Christo Lewis has successfully fought his biggest opponent to date \u2014 drug addiction \u2014 and he\u2019s now just a few days away from being licensed to fight professionally.<\/p>\n
Credit goes to Basil Ray, a former professional boxer, for opening the doors of his gym for Lewis.<\/p>\n
Famously known as \u201cNo Apologies\u201d during his heyday, Ray runs a boxing programme at the rehabilitation centre where Lewis\u2019s brother, Kyle, was also admitted for addiction problems.<\/p>\n
Lewis says his brother started boxing before him and has been boxing as an amateur for two and a half years.<\/p>\n
Having lost his first fight on points, Lewis soldiered on to win the next 12. That included bagging the Gauteng provincial championships, which led him to the SA championships, where he won gold and became the national elite cruiserweight champion.<\/p>\n
It was Ray who advised Lewis to join the HotBox gym of Colin \u201cNomakanjani\u201d Nathan. \u201cYes, he started training with us today,\u201d said Nathan.<\/p>\n
I became an addiction counsellor, and now I am devoting my life and career to boxing.<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u00a0 Christo Lewis<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everyone deserves a second chance, so thanks to Basil Ray and all the guys who gave Lewis the platform to box. He will be licensed very soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewis, nicknamed \u201cStuwie\u201d, told Nathan\u2019s No Doubt management company: \u201cI was in a bad way. My dad was shot dead when I was 12; I was angry, and started using drugs when I was 17 in high school. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt got worse to the point where my mother threw me out of the house. I was living alone, barely surviving, and close to being on the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewis said he had been clean for years now, and his relationship with his mom was tighter than ever. \u201cI became an addiction counsellor, and now I am devoting my life and career to boxing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started boxing, I found peace with myself. It was, and still is, a way to vent my anger. During our addiction problems, Kyle and I never really saw eye to eye, but now we\u2019re very close. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest I have ever been hit is by my brother in sparring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sowetan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christo Lewis has successfully fought his biggest opponent to date \u2014 drug addiction \u2014 and he\u2019s now just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[6116,64,63,224169,802,85],"class_list":["post-427109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-addiction","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basi-ray","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427109","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=427109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}