About this time 64 years ago, three years after World War II, Sandulo was a fresh-faced 17-year-old, heading for the Olympics — in London, site of this year’s five-ring circus.

Sandulo is engaging, with a sharp sense of humour. But over time, the former flyweight boxer (110 lbs.) has been rabbit punched by life’s frailties.

Sandulo is 81 now. A recent fall from a chair threw him for a loop. Mary found him in a pool of blood, yelling in pain. His side was black and blue. His middle fingers were dislocated.

Stitched up, the boxing champ is medicated to help with the hurt.

“He’s in a lot of pain right now,” says Mary. “He wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.”

But Sandulo’s eyes light up as he talks boxing.

“I put a lot of time into it,” he says. “But I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t love what I was doing. It gave me a chance to work with individuals and see how they develop not only in the sport, but in life.”

When he was running the Beaver Boxing Club, he would put in a full day as a cartographer in the armed forces. He was a sergeant major. Then he would spend five or six hours at the gym.

Sometimes there weren’t enough hours in the day for things like dinner with the family, graduations and activities with the children. It was tough at times, but there are no regrets; the impact of his dedication is huge.

“I am very proud of him,” says Mary.

A walk into the Sandulo’s basement is a walk through time. It’s a boxing museum … trophies, plaques, posters, ribbons and videos. Sandulo looks up at photos on the wall and rhymes off the names … Ian Clyde, George Chuvalo, Davey Hilton, Conroy Nelson, Joe Louis. In the boxing world, Sandulo was a somebody.

But it isn’t so much the champions and the days named after him, the spot in the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame and the certificates that verify what an excellent coach and outstanding sportsman he is. It’s his relationship with those he’s crossed paths with over the years.

He’s been suffering from short-term memory loss. He can tell you the names of boxers he fought or trained from more than 50 years ago. But remembering what was for breakfast that morning can deliver a looping left hook to a proud man.

“Sports came so natural to him,” says Mary. “To see him like he is now, it’s heartbreaking.”

He’s got an Olympic ring, with a ruby stone. He doesn’t wear it, but Mary playfully scolds him: “He doesn’t wear his wedding ring, either.”

Earl McRae once wrote in the pages of this newspaper that Sandulo was the worst-dressed man in Ottawa.

Mary was outraged.

“I told him, ‘The only time Earl sees you, you have your jogging suit on. He doesn’t see you when you go to church or when you go out to dinner,’ ” says Mary, whose golden voice has sung at weddings and funerals. “So I gave Earl a piece of my mind. He got a piece of my Irish temper. Earl just laughed at me.”

The couple hooked up on a date to a dance hall in Manotick after Mary, who was working for Bell Canada, initially turned him down. She told a friend: “He thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”

It proved to be the boxer’s greatest match — they were married in 1952 — and they had three children: Mary-Jane, Patrick and Kelly.

The calls and letters keep coming from boxers who have trained under Sandulo. Some of them, he has picked up from off the mat, giving them a chance to succeed when they were on a collision course with despair.

“Two years ago, I went down to the gym,” says Mary. “And there was a man coming out the door. We started talking and I said, ‘You don’t realize how much of his life he put into the gym.’ He told me Joe had saved his life. He said, ‘So many kids come in off the street. He straightened me out. I owe him my life.’ When I heard that, I started to cry.”

Sandulo lost his only Olympic bout. It was a controversial split decision and the Canadian team paid $25 to file a protest. But over the years, he hasn’t lost many battles. When you see him smile, a twinkle in his eye, and you see the accolades of 60-something years spread over his walls, you hope he has a couple of knockout roundhouse rights to deal with the welts age delivers.

No question, the flyweight is still a champ. No controversial Olympic decision or tumble from a chair can ever take that away.

Source: Ottawa Sun

The non-profit amateur gym found itself on the ropes after its Carling Avenue location was demolished in December 2009 to make way for an expansion of the Queensway. But the club has since found new space that club president Joe Sandulo is proud to call home.

“We’ve been here, there, and everywhere in Ottawa,” says Sandulo. “Now, I think we have one of the nicest facilities in Ontario.”

The new gym at 145 Spruce Street is just the latest home for the club, which has been an Ottawa institution for over 60 years. Beaver Boxing provides fitness classes for the general public, as well as specialized training under Sandulo and a group of experienced coaches. None, however, has more experience than Sandulo—he fought for Canada at the 1948 Olympics and has coached and mentored boxers since 1950.

The last year has been tumultuous for Beaver Boxing, ever since they were forced to vacate their previous location on Carling Avenue in January 2010. After a space-sharing deal with the Boys & Girls Club fell through at the last second, the club moved most of its equipment into storage and begin renting space from the N-1 Thai Boxing Academy on Preston Street three nights a week. The original plan was for Beaver Boxing to share space for three months while searching for a new home, but the club ended up extending their stay by almost six months.

“It’s hard finding the space you need,” says Jill Perry, the assistant coach of Beaver Boxing Club and a member of the board of directors. “A boxing club doesn’t have to be fancy, but it takes a bit of room, and it’s kind of noisy. A lot of our members are young people, so we wanted [the new space] to be close to public transit. It has to be in a safe environment.”

After examining several locations that didn’t fit the criteria, the members of the Beaver Boxing board of directors found their new location almost entirely by accident. While looking at space in the City Centre complex, one member of the board noticed a nearby rental at 145 Spruce Street.

“I knew right away, the first time I saw it,” says Perry. “I knew for absolute certain that it was the place. If we could get it, this was going to be an awesome gym.”

Beaver Boxing Club took over the space in December 2010, and Perry credits the club’s extensive network of alumni and volunteers with helping to convert the space into a proper gym.

“We just got our team of volunteers working,” says Perry. “Putting the flooring down, hanging up the old posters, painting, setting up the ring—it was a lot of work. You don’t realize how much everything in a gym weighs until you have to move it.”

Perry and Sandulo are volunteers as well, giving countless hours on evenings and weekends to train fighters and shuttle them to tournaments across Ontario. Perry says the Beaver Boxing community makes all the hard work worthwhile, and the new building is just the latest example of what a close-knit community can do.

“Beaver Boxing is an institution,” she says. “Once you’ve been here and done some time, it’s a part of you.”

” Boxing is the ultimate challenge. There’s nothing that can compare to testing yourself the way you do every time you step in the ring.” – Sugar Ray Leonard

At the Beaver Boxing Club we take pride in teaching the sweet science to both recreational and competitive boxers. We do more than create boxers, we provide an environment in which individuals can grow both physically and mentally. Our coaching staff led by Olympian Joe Sandulo and two time Canadian Champion Jill Perry, take an approach to coaching which has been tested and proven to produce provincial,national, and pro boxers. So whether your aspirations are to become the next world champion or to simply tone up and lose weight, the Beaver Boxing Club is the perfect vessel to achieve your goals. This is to all the Rocky’s of Beaver Boxing Club past and present that believe “they have something left in the Basement”!