My name is Dominic ‘Jack’ Shepherd I started White Collar Boxing in 1999.

My Dad first took me to an amateur club when I was an aggressive 11 year old but the cockiness was soon knocked out of me when I realised just how tough the other kids were and how dedicated you had to be to go anywhere within the sport. I basically couldn’t cut it and drifted away, eventually started work and found that my future, or so I thought lay in drinking and smoking in bars and clubs in the City where I was working as a moneybroker. At my peak I was over 15 stone, smoking as many as 30 cigarettes a day and my best mate was Jack Daniels.

By the time I was 27 I was heading one way and made a decision to start trying to get fit again and joined the Peacock Gym which was 10 minutes from the Isle of Dogs where I lived. Martin Bowers who owns the Peacock Gym fixed me up with a professional fighter called Scott Dixon who trained me and taught me the basics again and things started to look up.

I was training in the Peacock one day and recognised Alan Lacey who I had seen on the television who had pioneered White Collar Boxing in the UK through his company The Real Fight Club. We had a chat and a spar and agreed that we would train together again which we did the following week. In those days Alan was in the process of building interest in White Collar Boxing and was planning a show at The Royal National Hotel in Bloomsbury and asked me if I wanted to get ready for it, which I did.

I trained like never before for 5-6 months and boxed Lee Hazel over three rounds beating him on points. The feeling I had that night will stay with me forever as here I was 30 years old, down to 13 stone and boxing in front of 600 people. I have now had more than 30 White Collar bouts and at the age of 46 it just shows to anyone reading this that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.

Scores of people have attended the Peacock training classes, some of whom have taken part in the 40 or so shows that I have been involved in. Our aim is to teach you to box, whether just for your fitness and self confidence or to take things one step further to compete on a show.

White Collar Boxing Classes

There are several White Collar classes at the Peacock Gym run mainly by Bill Dodd.

Bill has had a glittering amateur career. He started boxing at the age of 7 and boxed for England when he was 12. He won 4 national schoolboys titles, the Nabc’s twice, junior ABA’s once, boxed for England 8 times and was captain against Russia. He was also senior London ABA champion having a total of 60 fights boxing for clubs such as Hornchurch, Dagenham and the world famous Repton. So rest assured anyone looking to start out on the road to becoming a White Collar Boxer is in very capable hands.

Bill’s classes are Monday and Wednesday at 6.30pm and Dom Shepherd 9am on Saturday mornings.