Paddy Benson said one of his grandfather’s proudest achievements was creating an environment where people from different backgrounds could come together through sport.<\/p>\n
The Small Heath gym full of “underdogs” became a focal point for communities across Birmingham, he said.<\/p>\n
“As an Irish immigrant coming into the country in the 1940s, he had an understanding that it was a very tough time for any immigrant, you needed to be hard mentally and physically to survive the injustices,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was a gym that was full of immigrant cultures, it was always a place where communities could bind together. <\/p>\n
“It was almost a place of therapy, a place that they were welcomed and use boxing as a form of cement to bind each other together.<\/p>\n
“He was so passionate about that right up until his last days, to create a place that could bind people together rather than create hate and division.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paddy Benson said one of his grandfather’s proudest achievements was creating an environment where people from different backgrounds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-716549","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\/716549","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=716549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}