Skip to main content

Sugar Ray, Joe and IBW

At the risk of being accused of being too 'Daily Mail' again with the title and posting, I thought it was worth highlighting this story about how International Business Wales (IBW) has been helping our very own undefeated Joe Calzaghe with his unique training system - the Calzaghe Counter-Punch-developed by the Newbridge boxer and his former coach Kevin Davies.

According to the story from Reuters - which has yet to be picked up properly in the Welsh press - the invitation for a private preview was extended to Sugar Ray (who has a range of business interests in the USA) after he read about the Counter-Punch and wanted to size up its commercial potential in his home market.

The Counter-Punch has already been widely recognized by the boxing fraternity in the UK as a leading fitness and boxing training system. Joe is promoting the equipment as a unique conditioning and cardio-workout system and is currently working with the IBW team to raise its profile overseas.

This is a great story which demonstrates what IBW is doing to help Welsh products and it is a shame that this story was clearly lost amongst the expenses furore last week.

As a big boxing fan, I think Sugar Ray is only slightly behind Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson and Jack Dempsey in the list of great boxers and I remember staying up well into the night to watch his epic fights with Roberto Duran and Thomas 'the Hit Man' Hearns during the 1980s.

If anyone can help to sell Joe's products in America, then Sugar Ray is the man.

Comments

red kite cbox said…
ach all u need is a pair of trai ing shoes for roadwork, a skipping rope, a wall with a light trained on it for a shadow boxing and a sparring partner that does not fall down like a sack of spuds!
Anonymous said…
Sorry but I'm with Dylan Joe an Ray. But if ya can get me the spuds cheap ! ........

Popular posts from this blog

THE CRACHACH

Unlike me, do you consider yourself part of 'the establishment' here in Wales?  As thousands gather for the Eisteddfod in Mold this morning, they will, according to some social commentators, not be participating in the greatest cultural festivals of Europe. Instead, they will merely be bit-part players in one of the annual gatherings of the great and good of Wales.  Unkindly, this set of the movers and shakers in Welsh society is known as 'the crachach' , and constitute a social class all of their own, dominating the educational, cultural and media sectors of Wales and allegedly looking down upon any outsider with new ideas, reinforcing mediocrity and failing to see beyond the limits of their own narrow experience.  They are said to live in a comfort zone that awaits the expected invitation to the next glass of chilled chardonnay and canapés, forgetting that due to their lack of leadership and drive, Wales remains firmly rooted to the bottom of the UK prosperity league ...

THE FUTURE FOR SILICON VALLEY

During the last twenty years, there have been many academics, politicians and policymakers (including yours truly) who have looked over to the innovation developed in Silicon Valley, California and wondered if we could ever emulate that success here in Wales. Whilst the former First Minister Rhodri Morgan proposed only last week that South Wales could become the “UK’s answer to Silicon Valley”, he is not alone in the world with such a suggestion for his local area. With imitation often being the sincerest form of flattery, many others regions across the globe have tried to emulate the ‘secret sauce’ that has led to this small valley to the South East of San Francisco becoming the seedbed for world-leading companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Google. But after fifty years of success, can it maintain its position as the premier location for innovation in the World? This is a question that its own business community has recently been asking itself. This has culminated in a...

MYOPIA AND ENTROPY

Over the next month, this blog will look very carefully at some of the new policies developed as part of the Economic Renewal Programme (ERP) launched by the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) last week. Hopefully, it will help to start a debate on whether this is the right approach to turn around the Welsh economy and to drag us from the bottom of the UK’s prosperity league table. I will start by examining the decision to abolish International Business Wales (IBW), the Assembly’s overseas investment arm that was responsible for attracting business into Wales as well as promoting Welsh business abroad. Some will say that this decision to close down the last remnant of the old Welsh Development Agency was justified by the outcomes of last October’s review of IBW by Glenn Massey, the former inward investment specialist. However, if you bother reading the Massey report in detail, it actually has little evidence to suggest that the division was doing badly. If we examine IBW’s record on new j...