Sport
Resolute Gym’s Kallym Huffer and Daniel Cleave head to Fiji with Boxing Victoria for international tournament
Kallym Huffer is preparing for his very own Rumble in the Jungle.
While it’s perhaps not as acclaimed as the 1974 heavyweight knockout bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, for 16-year-old Shepparton pugilist Huffer, his upcoming trip east across the Pacific is just as significant.
Huffer and Daniel Cleave, his coach at Resolute Gym, prepare to trade local digs for the unfamiliar air of Fiji.
The punching pair is set to jet off with the Boxing Victoria team to take on Fiji’s finest during a development tournament held in the nation’s capital Suva on November 20-24.
Cleave will serve as a state coach and mentor, but will undoubtedly keep a keener eye on Huffer, who he has worked with to hone the teen’s physical skill and mental muscle — a resilience that wears as heavily as any glove.
Now, he and his protégé are set to showcase this hard-won skill on an international stage.
“Sixteen boxers are going over and myself and two other coaches, the boys will be fighting hopefully one to two times over the five days,” Cleave said.
“So as one of the state coaches, we oversee all of them.
“I'll be looking after him and then, obviously, between the other two coaches we'll be looking after the 15 others.”
Strapping up in state colours, the international jaunt is not just a trip across the Pacific — it’s a statement.
While Cleave is out to prove that Resolute can breed real contenders, for Huffer, it’s a shot to show what he’s got outside the Victorian circuit.
“It's going to be a very different experience,” Huffer said.
“I’m excited to see how the fight style changes over different countries rather than Australia and also just everything, like the judging and the atmosphere and how everyone acts.”
Fighting for his state in Fiji, a nation more known for its sun-drenched beaches and turquoise waters than boxing blood, is a far cry from Huffer’s initial beginnings in the sport.
As a primary school kid wanting to shed some puppy weight, the young fighter first approached Cleave at the then-named Shepparton Boxing Gym.
“When he came to me, he was a short, little chubby kid,” Cleave said with a chuckle.
“And now he's obviously grown — not just in boxing, but as a person.”
Huffer voiced his initial desire to improve his fitness through the combat sport.
But after a few years of training the boxing bug’s bite had spread.
“I was playing cricket at the time, stopped that, and then I just pursued boxing more,” he said.
“I had my first fight, loved it, and then haven’t stopped since.
“I like boxing because you don't have a team to rely on.
“If you mess up, it's just yourself. If you lose, you can't say you had a good game or something. You either did good or you did bad.”
Realising and relishing the accountability in a solo sport such as boxing, Huffer has flourished into a hardened young man with equal parts talent and dedication.
He’ll fight at 66kg in Fiji and, bar a potential extra fight in the final months of the year, Huffer will go back to the bags to round out 2025.
What happens after that is up to him.
And in Cleave’s eyes, the Fiji international could be the first of many for his industrious young disciple.
“Hopefully one day (he can challenge) an Australian title and then international; we’d like to go international at one stage if we get the opportunity,” Cleave said.
“Then after that, I think he wants to turn pro, but that won’t be for a while yet.”
Huffer has cut his teeth in the state program for the past couple of years, so he has a taste of what his future could hold.
Even if that taste is sometimes accompanied by claret.
“Once you go to state training, there's always someone better than you,” he said.
“When you spar them, you really get a taste of what it's going to be like.
“But then once you spar them, get beat up by them, after say a couple of months, a couple of years, you spar them again and then you see a big improvement.”
Huffer’s ultimate dream?
The Olympics.
His eyes are set on the 2028 Games and, if not then, perhaps the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane. After that, he hopes to turn pro.
“The end goal is definitely the Olympics,” he said with resolve.
For now, the young boxer is poised to take Fiji by storm, with his eyes fixed on the rings that lay ahead.