Name: Kevin Hooper

Status: Amateur

Club: Grimsby Amateur Boxing Club

Date of Birth: 07/04/84

KEVIN Hooper has emerged as North East Lincolnshire’s top amateur boxer over the last few years.

With former National ABA finalist Andy Blackett still suffering from a long-term injury, 24-year-old Hooper has taken up the mantle of representing the area on both regional and national levels, winning a number coveted titles along the way.

A supermarket security guard by trade, Hooper began boxing aged 16 when he joined the Mariners Amateur Boxing Club on Wellington Street, Grimsby.

He trained there for nine months before transferring to Stuart Fleet’s Grimsby School of Boxing.

His debut came on March 29, 2001 at the Beachcomber, but he lost on a majority decision to Adil Karim.

Hooper avenged the defeat, however, when he beat Karim on a unanimous points decision at the Handsworth Working Men’s Club in Sheffield three weeks later.

That would be his last fight for more than three-and-a-half years, though, after a knee injury threatened to end his boxing career before it had really got started.

Hooper eventually returned to the fight game in January 2004 when he joined the Grimsby Amateur Boxing Club, who he continues to train with and represent today.

Hooper had piled on the weight during his lay-off and it took eight months to get back to fighting fitness (his comeback contest was at light-heavyweight), but he has since gone on to clock up more than 30 contests, predominantly as a welterweight.

His breakthrough fight came in the Novice Championship Midlands Counties semi-final last November, when he scored a TKO against Craig Hardy, from Nottingham, in Coventry.

It was his first career stoppage and provided the springboard for his best ever season as an amateur.

Later that year, he reached the final of the National Novice Class B final at York Hall, Bethnall Green, London in December, but was beaten 10-5 by Ahmet Patterson; and then the Senior ABA Midlands welterweight final in Coventry in April, only to suffer defeat once again, this time by Jamie McGough 16-8.

Hooper has won the National Novice Class B Midlands Counties welterweight title on two occasions.