The box­ing fra­ter­ni­ty was plunged in­to mourn­ing fol­low­ing the pass­ing of box­ing coach Fitzher­bert Dash last week Thurs­day from bone can­cer. He was 72 years old.

Dash was the head coach at the World Class Box­ing Gym of Diego Mar­tin and al­so coached na­tion­al box­ers Michael Alexan­der, who claimed a bronze medal at the Pan Amer­i­can Games in the light wel­ter­weight di­vi­sion in 2019, Jean-Paul Coop­er and An­tho­ny Joseph.

A re­lease from the T&T Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day said: "Dash was an am­a­teur box­er who learned the sport at the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC), un­der the watch­ful eyes of leg­endary coach Neville "Jimpy" Ed­wards. Up­on his re­lease, he turned pro­fes­sion­al. He is best re­mem­bered for his fights with na­tion­al feath­er­weight cham­pi­on Michael Dray­ton, and al­though he lost, he was not dis­graced."

Dash, a na­tive of Diego Mar­tin, was cred­it­ed for pro­duc­ing a num­ber of this coun­try's top fight­ers over the past 15 years.

Pres­i­dent of the TT­BA Ce­cil Forde de­scribed Dash as some­one who gave his life for the sport of box­ing, say­ing he would have done any­thing to see the sport progress.

"He didn't study mon­ey but was com­plete­ly com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of the sport and the young fight­ers. Maybe it's be­cause of how he start­ed in the sport, at the YTC. Be­cause of his pas­sion for the sport, he was re­cruit­ed as one of the coach­es at the na­tion's schools where he in­stant­ly be­came a fa­ther fig­ure."

Af­ter his am­a­teur ca­reer, he turned pro­fes­sion­al where he fought about six times. His two most pop­u­lar pro bouts came at the hands of Dray­ton, who beat him twice.

Fu­ner­al arrange­ments for Dash are still be­ing fi­nalised for Thurs­day. Forde said he is sad­dened that the COVID19 re­stric­tions have pre­vent­ed him and his fight­ers from mak­ing a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to a man who had giv­en yeo­man's ser­vice to the sport.