Fifty-nine-year-old Bob Pegues spent six months training for a fight that lasted all of three minutes.
Pegues lost 30 pounds getting ready for Saturday's match against Mickey Sims, the 60-year-old Ringside masters champion, but appears to have gained a new lease on a sport he put on the shelf 38 years ago.
The two oldest guys ever to fight in a Prince George boxing ring were last on the Night of the Champions fight card at the Charles Jago Northern Sport Centre and Pegues did what he had to earn the judges' favour with a third-round flurry that gave him the unanimous decision.
Pegues kept Sims wrapped up like an octopus for most of the fight, knowing he didn't want the more-seasoned Sims to leave the taste of leather on his chops. Pegues was able to get his hands free enough times to land most of his points in the last round. None of those punches really stung Sims, but they were enough to give him the victory.
"As the fight got closer and closer I was in total dread, and I still kind of had some doubts until I got in the ring," said Pegues. "As soon as I climbed through the ropes with the gloves on it was like back in the old days and I thought, 'I got this.'
"I had heard he wasn't as fast as I was but he's a pretty strong man and I just decided to use my speed and it worked. I could see him fading and when I saw that, I really started to push the jab forward. I'm very, very happy. I just didn't want to look like an idiot."
Sims, a born-and-bred Prince George boy who left at age 12 for Salmon Arm, where he now lives, was frustrated with his own inability to break free of Pegues's clutches and knew that's what kept him from having his arm raised at the end by referee Allan Bayne.
"He said he was going to stick and move, I didn't expect him to get in there and maul me," said Sims. "I was trying to get him to step back and box instead of just throwing the overhand right but his gameplan was smart.
"I'm a bigger guy and I have the distance and was hoping to hit him, but he got inside and held on so I couldn't punch back. It's pretty hard to throw anything when somebody puts his head on your chest."
Sims made his boxing comeback two years ago and sees no reason why he and Pegues won't still be fighting in their 80s.
"You train hard every week, you do your road work and try to stay healthy, you eat right, and then you get an opportunity to expend all that energy in an event and you find out what you've got and what the other guy has," Sims said. "We can do anything we want. It's tremendous."
Among the raucous crowd of about 1,600 in attendance were Bettie Bagnall, Pegue's mom from Qualicum Beach, and Pat Sims, who made the trip from Salmon Arm to watch her boy Mickey fight. Both were pleased with their early Mother's Day presents.
"I was impressed with the fact he never appeared to back off," said Bagnall. "I've had to wait all this time to see him fight around Mother's Day. This was the absolutely the best."
Pat Sims had about dozen family members sitting with her in the third row.
"I don't know much about boxing, I'm just glad neither of them got hurt," she said.
It was more like Father's Day for Pegues's daughter Becky. She was in Bob's corner during the fight and showed how proud she was by giving him a peck on the cheek in between the first and second rounds. Now living in Iqualuit, where she's married to an RCMP officer, Becky couldn't help but think back to the sacrifices her dad made as her youth boxing coach for eight years with the Inner City club.
"This was the neatest experience I've ever been part of, my dad was amazing," she said. "He was my coach my entire life and he was the one who saw me through all these details and I was trying to do at least half of what he used to do for me. He looks phenomenal."
Pegues says he's 80 per cent sure he'll travel with Sims to the Ringside masters tournament in late July in Kansas City. By that time, Pegues figures he'll be closer to the 67 kilogram fight weight from his teenage years.
