riots outside the Holiday Inn hotel in Manvers <\/a>that took place in August 2024.<\/p>\nMore than a dozen youths, aged between 13 and 17, received referral orders.<\/p>\n
Unity coach Mateen Razak, who has been with the gym since it opened, says: “For me personally as a Muslim man in Rotherham, I still get looks out and about.<\/p>\n
“A guy very recently asked me why I didn’t go back to my own country.<\/p>\n
“I told him I was born here and he told me it was still not my country.”<\/p>\n
Mr Razak and the other coaches decided rather than shying away from discussing the riots they would use it as an opportunity to engage with their young members.<\/p>\n
“When it was all going off we brought the kids in and said to them, look we know what’s going on outside, we’ve all seen the TikToks.<\/p>\n
“If there’s anybody in this gym that wants to talk to us or ask us anything about faith or religion, we’re here, we’ll answer it for you.”<\/p>\n
Listen: Rotherham gym celebrates four years of unity<\/p>\n
Reflecting on the riots, coach Shahid Shad says: “Do I agree with the boats coming over?<\/p>\n
“Well it’s an issue but it’s nothing to the point of where we should be slinging each other down and burning hotels because in a nutshell you’ve made your area bad, you’ve made your council spend money that they shouldn’t be spending to repair a building.”<\/p>\n
Kaya Odemis, 14, trains at the gym four times a week after school.<\/p>\n
He says: “Look at all the flags in the gym.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got people from Congo, from Yemen, Somalia, England, Kurdistan, Kashmir, Scotland and Turkey, which is where I’m from.<\/p>\n
“We’re all under the same banner aren’t we?<\/p>\n
“I know loads of guys who were pretty wild at school but this place changes them, it’s an escape.<\/p>\n
“It’s the discipline of boxing they respect.”<\/p>\n
On the riots, he says: “I understood why they were angry but what I think I didn’t understand is like the way they dealt with it.<\/p>\n
“For those in the hotel, I feel bad for them to be fair. I felt bad for what they had to go through. I hope they’re safe.”<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/bbcdotcom\/web\/20251210-151139-37baf2dfdd-web-2.36.1-1\/grey-placeholder.png\")
![\"Simon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/fd6083a0-e7d0-11f0-ab5d-b546e7209f13.jpg.webp.webp\")
Simon Thake\/BBC<\/p>\n
Sonnyboy Hughes from Barnsley is one of the success stories at the club. He became England Boxing National Development champion last year<\/p>\n
Harley Saeed, 19, describes his heritage as Yemeni.<\/p>\n
He admits misbehaviour in the classroom meant he was moved around to many different schools.<\/p>\n
“I’ve always liked fighting as a kid and I love it here,” he says.<\/p>\n
“Anyone new who comes in old or young, white, black or brown, I’ll grab them a skipping rope and make them feel comfortable.”<\/p>\n
Unity offers sessions for teenagers and adults as well as younger children with sessions for six to 11-year-olds.<\/p>\n
As well as providing a sense of purpose and unity for young boxers, the gym has also had success.<\/p>\n
Among its ranks is Sonnyboy Hughes from Barnsley who has been training at the club for more than a year.<\/p>\n
He became England Boxing National Development champion last year for the second time and is hoping to break into the Great Britain squad next year.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old lightweight says: “These are good people. It’s always been welcoming.<\/p>\n
“There’s a load of nonsense outside the gym but in here we’re all together.<\/p>\n
“When we come in, we all shake hands. We all respect each other.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Simon Thake\/BBC Atif Shafiq and Abdul Magid helped set up Unity Boxing having previously trained with Brendan Ingle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-392780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392780","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=392780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Simon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/d7cb15b0-e7d0-11f0-ab5d-b546e7209f13.jpg.webp.webp\")
Simon Thake\/BBC<\/p>\n![\"Simon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/f42da5a0-e597-11f0-bb65-6152e605acc9.jpg.webp.webp\")
Simon Thake\/BBC<\/p>\n