Banging Benny Kite: One Of The Best Boxers In Australia

A professional boxer, ANBF champion, WBF Asia-Pacific champ, IBF Pan-Pacific champion, and 2020 ANBF Fighter of the year, as well as being a proud father of two boys, Benny Kite is a champion boxer who talks about mindset, resilience and training. Background and how he got into boxingStarting from the age of 13, boxing had always been just a hobby for him. With a bunch of amateur fights under his sleeve till the age of 23, it wasn’t until he went backpacking across the US that he realised how much he enjoyed it. “I grew up in Cairns and there was a great deal of boxing around. At the time that I had about 20-25 amateur fights over the course of the time when I was 13-14 to 23. In that amount of time, you know, the guys that would be down here would’ve had a couple hundred, so it wasn’t something that I was really trying to pursue a career in,” says Benny.He continues, “As soon as my wife and I touched down in New York for our six-month backpacking trip, I was like, ‘I need to find a boxing gym’.” And then every single town that we stopped in, the whole way along the trip, I found a different boxing gym and did some training. I was over there on holiday, I was just having a good time and then just backpacking around and was just doing the training while I was there. I just found that I wasn’t really that far away from the guys that were always right at the top of the gym. I just thought that when I come back to Australia, I really owe it to myself to have a really good crack at it because I hadn’t really dedicated myself 100% to it yet.”Once he moved back to Cairns, he informed his parents of his plans of wanting to become a professional boxer, and that was the beginning of everything. What’s worked for himIt takes lots of hard work, effort, losses, reality checks to realise how difficult it is to make dreams a reality. Passion alone does not guarantee success, it’s all the effort put in behind the scenes that makes everything worthwhile. Benny had his fair share of losses before he got onto the victory train. “I had to learn how to apply myself 100% percent. As I said, when I was young, boxing was just a hobby for me, and then when I moved here, I kind of thought it was just going to happen and that it was going to be easy. But my professional career started off pretty rocky - I lost my first two professional fights, and my future was looking pretty bleak. I guess that’s when I had to kind of make a decision that if I’m going to make this work, I need to just completely apply myself and really put in the hard work and leave no stone unturned. Then I won a couple of fights, lost another one, won another one kind of thing. At that point, through that stage of my career, I guess I had to understand that it’s not all going to come at once just cause I’m trying my hardest right now, it doesn’t mean that it makes up for all the rest of the time. I needed to be like ‘keep going, keep going, keep going,’ and stay on that path kind of thing. And then the good things will start coming towards the end,” he confesses.But it’s clear that the results, eventually, proved to be fruitful as the legend went on to have a 13-fight win streak.He adds: “This is something that I guess I had to decide and come to realise after I went and had a fight in India. I had been applying myself for that fight 100% along with a lot of training, but I didn’t get a decision on that night, and it was then that I had to realise that yeah it’s not all going to come just because I trained hard. I had to train again, and again, and again. And it was after that fight, I went onto my 13th fight win streak and really started seeing some results, there has been a lot of growth and development since.” What does it mean to be healthy to you?It’s important to take care of your health regardless of what your life is focused around, and it’s all the more important to remain healthy as a professional boxer. For Benny, his kids are his main motivation to take care of himself. He says, “I’ve got young kids and might have another one or two so I need to be active for them. I don’t want to be a dad that sits on the couch and is like, ‘You guys go outside’. I want to be out there teaching them stuff, and then also exercise. I think it is the best thing for you, not just physically but mentally as well, you’re in so much a bit of a better place when you're fit and strong. I never want to not be able to do something because I’m not fit enough and strong enough. I want to be able to do things, and I want to be able to take the kids places and play sports with them. Even when someone says, ‘Do you want to come surf on the weekend?’ or ‘We are going to go to the mountains, do you want to come?,’ - I don’t want be like, ‘Oh I can do that.” Will you let your kids enter boxing?“I think that boxing is such an important thing for young kids to do,” says Benny as he speaks of his opinions regarding his kids taking up boxing.“I think that when growing up in boxing and have friends obviously that box or do any form of martial arts, you see them growing up and they’re the ones that never get in any trouble, at school or out on the street or anything like that, because they know what they can do, it’s not a massive excitement for them to go out there and punch some kid in the head. They are in here training every day and that’s just what they do. It’s the ones that haven’t done it, that are trying to test themselves and prove themselves, and it’s exciting for them because it’s so new. So that being said, I definitely want my kids to learn to box or do some form of a martial art because I think it’s important that way. I think my wife will kill me if they decide to pursue boxing, she definitely feels that she’s done her time. Plus, it’s a sport that I love, and I know that it’s a tough game, but I would want something easier for them. It’s important for them to learn, but for following their career I would want something nicer for them.