A goodbye to a friend I never met, but really knew

A goodbye to a friend I never met, but really knew
August 18, 2014

This afternoon, while at work (a job which, among many other things, encompasses monitoring Twitter), I came across the heart-stopping news that Glyn Leach, the longtime editor of well-regarded print publication Boxing Monthly, passed away.

Photo courtesy of @ZombieSquasher.@ZombieSquasher

The loss was met by unrelenting sorrow by those in the boxing community. A vast majority of these people never were lucky enough to interact with Glyn but were still fortunate enough to enjoy his blood, sweat, and tears, as the magazine arrived in their hands a number of ways. For me, I lost someone who could only be referred to as a mentor of sorts.

It is unbelievably tough in the dog-eat-dog world of trying to make a living on the written word. While working full-time on the graveyard shift at a retail job, stocking shelves and trying not to fall asleep, Glyn Leach gave me my first opportunity to showcase my work someplace I considered well out of reach at the time. Boxing writing was something that was still far off from paying my bills, but Glyn got in touch with me about ideas for the magazine after coming across my work on Twitter. Despite being half the world away and having never met, Glyn saw something in my writing (which was extremely rough at the time) to give me a shout. This even though I was writing for a small, lightly regarded blog at the time.