Ledley Hall Youth and Boxing Club in east Belfast, where Close started his boxing journey as a 10-year-old, led tributes and said he was a “true gentleman, humble, kind and always willing to give something back”.<\/p>\n
“To our young people, Ray was proof of what could be achieved,” the club posted on Facebook.<\/p>\n
“He was someone who had come through the same doors, trained in the same club and gone on to accomplish incredible things.”<\/p>\n
The club added that Close’s story has “inspired generations of young people at Ledley Hall and will continue to do so”.<\/p>\n
“There are some people who become part of the history and heart of a place, and Ray will always be part of ours.<\/p>\n
“We will remember him with enormous pride, affection and gratitude.”<\/p>\n
Bangor Abbey Boxing Academy, where Close had trained, said he will be a “huge loss to the boxing fraternity of Ireland and across the world”.<\/p>\n
“Ray and his whole family have been a huge part of our club over the years, right from the very start and we are truly devastated.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ledley Hall Youth and Boxing Club in east Belfast, where Close started his boxing journey as a 10-year-old,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-790030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}