“It’s a big step up for me”![\"Former](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1_BRI_PG_151025skemer-14.jpg\")
Former professional boxer Chris \u2018Skemer\u2019 Winters, left, his son Duane \u2018The Gasman\u2019 Winters, right, a former Southern Area Champion who fought for the British title live on TV, and in the middle, grandson McKenzie \u2019The Ghost\u2019\u00a0Hand, 19, whose first professional fight is in Swindon, November 2025(Image: PAUL GILLIS \/ Reach PLC)<\/p>\n
The third generation of a Bristol boxing dynasty is preparing to take on his first professional fight next month, with coachloads of supporters heading out of the city to cheer him on. Mckenzie Hand is just 19, and will step into the ring for the first time as a pro on a Fight Town bill at the Mecca venue in Swindon on November 22.<\/p>\n
And cheering him on will be the entire family, and scores of supporters from South Bristol, where his family are well known boxing stalwarts, so much so that his grandfather even has a housing development named after him<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mckenzie had a promising amateur career as a teenager, but admitted he didn\u2019t really dream of following in his family\u2019s footsteps. \u201cI didn\u2019t think about being a professional boxer when I was a kid, it was more just in the last couple of years or so when I started really training and fighting competitively, that I thought this could be something I could do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n People started noticing Mckenzie’s junior career when he was around 16<\/a>. He won amateur titles in his age and weight category and represented England in an international bout against Israel. He impressed in his junior fights and earlier this year was signed up by manager Matt Brennan, whose gym over in East Anglia produced up-and-coming heavyweight world champion hopeful Fabio Wardley.<\/p>\n While Wardley fights WBO interim heavyweight world champion Joseph Parker next Saturday at the O2, Mckenzie\u2019s first step into the professional ring will be at the slightly smaller – but still one of the key venues for boxing in the south west – the Mecca in Swindon.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a big step up, of course,\u201d said Mckenzie. \u201cI\u2019ve got a good team supporting me, and I\u2019ve been sparring and training hard. I\u2019ve always been in boxing, obviously, but it was when I started competing and started winning that I knew it was a step I could take.\u201d<\/p>\n Mckenzie is speaking upstairs in an industrial unit on the Novers Hill trading estate, between Bedminster<\/a> and Knowle<\/a> West. Downstairs is a weights gym called 81 Gym, run by Edwin Reed, who offered the upstairs to his good friend Chris \u2018Skemer\u2019 Winters to convert into a boxing gym.<\/p>\n On a regular Wednesday evening, the place is absolutely packed with aspiring boxers of all ages, and parents dropping off or picking up their children.<\/p>\n Skemer is Mckenzie\u2019s grandfather. Injury curtailed his professional career, so he turned to training, and for years ran a boxing gym in the grounds of the Park Centre in Knowle West that became far more than just a place to train boxers.<\/p>\n When the transformation of the Park Centre forced him out<\/a>, then Mayor Marvin Rees<\/a> stepped in to secure Skemer an empty community hall at Wedmore Vale<\/a>, at the bottom of the hill between Bedminster and Knowle West, where Skemer\u2019s Gym blossomed even more.<\/p>\n A move last year to the other side of the Northern Slopes and Novers Hill has meant Skemer\u2019s Gym has been able to expand, and earlier this year, he talked to Bristol Live about how<\/a>, in a South Bristol community he hoped he was continuing to provide a safe haven for young people<\/a> in a world of knives and postcode rivalries.<\/p>\n READ MORE: The South Bristol community legend moving to bigger and better things<\/a>READ MORE: South Bristol boxing legend says ‘it’s nuts’ that new apartments on site of his old gym are named after him<\/a><\/p>\n Like many boxing gyms across the city, Skemer’s gym has always been about more than just boxing<\/a>, and the community in Knowle West recognised that. Back in 2023, Skemer said it was \u2018nuts\u2019 that the flats built on the site of his first gym<\/a> at the Park Centre were named after him<\/p>\n Skemer\u2019s son Duane – Mckenzie\u2019s uncle – turned pro and won the Southern Area Championship, before fighting for the British title live on TV<\/a>, one of only two defeats in a 13-fight pro career<\/a>. He famously trained by doing shuttle runs up Vale Street<\/a> in Totterdown – the steepest residential street in England – encouraged by his trainer father.<\/p>\n![\"McKenzie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BRDR20170707D-007_C.jpg\")
Mckenzie Hand, aged 11, training with his grandfather Chris ‘Skemer’ Winters, at Skemer’s Gym at the Park Centre in Knowle West, in 2017
\n(Image: Dan Regan)<\/p>\n
![\"South](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1_TCR_BRI241123McKenzieBRI_02.jpg\")
November 2023 – South Bristol boxer McKenzie Hand is the third generation of his family to step into the ring. Grandfather Chris Skemer Winters runs a boxing gym on Wedmore Vale and McKenzie’s uncle Duane Winters was a regional champion. McKenzie is pictured after the national semi-finals, in which he was beaten by Connor Mitchell(Image: Skemer Winters)<\/p>\n