Category:Chicago Park District Champions

Chicago Park District Champions

Championship Program

City-wide amateur boxing Tournament Champions

All City-wide Champions were sectional champions, but are generally only listed as City champions as it is understood that they first had to win a sectional title to compete for a city championship. The boxers listed as Sectional CPD Champions are boxers that won either the North or South side section and lost or were unable to participate in the city finals. Boxers listed, from both the Novice and Open divisions.

Some boxers are listed as both City and Sectional champions because they made it to the finals in multiple tournaments, different years.

* CPD Sectional Champions

CHICAGO PARK DISTRICT BOXING Tournament History

The Chicago Park District (CPD) Boxing tournament, started by Edmund L. Kelly, was one of three major amateur boxing tournaments in Chicago, during the 1970's, 80's and early 1990's along with the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) and Golden Gloves.
The city finals were televised on major networks. The bouts televised were the Open division championships and selected bouts of the novice matches.
The venue's for the city championships were usually the Northwest Armory on Chicago's North side and at times the finals were held at the historic International Amphitheatre on Chicago's South side. In the late 1990's and following years the CPD discontinued the Open division bouts and in those later years the championships were only held in the Junior, Intermediate and Sub-Novice divisions. Those CPD championships since the late 1990's and today's championships are held at Curie Pk. High School gym.

The tournament participants generally come from various Chicago Park District Boxing Gyms throughout the city of Chicago, and nearby suburbs.
Boxers must represent one of the city of Chicago's Parks, when they participate in this tournament.

Thousands of young boxers have fought in the annual tournaments. Many of them have found success in the world. Among the participants that found success as professional boxers were, world champions David Diaz, Alfonzo Ratliff and one time heavyweight champ Oliver McCall.

Among the many Chicago Park District boxing products that went on to notable careers, were Olympic & World Champion Lee Roy Murphy and Notre Dame, NFL football star Tom Zbikowski.

CPD Citywide Boxing Championship belt