In 1976, Rocky Balboa captured audiences across the world, upholding the place of boxing as a popular sport within pop culture. More importantly, the film’s ending refuses to focus on who won the final fight, reframing the sport not as a competition to be won, but more as a way to build community, self-confidence, and personal relationships. It is within this community spirit that boxing has broken into the social life at U of T through the Victoria Pool Society’s (VPS) student fight night. 

In this piece, we won’t be focusing on the technicality of the fights. Instead, we will look at how the fight night was the product of collaboration and support from across the student body. 

Inhabiting approximately 68,000 students per year, U of T’s body of students form a vast landscape that’s hard to narrow down for generalizations. However, this broadness can lead one to think that what’s typically categorized as “campus spirit” is absent amongst students. This is a criticism often lobbed at U of T – that the sheer size of the student body makes organizing large, campus-wide, student events incredibly difficult, or nearly impossible. Yet, under the microscope, it becomes evident that, like every mass of people, U of T is built up of many diverse micro-circles and communities that complexify and inform the whole.

Both the construction and the gathering process that eventually became VPS’ Student Fight Night is rather revelatory of the hidden threads that connect students both as individuals and the groups to which they belong. 

In that regard, it may not be surprising to hear that the reportedly over 800 people who got together for the Fight Night – either on an organizational or participational level – weren’t total strangers to one another: they were there for someone, something, or even somewhere – whether to support a friend, to be a participant of history-in-the-making, or to find a community that reveres competition, friendship, and partying. 

The fight, which was the first of its kind at U of T, was held by VPS, led by co-CEOs Theo Sokol and Magdalena Berton. Despite what their name may suggest, VPS is not solely focused on pool, but rather on creating social events for students across campus. The group’s guiding principle is creating more student social events at U of T. 

Since 2023, they have expanded both in size and scale, as well as their weekly pool socials; the group now hosts parties and pub nights. They also work to partner with other social groups on campus in order to create larger, wide-reaching student events. However, the fight night was one of their biggest undertakings yet, with a months-long preparation process leading to a night-long event held at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. 

Student fight nights, while not incredibly common in Canada, are a ubiquitous tradition across universities in the United Kingdom. For Ivy Thomas, VPS photographer, it was amazing to see the tradition brought to Toronto. “A lot of the British university culture,” she said, “had amazing things for putting people together, and that was kind of lacking in Toronto. One of the big things in the UK is the culture of student fight nights, so we wanted to bring that in.” Her attitude seemed to be shared by the student body, as over the course of the night, the stadium was quickly filled with audience members dressed in formal wear, waiting anxiously for the fights to start. 

The event certainly did bring people together, as the Queen Elizabeth theatre was a full house of students from across all backgrounds and social groups. On the organizational side, the event blended many different groups and talents at U of T. From athletics to student journalism and local musicians, all areas of student life were working together to create a night of sport and celebration that showcased a broad array of talents. 

While the event was sanctioned by Boxing Ontario, and involved a notable degree of professionalism in its organization, the preparation for the boxing and how it was inevitably carried out served more as a highlight for the students partaking in it rather than a showcase of polished talent. 

The fighters had varying degrees of experience going in. Richard Leung, who fought in the first round as a light middleweight, admitted to having very “casual” experience with the sport from the past. Meanwhile, Bruno Sullivan, who was going last as the Blue Team’s cruiserweight, said his background in sports was normally in soccer. Yet, athletes overall seemed keen on testing themselves in a discipline that might be unfamiliar to them otherwise. 

Evidently, this was similar to the rationale of those who volunteered to be a ring girl. Eden Kendall, who was on duty that night, told the Herald that she liked to try new things – but also added that her volunteering was an extension of the support she was giving to her friend who was fighting that night.

Nonetheless, the fighters who responded to VPS’ call were split into two as the Blue and Red teams, and they all undertook 3 months’ worth of training. They learnt about different styles of fighting to prepare for their time in the ring, with the practices being done in groups and not between the actual opponents who were assigned to fight against each other that night. “I don’t know how my opponent’s been training or how their team has been training,” claimed Sullivan, and within the vein of competitive humor, added: “but I don’t think they’ve been training as hard as us.”

The fighters, while competitive, had a sense of humour and friendliness that sometimes overshadowed their on-court aggression. This was evident even in the lead-up to the fight, as during the VPS press conference on Wednesday night, athletes on both teams joked and laughed as they partook in cross-talk to taunt their competition. While the athletes may have been making predictions as to how many rounds they would need to defeat their opponents, the energy in the room remained amicable and open, with all sides clearly having fun with the teasing. 

The structure of the fights was simple: athletes belonging to two separate teams (Blue and Red) would meet in the ring, moving through a series of fights until a victor was named. The fights spanned a number of weight divisions, with matches alternating between male and female categories. 

On Friday, the energy and anticipation of everyone in the theatre were running high. The atmosphere of the fight was difficult to describe. At times, the event felt more like a clubbing event than a sporting one, with DJ-curated music playing over a sea of students holding cans of drinks and seltzers. When the fights started, however, the audience was quickly engrossed in the sport taking place on stage. In the crowd, the strength of community was felt as people gathered to cheer on athletes while standing next to people they had likely never met before. At certain times, the support chants for both teams became so entangled that once you indulged in your selective listening, your mind would switch channels in whose name you’re actually hearing – like the famous Yanny and Laurel phenomenon.

On a personal level, going out to an event where people become so homogenized was interesting for us – the authors of this article – because whether we want to admit it or not, our mutual friend group consists of people in our Cinema Studies major. We were indeed flattered by the “CINSSU is here!” exclamation we received backstage, but that certainly calls into question how much of our personas are baked into the social groups and programs we are in – especially given the conception of U of T as a very academic space overall. 

Vince had to leave towards the end, but I, Batu, stuck around. After the show was over, the conversations still carried on from the lobby to the outside. Either it was the anticipation of the official afterparty that held people together, or to some degree, it was the hope for the collective fun to not end quite yet. In retrospect on the show, spectator Dustin Kai admitted that it was the first event that got him this pumped in a long while, and added, “It was great meeting with people I didn’t even know and talking to them.” 

Certainly, Vic Pool Society’s presence brought together people from different circles who were united in the fight, and soon it became irrelevant whether or not these people knew each other from before. “Truthfully, it’s a lot of friendship even between the teams,” said Bruno Sullivan, hours before he fought with the eventual champion Max Berton in the finale; “We’ve all known each other for three months now. Obviously, there’s competition with the opponent, but at the end of the day, it’s all good, we’re all friends.”

We ended up meeting a lot of people that night, like our colleagues from The Mike and Hart House Film Board. It was also a night of stumbling into old friends from all around. One of my closest friends, Mark Metri, came by towards the finale to cheer and chant for his former roommate – who happened to be Sullivan himself. In the meantime, I realized that my high school friend Derin Iman happened to be there, too. I was especially surprised to hear she was doing a DJ set later that night. And finally, I bumped into the Editor-in-Chief of this newspaper you’re currently reading, Julian Apolinario, and reported to him that I was on duty. 

Probably the most recurring piece of dialogue that night after “Who-are-you-here-for” was the factual statement “This is the biggest boxing event in Ontario.” I do not doubt this sentence – which tells me that Student Fight Night was a fitting microcosm of this fishbowl we call the University of Toronto: despite how massive it may seem to us students, we are more connected and aware of each other than we normally perceive. Eventually, we all end up sailing towards the familiar spots we have warmed up for ourselves, but every now and then, we inhabit the same time and setting with a potential soon-not-to-be stranger.