Daunt to Fight in Road to Garden's Quarterfinals

Golden gloves are no longer the prize for winning what used to be The New York Daily News’s boxing tournament, though Richie Daunt, who won his second-round match Friday, will take whatever U.S.A. Boxing wants to give him. The organization oversees the tourney now, under the “The Road to the Garden” banner.

“Two more and I’m in the Garden,” the 27-year-old Montauker said on Monday. 

Daunt, fighting at 152 pounds in the novice division, outscored Diego Iglesias at the Electric Industry Center in Flushing Friday, finishing with a flurry of punches that impressed the judges and the commentators, who also observed that he is fighting a lot better than he has in the past.

“I used to get gassed,” said Daunt, who has been following a strict training regimen — running, swimming, and biking, as well as traveling UpIsland several times a week to spar in either Freeport or Westbury. “I’m living the life . . . no drinking, no partying. . . .” 

Watching a Pug Life Chronicles Facebook video of the fight with this writer, he agreed that the first round was close. The two brawled a bit toward the end of the second, during which the commentators, who pronounced him the aggressor, said, “Daunt’s trying to decapitate him.” And the third ended, as had the second, with fists flying. “He walked into a lot of punches,” the winner said, with a smile. “The commentators said he ate about 20.”

Daunt thinks this is his year. He owns a 5-4 overall record now. One more fight and he’ll have to move up to the open division (though not until The Road to the Garden tournament is over). 

Not having to move out of the novice division until after the tourney “is why it’s good for me, it gives me an edge,” he said.

Friday’s match was for him a particularly emotional one. His grandmother, Maria Locasio, with whom he’s lived for the past seven years, had died the day before. And the Electric Industry Center, at 15811 Jewel Avenue in Flushing, had been his late grandfather Tony Daunt’s union hall. 

“My grandparents lived in Flushing before coming out here,” he said. “We were close, we knew she was sick, but we thought she might be here for a little longer. . . . This one was for her.”

“She would always say, ‘Tell me after’ when I would say I was fighting.” His girlfriend, Camille Erb, “gets mad if I lose,” he said.

His next fight — he did not know the particulars as of Monday, though he thought it might be in the Bronx at the end of the month — will be with Patrick Gough in the quarterfinals. “I’m going to watch his fights,” Daunt said. 

A win over Gough would advance him to a possible semifinal matchup with one of his Freeport sparring partners, Zach Bloomberg — a fight that may be held at his home gym, Finest Fitness, in Patchogue, on April 7.

The finals are to be contested in Madison Square Garden on April 20.

Getting back to this being his year, “You’ve got to be 100 percent,” he said. “If you’re doubting, you’ve already lost. As they say, defeat is not declared when you fall, but when you refuse to rise again.”