Bit of a long video, sorry for taking so much of your time and demanding your read this. But it means a lot to me.

Basically I played basketball because of my idol Sinclair Brown. He played basketball. So I wanted to.

Then this coach comes along with this fancy, fully laminated binder, with his signature photocopied on the bottom. They looked really nice.

I just looked at it - these binders were truly impressive examples of branding, especially for the time.

The basketball drills inside were absolute shit.

But we didn't know that, in the early 2000s in Vancouver. Basketball was NEW. He was able to trick hundreds of parents because of those flashy binders.

The camps were packed. And ALL the best players in Vancouver were there. He wore Gucci sweatsuits to practice. He had a nice Audi. Looking back on it, it was pathetic. This fat, out of shape man, who had never played basketball himself, trying to impress teenagers to lure them to his shitty basketball camps.

He made the campers gather around him as he sat on his folding chair - often becasue he was stricken with gout from being so out of shape and eating such rich food - and made us all listen to him. He was so lacking in charm, too. This cult would not have worked on anyone above the age of 18.

But, to a younger guy, the impression was "he had made these guys who they were." These are National Team guys, NBA guys, Div 1, CIS guys - these guys were all my heroes. Tyler Kepkay, Scott Morrison, Diego Kapelan, Sean Burke, Cam Mowat, Kevin Shaw, and SINCLAIR BROWN. My heroes. This the man who made my HEROES.

And that's the impression he tried to give. He's a businessman. He sells shitty camps to kids with dreams. It really was impressive actually. Really what he had done was open the gym to a bunch of kids who loved basketball. He had a key to a gym. And credit to him, he opened the gym. But they did all the work and learned everything themselves.

But fucking with children's dreams is a big no-no. And the philosophies and ideas and training behind his camps and when he coached my high-school team was absolute shit and lead to nothing to devastation and ruin - not only for my life, but for his coaching career.

Consider this man the anti-Eastside Boxing Club. Where Eastside Boxing gives fucked up a kids a chance to make something of themselves, this guy took well-to-do kids and fucked up their lives.

Where Eastside gets us contenders to raise $2000 to support these intitiatives, this guy was on a mission to extract as much money as he could from the rich parents of North Vancouver.

And please, I encourage you to learn and read more about Eastside Boxing, and what they do, on my Fundrazr page.

When he coached my high-school team we were ranked number 1 all-season. The Argyle Pipers had won Provincials the year before and - as Grade 10 - I got what I thought was a golden opportunity to play up with my heroes.

Never Meet Your Heroes (aside from Sinclair Brown)

Howard Tsumura was writing articles about us in the Province every day, we won every tournament, including one in AMERICA. But really, the team had five CIS players, including myself. And the year before they had the same team except with the addition of seven foot tall Scott Morrisson.

A BC Boys high-school team with a seven footer should be fucking GUARANTEED to win, let alone with SCOTT MORRISSON, a great player and future Div. 1 player at Portland and a man who had broken a rim on the head of NBA Legend Robert Sacré in the 2004 Howe Sound Final, forcing Larry Donohoe to rush to Carson Graham, remove the rim from his school, return to Argyle and, in his signature khaki shorts, black sweater vest, and tiny glasses, climb a metal ladder to attach the new rim as hundreds of drunken Valley LG's became progressively more drunken and belligerent.

Somehow this coach had this aura that it was him. He won the championship. Not the stacked team with a Div. 1 seven footer. This was so clownishly illustrated in the photo on the back of the Province. These boys had just won a Provincial Championship. Is it a photo of the boys who won the championship?

No. It's a photo of the 30+ year-old coach, holding up his fucking stupid lucky penny that he put under one of the hoops. Very cool. It wasn't the hard-work of the boys. It was your penny!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words - but that one was worth a million.

The next year, this coach led us through a hellish season. He didn't know what he was doing at all. But it seemed like he did. So we ran through the wall for him.

I - and I'm sure some of the other players - would wake up in the middle of the night screaming, thinking I was at practice. I was fifteen years old, in my third year of playing basketball. I have no friends. I just shoot shots in the morning at Upper Lynn with my mom, go to school, shoot shots in the driveway, and then go to practice from 8-10PM. Every day.

And then we go to Provincials and everyone's sizing up their fingers up for our Provincial Championship rings BUT, in our first game, in front of our entire school, and the entire province, and the entire basketball community at the legendary Agrodome - the beautiful, dark, deep Agrodome - with everyone who mattered either there, or tuned in on Hooplife, we got absolutely fucking SPANKED.

And we were OUT.

Really - if I was that coach. I would have ended it. I was revealed to be a fraud and a con-man on such a MASSIVE level. Everything I had said, all my credibility, evaporated in front of everyone who mattered in BC High School Boys Basketball. But we - the players - thought it was OUR fault.

(ASIDE: I ran a cart take-out service for Mr. Can Clean in the mornings and I fucked it up because we moved to North Delta and I was waking up at 5AM, driving to North Van, taking out peoples garbage, cleaning cans all day, then driving home through standstill rush-hour traffic and going to sleep at 1AM for days and days and months and months on end without answering an e-mail. My website got deleted because I was behind on admin from being so exhausted.

This was a horrible time in my life, especially with our newborn son Cooper. But I fucked up taking someone's garbage out and the devastation I felt after fucking up garbage - something I LOVE - as someone with pride and love for my work - brought me close to the edge.

The fact that this guy didn't end it all tells me all I need to know about him and everything he taught me.)

Despite how much pain this has caused me, now that I've finally opened up and examined this, I cannot stop laughing about it. I'll be having a bad day and just start giggling thinking about the entire school sobbing in the dim, dusky light of the Agrodome, their hand-made signs dangled limply over the fan barricades.

My girlfriend in the crowd, shrieking in agony, tears streaming down my classmate's faces, even the hot, popular girls. My entire family, sobbing by the popcorn machines. Ben Frisby with his head down near his Huraches, his face covered with a towel in shame.

The only fucking smart guy - aside from the great bench we had (Stanley Yeh, Kenney Leung, Anthony Fortunaso, Andrew Charters, Jesse Neate) head held high, with no tears, staring blankly with his green headband was Sinclair Brown.

And I knew what he was thinking, because he has screamed it at half-time in the locker room. "Pass me the fucking ball!" And the coach saying: "Sinclair it's not about you!"

Because that coach was a fucking idiot. My mom could have coached that team to the Provincial championship.

Here's the game-plan: "give the fucking ball to the 6'7 guy who lives, eats, breathes, sleeps, and writes poetry about basketball. The guy who at 6'7 has range well beyond the three point line. The guy who dunks on seven people a game... HARD."

This - and my life afterwards - is the result of that coaches style, that philosophy. And the loss of something we loved affected a lot of us . I don't want to speak for Sinclair but I barely made it through the loss of basketball. And my love was just a shadow of his love , because he was my idol and I was copying him because I loved him.

Have you even wanted to devastate everyone around you? See your entire high-school in tears, even the hot, popular girls? Ruin people's love for things? Isolate yourself from family and friends and the community that would nurture your development? I know the perfect guy.

Argyle's loss in the first-round of the provincial championships was victory for REAL PEOPLE, substance over style. I wish I had been looking at that coaches face instead of the shrieking girls in the stands and my family, shaking in the dim light of the Agrodome.

You might be saying: "Hey, this happened in 2005 buddy, get over it!" And you'd be right. But truthfully, I idolized this coach. His faulty philosophy to teaching me basketball was how I approached everything in my life.

You cannot even begin to imagine the pain and mental suffering and anguish and self-degradation and immolation of my self-worth this has caused me.

If you have attended Eastside Boxing, imagine an Omar session, with fifteen Omars but instead of calisthetics, those Omar's are in my head me telling me I suck. "I'm fucking shit. I'm bad at EVERYTHING!"

Every repition of everything I have ever done while learning has been an exercise in self-hate.

Learning Spanish. Starting a business. Owning a dog. Being in a relationship. Receiving and responding to a text message. Everything.

And I really had no one to talk to, aside from my dog Flynn, who died on Nov 4, 2022. The people at the Capilano Courier hated me because I was a jock, and I couldn't connect with the players on my basketball team because I was shy, book nerd.

Also, Vancouver is a tough place for me. I have a fucking personality and people HATE that here.

What slowly started piecing me together was one) my wife, who was the first person who had accepted me for who I was since Brennan Jarrett and, two) starting a business, because that's really all I have. If I lose this I'm fucked. I'll have to work at Wal-Mart or something. So I had to learn.

But really looking back on who else had accepted me - it was always boxing. And not just Eastside but anyone who boxed, or any gym I barely worked up to courage to get into. Boxing is for outcasts, and losers, and weirdos, and people without friends but then we band together and we are a big group of people who fit in and find comfort amongst each other like an Island of Misfit toys.

And they don't need to tell each other that - you just know. From action. What they do. The weird shit they go through to prepare. The neurtoticism towards their bodies. How we talk at to each other at the gym. I don't need these people to make me a fucking duotang about all the ways they love me and how they love boxing, I just KNOW.

I did the 2015 Rumble, and then fucked up my leg before the 2016 Rumble, and just kind of drifted away partying. But any and every time time in the next decade I asked Dave Schuck - "Hey, can I fight?" he'd say yes. Dave and I's Facebook messenger convo history is me, every few years, saying "Dave, can I get a fight" and then he says, "Yes. Come to training."

"Dave, I'm shadowboxing in a rice paddy in Vietnam. Can I get a fight?"

"Yes, come to training"

But I never did. Becasue I was shy and I didn't think I was good enough.

But I loved boxing.

My neighbour at the Royal Mansions would call the police on me constantly because I had a heavy bag hung up off the cast iron pipes in the apartment below her and would pound away on it at all-times of the day.

I would carry my heavy bag on my shoulder across the Lucas Center gravel field while frightened old ladies with Pomeranians and Labradoodles would scurry past me as I pounded the bag.

I would wear out rope after rope after rope after rope skipping on concrete.

I would watch Tony Jeffries and Fran Sands and Frank Gilfeather videos until 3AM before getting up at 6AM to go pick-up garbage.

I know who Donald Curry is and Ricardo Lopez and Jorge Paez and Riddick Bowe and I love them all. I read Joyce Carol Oates "On Boxing" constantly.

And nothing made me good. I still fucking sucked. I was just working out, because I hadn't learned anything. This coaches philosophy was still infecting my boxing.

Now that I'm back at Eastside? I wake up at 3:30am to do road work with my dogs and I LEAP out of fucking bed. Cause I get to do road work with my DOGS! Yes! I am so lucky. And then I get to go to fucking box with OMAR! Yes! And then I get to see all my customers and I love them! And clean cans, I love that too. And be in North Van. And then come home and see my son, Cooper. I love him. I have best fucking life ever because I ENJOY things now.

With basketball, it was all about IMAGE - the coach with the Gucci suit, the new Jordan's. The fraudlent coaching credentials. Illusions are impossible to maintain in a boxing ring. You can look as good as you want outside the ring but the whole point is to get inside and see what you're made of.

And I'm not saying I'm not saying I'm good or anything. I fucking suck. But I LOVE learning. I am obsessed with it. But I have almost no time, which is the complete opposite of how I used to train.

Hours and hours and hours of free-time to do shitty boxing drills from Tony Jeffries. Now, I cherish and love the thirty minutes I can sneak in staying up late after my business, or my son, or my wife, or my family, or my dogs.

I am so fucking rich with great people and dogs and family and things in my life.

Unfortunately, I am inversely as poor financially. I messaged the organizers today being like: "Hey, I have no money with the deadline coming up of the 6th"

And they said: "we're sorry you're struggling." And that's very nice of them. They are supportive and nice.

" No, no, just to clarify, I LOVE it." I'm so happy for the opportunity to struggle.

It's just I have learned how to communicate. Because for the first time in my life I have the tools to deal with things. No one taught me them, I learned them, by myself. I am so grateful and filled with joy. I have been looking for something or someone to bang my head against the wall for my entire life and I have.

But now I have learned how to bang my head against the wall, in the right way, for my business, my family, my son, my dogs, and boxing.

So I need your money. Give it to me.

Please. I want to fight someone. Badly. I fall asleep crying beside my wife thinking about how much boxing has given to me and how little I have given back.

And I cry thinking about how fucking badly I want to be back in the ring. And I cry thinking about how all the coaches at Eastside rarely, if ever, did any pop-science philosophizing on me. They ACT. They don't say. Because they have DONE IT themselves.

I remember being in PEAK physical condition and Omar is there stone-faced leading my class through the most grueling calisthetics you could ever imagine and I can barely do a quarter of what he's doing. And Jordan Bowers shouts in Mitch Hedberg-esque inflection to the boxers sprawled on the dirty, disgusting Astoria basement: "HE'S BEEN FINISHING CONRETE ALL DAY IN THE HOT SUN AND HE'S KICKING YOUR ASS."

I've spoken to Omar maybe five times in my life but simply being around him has forever changed it. I picked up garbage for weeks with one-hand when I broke all my knuckles on a guys forehead because I would think "Omar would fucking do that." Do you know how fucking hard it is to operate a garbage truck one handed? To pull and lift a can, operate the handles - on the wrong side - and then drive? And do it well?

I picked up garbage with elbow tendonitis so bad tears would stream down my face and I couldn't even think about making a fist or closing my hand: "OMAR WOULD FUCKING DO IT."

I picked up garbage two days in a row with no sleep, during the 45 degree HEAT DOME because fucking "OMAR WOULD DO IT."

Just think about the impact that has had on me. A soft, scared little boy from North Van becomes a garbage man, not because of anything Omar said, but just because I was around him.

And same with Dave Schuck. And everyone at Eastside. They do things. And they change and save people's lives - like mine - because they love boxing. They lead by example in their community. They don't make fancy binders and wear gucci sweatsuits and make the kids sit around them in a circle and listen to them tell ridiculous stories about when they were a media relations person for the Vancouver Grizzlies.

They teach kids how to fucking box. And it helps them, like its helped me. And they are REAL people. And I want it to help kids before they're fucking 25, or 35 and have to suffer with a lifetime of shit.

Think about the impact Omar and Dave had on me, and then think about that spreading out in our community, to the younger garbage men who I trained, some the only guys there who still give a shit, like Mike Crema, who was running the fronload operation - two routes - by himself.

But the kids have to ask. Like I never had the courage to do until now, because I',m ready. I'm asking. I want a fucking fight. Please. I cry myself to sleep thinking about how badly I want a fight.

And I want your fucking money. So I can give it to them. So I can fight. Give it to me.

I have no money. I gave it all away to the North Shore Black Bear Society and Heart of the Underdog Rescue and Elementary School PACs and 10 year old kids who slang better than full-grown adults, and printing flyers for the kids to hand out and make money, and all the fucking associated businesses designed around ripping off small businesses like mine, and GAS. Fucking GAS. And then I have to give to rest to my wife and my son.

Please, just give me twenty dollars. It can be $10 dollars. $5 fucking dollars. I don't care. Just give me some fucking money, so I can give it to Eastside Boxing and I can get a fight.

Thank you,
Mac