HAVING only fought a handful of times in 2025, Mildura’s rising boxing star Hamish Berry has returned to the ring emphatically after claiming the 54kg Futures Challenge belt.
Berry produced a convincing victory against Jamie Tune from Sydney at a Boxing South Australia tournament on July 5.
The bout took place at the Dom Polski Centre in Adelaide as part of the national futures program that is a Boxing Australia platform designed to identify and develop the nation’s most promising young boxers.
“There’s a belt that has been introduced to just work out who in the Futures Program is the best of that division,” said Jackson Ladd, Berry’s trainer from Ladd’s Boxing Club gym.
“All it means is whoever has the belt can be challenged, you can’t turn that down more than once.
“If you turn down a fight for a second time, it means you lose the belt, so basically it stops people pulling out of the fight.”
Berry has had a slower than intended year in terms of bouts.
A back injury after he fought in the Australian Schools Championships put him out of boxing for at least six months, missing the latter half of 2024.
“It was good event to just jump back into,” Ladd said.
“He’s fought a few times this year, but this was my first time in his corner in a while, so it was good to be able to see this fight and he won in dominating fashion, which was good.”
Four of the five judges scored the contest in Berry’s favour as the Futures belt was strapped around his waist via a majority decision.
Boxing since he was eight, the 15-year-old has twice competed at the National Championships, reaching the semi-finals on both occasions and has been coached by Ladd for the entirety of his tenure in the sport.
“The boys who he was fighting were a couple of years older,” said Ladd.
“He’s always been at the bottom age of his division.
“He’s competing at the top level for his age and weight in the country.”
Ladd applauded Berry’s tireless work ethic and said persistence will be pivotal to his boxing student’s future success in the sport.
“He trains really hard, and he puts in the effort to be able to achieve whatever he wants,” he said.
“I think the thing with boxing is the longer you stay around the sport, the more opportunities you get.
“Because what happens is a lot of the other kids that you compete with, whether they’re better than you or whether you’re better than them, they drop off.
“So, it’s just a matter of consistency, turning up every day and doing the work that needs to be done to get to where you want to go.”
Berry has the Ladd’s Boxing Club 2025 Hogarth Cup to look forward to in September, followed by Australian and state titles as well.
“There’s a handful of tournaments that we’ll enter him in and then we’ll look at Melbourne for a few fights just to keep him moving,” said Ladd.
“I wanted him to have at least 20 fights this year, but he was out, and we haven’t travelled as much as we’d like to, which can just happen, sometimes you get matched up, sometimes you don’t.”
Despite not fighting as much as Ladd would’ve hoped for him to, Berry picked up a huge result back in May, defeating former Australian Schools champion Cruz Oppy.
“Maturing into a young adult, he’s developed quite well, and he’s got good capabilities to be able to do well in the sport,” Ladd said.
“He’s getting better as he gets older.
“So, I think around 19, 20 years old he’ll have all the stuff to see what he’s really capable of.”
