He still hits a punching bag inside his home in Florida in the United States before he departs outside for his morning briefing and daily activities that have governed his life for some fifty years after his retirement from boxing and playing football in Belize in the 1960s and early ‘70s. He is still Belize’s legendary boxing champion for life — displaying remarkably good health and fitness that enable him to keep punching and kicking at the challenges of life after all these years. He is the same Gilly Dunn — still!
The legendary Gilly Dunn became the middleweight boxing champion of Belize in the early 1970s, fighting out of several boxing gyms before establishing himself inside the historic Independence Gym under the legendary Belizean boxer and boxing trainer Gustavo Marin. Beating the formidable boxing opponent Fred Hunter to clench the title, Dunn fought other classic Belizean boxers in his heyday while playing some of the best Belizean football with the legendary Belizean football team Brodies that included Belizean football greats like Pops Hamilton, Louis “Mugger” Garbutt, John Young, Nelson “Roo” Robinson and others.
During the 1960s Dunn became a multitalented Belizean athlete with a lot of energy and power, like many of his peers who were also playing many different sports in Belize due to a passion/love for athletics. But boxing and football were his favorites, and before taking the middleweight boxing championship of Belize in the ‘60s, he fought Belizean boxers of his time that some would not even know boxed, like the Belizean musical rocker Bredda David Obi, who went by the name “David Smith” at that time. Dunn and Smith fought in the preliminary bouts that took place before the exhibition boxing match of the world heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Muhammad Ali, at Belize City’s Palace Theater in 1965.
Ali, who was Cassius Clay before his conversion to Islam, was visiting Belize from the United States as a member of the Nation of Islam and had gained world class boxing fame after beating Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship. The visit to then British Honduras gave the former British colony recognition as a country of stature, and led to the endorsement of Belizean boxers like Gilly Dunn with class as some of the best boxers in Central America and the Caribbean.
And the Dunn & Smith fight became historic for Belize as one of the fights that were on the card of the Muhammad Ali exhibition fight. Dunn recalled the Ali boxing exhibition match very well, and he basked in the celebrity status of meeting the champ and being the Belizean boxer who opened up for the world’s famous “Champ”. With Belizean boxing greats like the late Gus Marin in Ali’s corner and C.F.S. Brown being the promoter and ring announcer, Gilly Dunn and Bredda David also became Belizean national celebrity boxers of the moment.
Establishing himself as one of the best football players of the 1960s, Gilly Dunn made a mark on Belizean football of the time while playing for the legendary Belizean team, BRODIES, and got respect from the best of them, like Pops Hamilton, Palma Davis, Nelson “Roo” Robinson and Louis “Mugger” Garbutt, whom he expressed deep respect and admiration for as some of the best Belizean football players in the history of the sport in Belize. Dunn remarked that if Belizean football was played today as it was in his era, Belize would still be the Central American and Caribbean powerhouse that it was in the ‘60s.
He celebrated the fact that Belizean football players of his caliber were passionately driven and hardworking. They practiced often and pushed their bodies to the brink of its maximum capacity. He remembered how he trained well for a fight and would also attend football practice in between the weekly schedule without any complaint or exhaustion. He added that the Belizean athletes like him of the ‘60s conditioned their bodies to have the stamina to withstand and sustain the distance of sporting competitions. Dunn became a talented football team player, scoring many times whenever he could and assisting his team to play the best game in every match in Belize City and in countrywide football knockout matches.
Gilly Dunn played football for team Brodies and Independence and played against some of the best football teams in the Belize district, as well as the south, west and north of countrywide Belize. When I called the roll to Dunn of Belize’s greatest footballers of the 1960s and Belize’s legendary hall of famers, he expressed that he has played with and against most of them. Apart from the dynamic Pops Hamilton, John Young and Louis “Mugger” Garbutt, Dunn’s recollection included distinct memories of other legendaries like Paama Davis, Angus Vernon aka Mr. Ball, Rodwell “Roddy” Leslie, Nelson “Roo” Robinson, Daniel “D-Line” Lino, Victor “Tubook” Martinez, Rudolf “Pas” Ellis, Gilbert “Pine” Hernandez, and many others.
Although Dunn came from out of the cadre of ‘60s Belize district footballers, this remarkably high-skilled footballer clashed with the best from Belize’s football south, west and north, winning against them most of the time. Teams ranging from the southern Stann Creek’s “Queen’s Park Rangers” to the west’s Cayo district “Avengers” got beat by Dunn’s Allstar supermen, Belize district footballers that showed no mercy and took no prisoners. Through the lens of Dunn, Belize district footballers were the most dominant and skillful of all of Belize’s football giants of the 1960s.
But how did Gilly Dunn play both Central American and Caribbean regional class football of the 1960s at such a high level among his national athletic counterparts? And how did he also box his way as a Belizean fighter into regional boxing, becoming Belize’s middleweight boxing champion before losing to the legendary Belizean boxer David Dakers in the 1970s and retiring from Belizean sports? The answer lies in the fact that at 76-years-old, Gilly Dunn is still in some of the best shape possible for his age as a man that lived by the principles of health and wellness. He still punches a hundred-pound bag with some of the same power as he did in his days as one of Belize’s legendary athletes of all time.
Dunn’s story here transcends volumes and is just a glimpse of this talented Belizean athlete. It serves to remind Belizean athletes of the day that they stand on the shoulders of giants like him who did better with much less in the ‘60s. He reminds the present and future Belizean athletes that mediocrity should not be an excuse or should not obscure the great athletic power Belize was and can still become. The late Belizean boxing legend Eustace Vernon called Dunn nothing else but the “Champ”; and he continues to live up to that name honorably, as Belize’s legendary middleweight boxing champion and football great for all times.
(Photos through the courtesy of Gilly Dunn & the Belize AMANDALA newspaper)