Tribute to Hans-Karl Muhlegg
The WBC pay tribute to the life and times of Hans-Karl Muhlegg, founder of Interbox, which propelled boxing in Quebec to magnifique world class levels.
Hans-Karl, who fought a valiant battle against cancer, was a driving force in Canadian boxing. A German trained mining engineer who`s speciality was in blasting, emigrated to Montreal in 1964, and switched from industry to become a pioneer of boxing.
After founding Interbox in 1997, he recruited Yvon Michel as his General Manager, plus three full time trainers, a strength and conditioning coach, a sports psychologist, a physiotherapist, medical doctors and based them in a ten thousand square feet facility.
Interbox developed Eric Lucas who won the WBC super welterweight title, Leonard Dorin who was WBA lightweight champion and Lucian Bute who became the IBF super middleweight champion, plus Stephane Ouelet and Jean Francois Bergeron, among many others.
Hans-Karl paid his boxers a regular wage, so they could focus on training towards success. He was modest often using the word us, rather than me or mine and was fond of saying: “Don't be scared of making decisions.”
In his memory two TS Eliot quotes come to mind. They are: “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go,” and: “We shall not cease from exploration and at the end of all our exploration will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”