Boro boxing champ fights his way to world title

BEN 'THE BOMBER' HOPES HIS SUCCESS WILL INSPIRE CHILDREN

- By DAVE ROBSON

HE'S Teesside’s latest world champion - and he’s done it in one of the toughest sports around.

Bare-knuckle boxing isn’t for the fainthearted. But it's where Grove Hill-raised Ben Bonner has, in just three years, fought his way to a world title.

A 12,000 crowd at the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, saw ‘The Bomber’ clinch the Bare Knuckle Fight Championship (BKFC) 70kg World Lightweight title with a thrilling unanimous decision victory over Tony ‘Loco’ Soto. Despite taking on the fight with just eight days’ notice, the Boro fighter managed knockdowns in the first and second rounds, paving the way to a hard-fought points victory.

And when he returned to see mam Danielle in Grove Hill after the fight, the community he grew up in turned out in force to welcome him home. It’s been a remarkable rise to the top for Ben, 34, who for the past four years has lived in London, where he works as a drug counsellor.

Growing up in Grove Hill, he attended St Joseph's Primary and Newlands School before taking a two-year sports science course at college in Hammersmith, London, where his dad Carl was living. Returning to Teesside, he played football at a decent standard for various local sides and, in his 20s, resumed the conventional boxing he’d first tried as a youngster at the Halfpenny pub in Grove Hill.

Intrigued by the arrival in the UK of US-based BKFC three years ago, Ben got in touch - and he’s never looked back.