Beyond The Ropes: Bobby Lee Burns

Beyond The Ropes: Bobby Lee Burns

The South Shields-born Bobby Lee Burns is only 22, but she is already making waves in her sport of choice. After just twenty-five amateur fights, Burns is already showing more than enough potential for a golden future in boxing. A two-time National Champion. You sense that is just the beginning.

“I had a good upbringing. I was never in the house and was always out playing like a kid,” Burns says of her formative years. “My best friend when I was younger was a boy. I was never a girly girl. I loved being out building dens and playing rough, basically. I would stay out until the lights came on in the streets.

“I would never dress like a boy as my mam would still dress me girly and put plaits in my hair, and you wouldn’t have ever thought I loved the things I did. I was always around sports my mam was a stay-at-home mam who looked after three kids on her own. We had to travel at least four times a week to go to football for my older brother Nevigh. My mam couldn’t drive then, so we would have to get the metro and walk quite far from it.

“My mam would do anything for us and make sure we had hobbies. He used to play for Middlesbrough and Sunderland Football Academy and got scouted to play for Newcastle Academy and settled there. So I was always around that sort of atmosphere. I lived in Ireland for a short period of time when I was younger. That’s where all my family are from, and then we moved back over to England. So I only have my auntie and uncle over here, and the rest still live over in Ireland. My family are driven people and I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without them my mam stepdad, auntie and uncle push me and always drive me to become better in the sport now and believe I can go far.”

Even from an early age, Burns always seemed destined for a life with sport at the forefront. “I was always sport-minded it runs in the family my two uncles from Ireland were in fighting sports my Uncle Paddy was a boxer and my other Uncle Mathew did Taekwondo, he was actually selected to go to the Olympics. Years ago, I was like a ‘Tom Boy’ when I was younger. I was always involved in the more boy-like sports. I tried gymnastics and other girly sports but never liked them. I got picked to play for the boy’s football team in school, and I was the team captain for the girls’ football team in school. I never actually wanted to do football out of school. I was always picked to go to the athletic competitions. Then, from a young age, I did Jujitsu, which I loved. I got to the purple belt but quit as I wanted more of a contact sport.”

It was at that point that boxing entered her life. “I started boxing when I was about 12 or 13,” Burns relayed to FightPost. “I had done Jujitsu for a couple of years when I was younger, but I quit as I wanted to do something more physical and more of a contact sport. My mam Janine always jokes about it, as I said to her. ”I don’t want to do Jujitsu anymore, I want to actually punch people.” We didn’t know a boxing club to go to, then my mam met Ciaran, who would later become my step-dad.

“Ciaran got me into the sport when he first met my mam, as he had boxed when he was younger and was a coach at Perth Green ABC in Jarrow. So me and my brother Nevigh started going, there was only one other girl there, so I trained with all the lads, after a few weeks, another of the coaches Jordan Minchell told me if I stuck to it I would be a National Champion.

“I had a few bouts at Perth Green, I got to a development final at about 40kg, but I couldn’t control my nerves and stopped boxing. It was affecting me too much. I was also told I had scoliosis after suffering with a bad back. The doctors told me that boxing wasn’t going to help it, basically saying I should stop. I wish I hadn’t listened now as I think I would have been a lot further in the sport and won even more National titles and been on the England squad earlier.

“Then when I left school when I was 16, I wanted to do sport as a career/job, so I applied for the DISE boxing programme at Gateshead College. I chose boxing as the sport. I always wanted to box again but never had the push in me to go back. I was just doing that course to get my qualifications. But I started to get the bug back when I was in college, as Perth Green had closed, and I was looking for a gym when I finished college. My college friend Beau Pape’s dad Craig ran Kenton ABC, where my college tutor/coach Steve Cranston also coached after college. But Kenton was on the far side of Newcastle from me. It was a 40-50 min drive away with all the traffic. So I tried a gym closer to home, as I couldn’t drive at the time. I liked it, but one of the coaches actually told me to look for a better gym. So I decided to go to Kenton when I could drive as I knew Beau and Steve. I was there for about six months and had my first bout for them in Scotland when I was 19. Two years to that day, after that bout, I was in the NAC(ABA) 48kg final.”

“The attraction at the start was, getting to hit people, as how I put it across,” Burns says why she gravitates to boxing. “Which is obviously the basics of it. By that, I mean the contact and the fight, fighting and sparring are my favourite things. But everything that comes with it. The feeling of being fit. I know my coaches are in my corner, but it’s down to me in there as it’s a one-woman sport. Winning or losing the winning feeling is the best feeling.”

Bobby Lee Burns has ambitions way beyond her years. Like many, there are thoughts of world titles. But also a desire to have the way for the next generation.

“My long-term aspirations are to win a world title,” Burns says of what potentially lies ahead. “I want to then make a name for myself in the pro game, and make money out of the sport and inspire females in the sport like Katie Taylor has done. I also wanted to go to the Olympics but with having time off when I was younger and not being back in the sport for that long I think I’ve missed my chances as you want to be known by the England coaches and GB coaches for a long time.”