White collar boxers learn that life on the ropes requires perseverance

By day Mark Daniels sells slot machines to Macau's casino operators on behalf of his employer, Australian based Aristocrat Technologies. By night he is Mark "I want to remove your teeth, The Dentist" Daniels, a pumped up pugilist, and participant in Macau's first white collar boxing tournament.

"I saw an e-mail 'looking for fools'," said Daniels, while taking a break between sparring rounds with his fight night opponent, Phil "The Kalashnikov" Cox (like the other boxers both men gave themselves fight names). "I thought this would be a hard thing to do. And there is not a lot to do in Macau," explained Daniels on why he signed up. There was also another motivation; in memory of his late brother who died from cancer.

"No matter how hard training is and how much it hurts, I always have the option to stop," he said. His brother, however, had no such choice, and this spurs Daniels on.

Daniels joined 34 "fools" all vying for a place in the final, held last night in The Venetian Macao Hotel ballroom. Whittled down over three months by an intense training regime, which fighter Justin Casey felt, "sorted the men from the boys", the surviving 18 entered the ring to raise money for the Macau Special Olympics team. Daniels emerged as victor in his bout last night.

The switch from day time office executive to in-the-ring fighter is not as extreme as it might sound. White collar boxing reportedly started in New York in the 1980s, and there are now regular bouts in London, Hong Kong, and other major cities. All that's needed is a large amount of courage and no professional fighting experience.

"A lot of people wanted to learn how to box but never had an opportunity to do it," said Shane Benis, the fight's organiser, and the founder of China Sports Promotions.

Participants were put through their paces by Danny Lawley, a well built ex-policeman, and founding member of the Hong Kong Police Boxing Club. Lawley's job is to prepare them both physically and mentally for the fight. He said he exhorts each fighter to remind themselves, "they have done everything I can," and as long as they apply what they learned, "they will be all right".