Melbourne’s amateur boxing community will host an international tournament this week as Boxing Victoria welcomes athletes from India’s Inspire Institute of Sport for a two-day event at the Veneto Club on 15 and 16 May.
The tournament will bring together Victorian boxers and a visiting Indian squad made up of amateur athletes training within a full-time high-performance program in Karnataka, India. Bouts are scheduled for Friday evening from 6pm and Saturday from midday.
Boxing Victoria coach Sam Brizzi, who helped organise the event, said the visiting team includes fighters selected from across India to train and compete within the Inspire Institute of Sport system.
“They’re amateur boxers from all over India who’ve been selected to train full-time out of the Institute,” Brizzi said.
Brizzi said the tournament came together through his long-standing relationship with Indian boxing coach Stuart O’Connor.
“I’ve known Stuart for about 15 years,” he said. “We organised the tournament for them to come over, train and compete with our state boxers.”
He said the Indian squad includes several athletes with strong amateur records, including 80kg fighter Rocky Chaudhary.
“Pretty much all of them have boxed for the Indian national team at various levels,” Brizzi said.
The event arrives at a time when amateur boxing in Australia continues to rely heavily on club networks and volunteer coaching structures. Brizzi said tournaments like this provide rare opportunities for local fighters to gain international experience without travelling overseas.
“What this can do for boxers is it gives them a pathway to international events as well,” he said.
He pointed to Australian Olympian Harry Garside as an example of how smaller international competitions can shape careers.
“Harry Garside’s first Olympics came after his 31st international senior fight, which was in a similar tournament with the British Navy,” Brizzi said. “So who knows who the next Harry Garside might be.”
Brizzi believes the event could strengthen sporting ties between Australia and India, particularly within Melbourne’s Indian community.
“We’ve already spoken about trying to make this an annual thing, whether they come here every year or we go there,” he said.
He said the long-term aim is to create stronger links between Victorian boxing clubs and Indian sporting institutions.
Melbourne will host an India vs Australia amateur boxing tournament at the Veneto Club on 15 and 16 May, featuring fighters from Boxing Victoria and India’s Inspire Institute of Sport
“We were hoping to take a Victorian team over to train with the Inspire Institute and compete with them,” Brizzi said.
The Inspire Institute of Sport, based in Karnataka, has become one of India’s leading high-performance sporting centres, supporting athletes across boxing, wrestling, athletics and other Olympic sports.
For Brizzi, the tournament also reflects boxing’s long relationship with migrant communities in Australia.
“My uncle and father were immigrants,” he said. “They faced their own issues when they got to Australia back in the 50s.”
He described boxing as a sport where multiculturalism has existed quietly for decades.
“There’s kids representing Australia at the moment who are Muslim, Indian, Arabic and from Mediterranean backgrounds,” Brizzi said.
“These kids are from all over, which really symbolises what Australia is all about.”
Brizzi, whose family has been involved in boxing since the early 1970s, said his own connection to the sport began through a family-run gym that started in a backyard garage before relocating to Kingsbury in 1988.
“It was a gym that opened in 1968,” he said. “My grandfather built a garage in the backyard after my uncle had to retire early because of injury and we’ve been running ever since.”
Over the decades, the gym has trained professional and amateur fighters, including athletes who represented Australia internationally. Brizzi said community engagement remains central to its identity.
“We have people who’ve just come from overseas and don’t really have a foot in the community,” he said.
“We have young girls, young kids trying to find their way in life. We have people trying to turn their life around, whether it’s through substance abuse or mistakes they’ve made in the past.”
He said boxing gyms often become support systems for people from different walks of life.
“We’d like to think we have open arms,” Brizzi said. “Everyone’s welcome as long as you respect the gym.”
The Melbourne tournament is expected to attract local boxing supporters, members of Victoria’s Indian community and amateur sporting groups interested in grassroots international competition.
Brizzi said the wider impact of the event may only become clear years later.
“We might look back and find that one of the Indian athletes is an Olympic medallist or a world champion,” he said.
“They’ve got a very strong boxing team at the moment.”
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