
“If they [police] say that they’re not to fight then I will go with whatever the police recommendation is, to make sure our event is as safe as possible.”<\/p>\n
Communicating with police over the safety of the Fight for Life events was nothing new, and happened every year, she said.<\/p>\n
Larby said she felt for the Wairoa community whose event was cancelled.<\/p>\n
“I do feel very sad for them, because I know how important this event is for our community.<\/p>\n
“We’re stoked to see our event go ahead for another year and we wish Wairoa the best of luck for next year.”<\/p>\n
She called on the Gisborne community to make sure everyone was well-behaved at the event on 29 November, which was now sold out.<\/p>\n
“We want boxing to go ahead as safe as possible, and at the same time the community that comes out to watch it to be sitting in a safe environment as well.”<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jamie Cox (right) of Wairoa Boxing club reffing a sparring session. Police declined a permit for the Wairoa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,1590,63,802,1589,44,1591,1588,1586,1587,85],"class_list":["post-295798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-audio","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-current-affairs","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}