Rosie McDonald Editor-in-Chief

In a dimly lit gym located in the heart of downtown Toronto, students across the city train vigorously, hoping to knock out their peers in two months’ time. This is the beginning of VPS Entertainment’s highly anticipated Student Fight Night; the first legal, sanctioned student boxing tournament in Canada. At 161 Boxing Gym, students train for free with full access to the gym even outside of designated training hours January through March, all to take on an opponent and more than likely a friend in the ring on March 20th at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Students will be matched to an opponent based on skill, height, and weight class, all with no formal boxing training until now.

VPS Entertainment has made its own way into mainstream student life on the St. George Campus. Starting out as a Victoria College pool club, VPS Entertainment broke off from official university affiliation in 2023, and has since grown tremendously, even expanding to Montreal, Edinburgh, and London. Throwing weekly pool nights at the Copper Boot, formerly the Smith Social House, hosting at club venues likeApt. 200, and holding fundraisers, VPS Entertainment hopes to fill a well-known void in Toronto’s student life and pub culture, and has been successful in doing so since its humble start four years ago. Furthermore, VPS Entertainment is associated with Prevention, Empowerment, Advocacy, Response, for Survivors, or, as they’re better known on campus, the PEARS Project. VPS Entertainment works with PEARS to keep students safe and make them feel comfortable at VPS events, where boozing, dancing, and late nights might be intimidating to some.

To get the inside scoop on VPS Student Fight Night, we attended a training session. Students are led by energetic coaches under a mural of Mike Tyson for good measure. We managed to sneak some interviews during water breaks. We asked Bruno Sullivan, a student at UofT, what made him decide to sign up for Student Fight Night, as it is a requirement that participants involved have no prior professional training. Bruno stated that he’s wanted to get into boxing for some time and that VPS Fight Night offers fighters something to work towards; the fight. The free training and gym access was also a big incentive for Bruno, as it was for all the fighters we spoke with. We asked Bruno if he was planning on taking advantage of the free, full access to the gym, and he informed us that he already had. We asked Clare Mooney, another student at UofT, why she decided to sign up for the fight, to which she responded that she had done a boxing lesson once before; “[I thought,] ‘if I could do this for free, I’d do it all the time.’ And now I can do it for free, so I’m doing it all the time.”

While some concerns have been raised about the ethics of the sport of boxing and pitting students against each other, by our observations students are in great spirits. They are doing physical activity, something students are often too burnt out and swamped to prioritize, and they are working towards a common goal which will be celebrated by approximately 2,000 of their close friends and peers on March 20th. For more information, updates, and content about VPS Entertainment and Student Fight Night, visit @vicpoolsociety and @readthemike, and pick up issue 7 of The Mike on February 16th. Thank you to Theo Sokol, Yegor Lyutikov, and the VPS team for collaborating with The Mike to produce this article and more content to come.