Years after they retire from boxing, Jag Seehra and Kenny Lally will probably be reminded every once in a while about the day they lost their battle with the weigh scales.
The date was Feb. 25, 2009, and Seehra and Lally were in Edmonton, desperately trying to make their respective weights so they could compete in the Boxing Canada national team final selection tournament.
But after hours of running, skipping and sweating it out in a sauna they were still over the maximum allowable weight. Seehra, a contender for the 64-kilogram national championship, was 600 grams over, while Lally, the 51kg national champion, was 100 grams too heavy. The verdict for both Inner City Boxing Club members was instant disqualification and a tail-between-the-legs return to Prince George.
Both had some explaining to do to their sponsors back home and had to live with the embarrassment of seeing the story in The Citizen the next day headlined: "Oops! I think we ate too much." There were also financial implications for Lally, who was dropped to national B team status and lost his $900 per month team funding.
"That was the best thing to happen to me in my career," said Lally, now 24, who hopes to be fighting for his 10th provincial title tonight in New Westminster. "That was the stage for me taking boxing from a leisurely sport to a way of life. I'm always on weight, I'm not going through that again. It was the best thing for Jag and I."
Since January, Lally and Seehra's workouts have been geared to gaining muscle mass so they can pack more explosive power into their punches. The tradeoff is muscle fibres are dense and add weight. On Thursday morning, Lally was still more than 2.5 kilos overweight while Seehra had to figure out how to shed three kilos (seven pounds) before today's weigh-ins.
"Hopefully that's six pounds of water," said Seehra, entered in the 60kg provincial weight class. "The most I've ever done was five pounds the night before [the weigh-in]. It's nothing new to me, I know what I have to do and I just have to do it."
Seehra, 24, is coming off a unanimous decision over Gurinder Khabra of Surrey at a fight card in Vernon in March. This will be Seehra's ninth provincial championships and assuming he fights tonight it will be his 103rd bout in 12 years as a boxer. It could move him one more step closer to reclaiming the national team spot he held three years ago.
"I can't believe this is Number 9, we've been doing it for so long," said Seehra. "Good things happen the more you do things and every provincials is a good one but what really matters to us is nationals and being on the national team.
"It's a big year with the Pan Am Games next year and the 2016 Olympics coming up. Time goes by so fast when you're progressively working at what you are."
A month ago in Vernon Lally claimed a one-sided victory over Connor Rankin of Maple Ridge. Rankin is the only B.C. fighter likely to enter Lally's 56kg weight class this weekend. The Vernon fight was the 106th of Lally's career and his first since he lost his opening bout at the world championships in October in Kazakhstan.
"If I don't have an opponent I'm willing to move up to 60 or 64kg to get a fight," said Lally. "I'm in such good shape and I'm ready to fight and need to fight. If [Rankin] is smart he won't come, but you never know. I want to fight for it, I don't want a walkover. If I'm doing all that work I want a fight.
"I've been competing for a decade of my life and I want to get back in there. If I could go to the Pan Am Games it's a ranking tournament to go to the next Olympic qualifier."
After his Kazakhstan experience, Lally took five months off and gave up his spot on the national team to recharge his batteries and renew his ambition to compete in the Pan Am Games in Toronto, July 10-26, 2015. He's been trying to learn how to better deal with the stress of competition, training his mind to convince his body to accept the fact opponents want to take off his head.
"I want to try to be more relaxed in the ring," Lally said. "If I can do that at this level, then when I go international I can bring that same game. When you're at that high of a level you're nervous and your body is tense and you're not the same person you are in practice. That definitely hurt me at some of my international tournaments."
Canadian elite national champions in each weight class will automatically qualify for the Pan Am Games. To get there, Lally and Seehra will have to win their respective Western Canadian titles in Red Deer, July 7-8. Failing that, the national golden gloves tournament in Cornwall, Ont., July 8-13 would be a last-chance nationals qualifier.
"It will be a real war between Kenny and Francois Pratt to see who gets to go to Pan-Am Games," said Inner City coach Bob Pegues. "Jag is always the bridesmaid, never the bride and his goal is to win a national gold medal this year before he runs out of time."
Pegues, 60, is retiring at the end of May after 32 years as yard crew supervisor at Prince George Pulp. He's announced his plans to move to the coast and has told Lally and Seehra he plans to quit coaching them in 2016 -- after the Olympics.
