GREAT FALLS — As mixed martial arts and bareknuckle fighting continue to carve out their place in combat sports, Keith Kelly believes there's still plenty of room in Great Falls for the sport that helped lay the foundation.
Kelly is one of the owners of Montana's Finest Boxing LLC, a new venture hoping to create more opportunities for boxers across Montana. The organization is preparing to hold its inaugural event Friday after fighters weighed in Thursday at Diesel Counterpunch Gym.
"Boxing is like the origination of all these sports, and everything's kind of broken off from it," Kelly said. "Boxers transitioned to MMA. Guys do boxing in their workouts."
Kelly knows the sport first hand. He said he began boxing at 8 years old and has competed in more than 150 fights during a career that took him around the world.
But locally, Kelly said boxing events have become harder to find as other combat sports have grown.
"It was kind of drifting away," Kelly said. "You would see an amateur event here, there, very rare though. It was all just MMA. We started to come around like, 'We need to bring this back.' And so that's why we came this direction and that's why I put this together."
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Montana's Finest Boxing is only a few months into its existence, but Kelly said the plan is to hold events regularly and give local fighters more opportunities to compete without having to continually travel outside the area.
He also believes boxing can offer something beyond competition, particularly for young athletes who need an outlet and structure in their lives.
"It's keeping the kids that are in a different direction busy. It's keeping them active," Kelly said. "They need discipline. And that's where this comes in. That's where boxing helps."
And while the combat-sports landscape continues to change, Kelly believes the technical nature of boxing will always give the sport its own identity.
"People think you can just go there and brawl and it works. It doesn't always work like that at all," Kelly said. "Boxing's technical. It's very technical, and there's a lot that comes into it. You really have to be smarter than your opponent to actually win."
For Kelly, Friday's inaugural event is the first step toward a much larger goal.
"This is something I've been dreaming about for years," Kelly said. "I want to see world champions coming out of Great Falls, Montana, in the boxing world. And that's what we're going to do."
