A day named af­ter for­mer world cham­pi­on box­er Claude Noel, is what his fam­i­ly is ask­ing for.

On Sun­day, Claude Noel Jr, the sec­ond of three sons but the first with his wife Ann Noel, made the re­quest just days af­ter touch­ing down on lo­cal soil to com­plete fu­ner­al arrange­ments for his fa­ther. He is here with his broth­er Sean and moth­er Ann. Cas­sius An­toine is Noel's first son.

Noel Jr said the day will be held to re­mem­ber his dad and the con­tri­bu­tions he made to the coun­try and the world in the field of box­ing.

Noel died on May 22 at the Mt Hope Med­ical Hos­pi­tal af­ter a long bat­tle with di­a­betes. His nephew Ren­ny Noel who lived with him and took care of him at their Mal­abar, Ari­ma home, told the me­dia he died af­ter get­ting a stroke. He al­so said his un­cle was be­ing treat­ed for an in­fec­tion in the lung.

Noel spent his for­ma­tive years at the Boys In­dus­tri­al Home in Diego Mar­tin where the sport of box­ing was among sev­er­al sports taught there. He was not alone, as some oth­er for­mer na­tion­al box­ing cham­pi­ons such as Michael Paul, Michael Dray­ton, and Wen­dell Joseph were al­so the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the coach­ing of Ken Mat­tias, and the sports pro­gramme of­fered at the home.

The quar­tet lat­er went on to box for the Wood­brook Box­ing Gym where their trade was fine-tuned and their suc­cess­es were in­evitable. Paul said Noel, how­ev­er, was des­tined for great­ness as he was nev­er afraid of any­one, re­gard­less of how big they were or who they may be.

"He had a fe­ro­cious punch­ing pow­er that was cer­tain to knock down any­one. And he al­so had a bad mind with it," Paul said jok­ing­ly.

Noel's rise to great­ness came in 1981 when he de­feat­ed Mex­i­can Rodol­fo Gon­za­lez for the WBA light­weight ti­tle in At­lantic City, New Jer­sey. The sched­uled 15-round con­test went the dis­tance, with Noel pre­vail­ing 145-140, 145-141, and 144-141.

Be­fore that, Noel had set the pace for his tri­umph soon af­ter en­ter­ing the fray of pro­fes­sion­al box­ing. He de­feat­ed Art de Fre­itas by sec­ond-round knock-out in 1973, which start­ed a se­ries of un­beat­en fights that led to his first ver­sion of the world ti­tle in 1979.

The ju­nior Noel said the day for his fa­ther is crit­i­cal as many of the young peo­ple to­day do not know his fa­ther and what he has done.

"We are now try­ing to find out what is the pro­ce­dure for get­ting the day name in his ho­n­our. This is a great na­tion, but we must be able to recog­nise peo­ple for their con­tri­bu­tions, which peo­ple can ac­tu­al­ly learn from," Noel Jr ex­plained.

He not­ed al­so: "This is the 21st cen­tu­ry and peo­ple can ac­cess in­for­ma­tion at their fin­ger­tips. Sad­ly, we al­so have lots of peo­ple com­ing in­to the coun­try and ben­e­fit­ing more than the peo­ple who live here."

Noel's fu­ner­al is card­ed for June 10 at Allen's Fu­ner­al Home in Ari­ma, but the fam­i­ly has still been toy­ing with the op­tion of a state fu­ner­al for him. This, Ren­ny said, was of­fered to them re­cent­ly.

"If that is to hap­pen, then it will have to be done by this week. For me, be­cause of the things that my hus­band did for the coun­try, we would like to have a fu­ner­al that is fit­ting for his achieve­ment and his con­tri­bu­tion.

"We ex­pect that peo­ple from all over the world would want to pay their re­spects. So, I don't want the bac­cha­nal and the fight with the gov­ern­ment be­cause they have been a tremen­dous help to him, and we are thank­ful. All I want is to send him off in a smooth and re­spect­ful man­ner," Ann said.

Ac­cord­ing to Ren­ny, there are sug­ges­tions by peo­ple in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) for Noel's body to be giv­en a fi­nal ride on the High­way named af­ter him in To­ba­go.

This, he said, will be a wel­comed ini­tia­tive, but it will all de­pend on the sup­port for it.