Peter Cope Trainer
Most boxing coaches can wait a lifetime to train a champion, but Peter Cope has achieved it before he has even turned 40.
Nigel Wright’s stunning seventh-round stoppage of West Bromwich’s Dean Hickman to win the English light-welterweight title in March 2005 at the Doncaster Dome was as sweet a moment for the coach as it was the boxer.
Not only did Peter strike gold with Wright, he guided his old amateur star Alan Temple to the British Masters lightweight belt. Cope also worked closely with Geard Ajetovic ahead of the Serbian’s bid for the IBO world middleweight title in Australia in the autumn of 2008.
Cope has been in the corner for three major title fights for Wright.
The light-welterweight lost a clash with Londoner Lenny Daws for the vacant British belt in May 2006 and was then outpointed by Ajose Olusegun in a challenge for the African’s Commonwealth title in Peterlee in February 2008. It was a close-run thing (some neutral observers felt Nigel had done enough to have been given the verdict) but there were no such arguments in July 2009 when Olusegun comprehensively outpointed him in Liverpool for the Commonwealth and British crowns.
Despite those setbacks Cope is very much seen as one of the country’s top young coaching talents.
Peter could not stop winning titles as a coach in the amateur game. At the Boys Welfare Club in Hartlepool, Cope enjoyed triumph after triumph between 1989-1997.
Cope joined the Wiltshire Way gym as a 14-year-old in 1979 and boxed there until 1984, developing an interest in coaching as time progressed. He returned in 1985 to begin coaching the young talent there and the rest, as they say, is history.
Kevin Crumplin was Cope’s first winner, a National Association of Boys Clubs champion in 1989. Further junior success followed in the shape of David Carter, Michael Hunter and Terry Rowley. There had been near misses too for Chris Hubbard and Stuart Longstaff.
His greatest moments came in amateur boxing’s version of the FA Cup – the ABA Championships. Temple was 
the featherweight winner in 1992 and then became the light-welterweight king in 1994. In 1997, Boys Welfare completed a sensational double – precocious teenage flyweight Michael Hunter and exciting middleweight Ian Cooper both victorious at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham.
Yet, after that historic triumph, Peter retired at the tender age of 32.
However, he was lured out of retirement in 1998 by Gus Robinson who installed him as a coach at the team’s then base upstairs in the Borough Hall on the Headland, working alongside the famous trainer, George Bowes.
When Robinson opened his new high-tech HQ in West View Road in 2002, Cope assumed the role of head coach with Bowes specialising in working with the amateur club at the same premises before his retirement.
Peter runs the gym, where he is aided with the considerable expertise of Temple, who has joined the coaching team after retiring from the ring.
Cope is still hopeful there is a major title in Wright, while Paul Buchanan is on the comeback trail after being out of action since June 2007.
He also has two new pros under his tutelage at Stranton House, Phil Boyle and Michael O’Gara.
To date, Peter has been in the corner on 1,300 occasions and still counting. He has also been thrilled to watch three of his sons take up boxing, Peter, Daniel and Adam, while another son, Lewis, found fame as a star of the stage show of Billy Elliot in London’s west end.
