In the 12 years he called Prince George his home, Mickey Sims was never a boxer.
But he was always a fighter.
Back then, in the early 1960s, when he was a kid selling copies of the Prince George Citizen as an afternoon street vendor, he'd sometimes tread on another hawker's turf and he would have to fight for his right to earn a buck.
"I sold papers around the old government building and the little railroad kids from the Cache, a little island down by the tracks, they were tough kids and we were always fighting," said Sims. "When you're an entrepreneur, sometimes you had to take your lumps."
Sims and his street-fighting ways never drew an audience like the one he expects to pack into the Charles Jago Northern Sport Centre on May 11. On that Night of the Champions, he and his 60-year-old body will enter the ring to fight Bob Pegues, the 59-year-old Nanaimo-born-and-raised coach of the Inner City Boxing Club.
"I had no idea when he said, 'I'd like to fight ya,' it's not every day you get called out," said Sims.
Now living in Salmon Arm, where he's spent most of his life, Sims says he has no doubt who deserves to be called the local hero.
"I was born in Prince George, that's my hometown, and I'm going to be looking for hometown support," said Sims. "Those guys on the Island are soft spoiled brats and he's not going to beat a tough kid from the North."
Sims was born March 21, 1953 in the old army hospital in Prince George, the same place where his mother entered the world, well within walking distance of the horse-logging harness shop his grandfather owned in downtown Prince George. South Fort George and Central Fort George were his neighbourhoods and his dad's sawmill work included stops in Giscome and Penny (he was there in 1963, the year the sawmill burnt down). They also lived in Chetwynd for a couple years before the family moved to Salmon Arm in 1967.
Boxing first took hold of Sims in 1984 when he was living in Cranbrook, working a day job as a self-defence/use-of-force trainer for the B.C. Sherriff Service, which also took him to Kamloops and Ashcroft. No stranger to competition, having fought karate and kickboxing matches, he was training to be a boxer when his coach at the Cranbrook Eagles Boxing Club suffered a broken back and had to give up coaching. Sims agreed to take over the club and for the next three decades his own fight career was put on hold.
"I was never out of shape," said Sims. "I get a tummy on me but I'm never that far out of shape
"The sherriffs were always great to me and it was a good career for me."
Sims had his first boxing matches two years ago, at the Ringside masters tournament in Kansas City, where he's won the 165-pound middleweight title the past two years. He now has six fights to his credit and has yet to lose.
"The first year I went, there were two guys in their 80s," said Sims "I thought, this is a joke. I watched them shuffle up to the ring and when they got in there, something magical happened. Their brains kicked in and they moved without any obvious disability or anything to hold them back. Their hand speed was a bit slower, but they looked like boxers in there. The brain is a pretty powerful organ."
Sims trained for his first Ringside tournament experience by fighting a few younger guys in Salmon Arm, including a young competitive heavyweight, and felt well-prepared for his first masters fight.
"It wasn't too smart fighting that kid, but it was a good lesson," said Sims. "He smashed me up a bunch but he didn't hurt me and if he couldn't hurt me I thought, there ain't no old guy's going to hurt me. They might beat me, but they won't hurt me.
"But still I was nervous. The first guy I fought was from Chicago. He was younger and it's different in the States than up here. They have a lot more fights and a lot more sparring partners, so he kind of scared me, but it was my arm that went up at the end of the fight, not his."
Mickey is the son of Doug Sims, a Prince George Mohawks senior hockey team forward in the 1960s who carried a mean reputation on the ice. Back then, the Mohawks were the top team in the city and had a large fan following at the Coliseum.
"They called my dad Dirty Number 17, he was a pretty tough guy," said Sims.
"My older brother Tom and I spent quite a bit of time in the dressing room with the Mohawks when we were kids."
In hockey, Mickey got as far as the juvenile rep team in Salmon Arm, which won the provincial championship in 1971. He played against Darcy Rota, when Rota was a young teen from Prince George.
Sims has been away from home for 46 years, but still has plenty of local ties with his relatives in the Minty and Brommeland families, who plan to make their presence known in the stands at the NSC on fight night. He and his wife Heather raised six kids and have seven grandchildren, and none of the clan got into competitive boxing.
Sims and Pegues are evenly-matched size-wise -- both stand about five-foot-six -- but Pegues is perceived as the underdog simply because he hasn't fought since 1975. Both consider themselves friends, but that could change, depending on what happens in the ring next month.
"Boxing is a small community and we're all competitors, and neither one of us is going in there to lose, it doesn't matter if we're six or 60," Sims said. "It will be a show for sure, and I think the fans are going to enjoy it. We're going to have fun."
Tickets will be available at the NSC.
