Ralph “Junior” Moar is a 33 year-old light heavyweight, the Canadian champion. He has a 9-3 record but no fights over the past year.  Junior grew up in the North End of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The North End is a working class area, rife with gangs and violence.  Junior, though, was able to avoid the pitfalls of the streets by spending his free time in the boxing gym. Trained by Reg Bruno, Junior fought all over Canada winning multiple amateur tournaments including the Golden Gloves and Silver Gloves. In 1997, Junior won his first of two middleweight National Championships and would go on to represent Canada in international tournaments. It seemed like the sky was the limit for the Aboriginal kid from the wrong side of the tracks.

But with his new found local fame came new friends. Soon, Junior was hanging out with the wrong crowd, a local gang known as the Zig Zag Crew, which had ties to Hell's Angels. As his affiliation with the gang grew, his boxing career took a back seat to his new lifestyle. Junior left his trainer and started working out at a new gym where he was surrounded by people who told him what he wanted to hear and not what he needed to hear. Soon after going to his new gym, he took his skills to the professional ranks. The once promising middleweight campaigned as light heavyweight and heavyweight blowing up to over two hundred pounds and starting off 1-1 in first two fights.

When he wasn't boxing, Junior was a gun carrying, bullet-proof vest wearing member of the Zig Zag Crew. His life in the fast lane wouldn't last long though, because on December 12, 1990 his life changed forever. While driving home from his girlfriend's house with his younger brother and two-year old cousin in the car, Junior came face-to-face with rival gang members. A shootout took place. Junior escaped unharmed but would soon lose his freedom and go from the sports page to the front page. No stranger to trouble at this point in his life, Junior was sentenced to four years in prison for his involvement in the shoot out. [According to canada.com, Junior shot a rival gang member].

Prison was no picnic for the Aboriginal kid from the North End. As a member of a predominately white gang, he was often called an “apple” (red on the outside white on the inside), by other Aboriginal prisoners. He was the victim of a stabbing, countless fights, and spent nearly twenty seven months in solitary confinement. Without his boxing skills, there is a good chance he would have dided in prison.

Upon his release, Junior decided to leave the gangster lifestyle behind and asked gang leaders to let him go on with his life. The gang leadership obliged and Junior started a new chapter in his thus far tumultuous life.

After taking almost two years to get accustomed to life on the outside, the itch to box came back to Junior. Although he was out of shape and hadn't even done as much as a push up in years behind bars, Junior decided he wanted to see if he could give his boxing career one more go at it, to see what might have been. With the help of a personal trainer, he shed the extra pounds and gave it another go. He lost his first fight back after nearly six years out of the ring [second fight back acooridng to Boxrec] , a decision Junior thought he deserved to win. The crowd threw chairs in the ring when the verdict was announced and Junior decided in order to get a fair shake, he would need to leave his native Winnipeg, where some people still looked at him as criminal.

Junior went to Vancouver on the advice of his first trainer, Reg Bruno, where he hooked up with Canadian boxing great Manny Sobral. (A former IBO and Canadian champion, Sobral's biggest fight was a loss to Mikkel Kessler well above Sobral's best weight).  Manny had just gotten into the promotional side of things and took Junior under his wing. In 2009, Junior won the Canadian light heavyweight championship, but he doesn;t get offered many fights up in Western Canada. Boxingtalk recently spoke to Junior about his career, prison, and what his plans are for the future.
 

Boxingtalk: When did you first get involved with the sport?

Junior Moar: At the age of ten or so. My parents could no longer afford to keep me involved with the sport of hockey at that time they had just got divorced. Boxing isn't a very expensive sport to get involved in. So that's how I got involved in it. Hockey was too expensive and I loved playing sports. So boxing and it's individual aspect was more interesting to me then the team aspect of hockey so I really took a liking to that aspect of boxing.

BT: Can you tell me a little bit about growing up in Winnipeg?

JM: Where I come from in the North End, it's a low-income area. You got all kind of people there poor people, middle class, but where I was from, I grew up in a pretty hard neighborhood.  It helped develop me into the man I am today and to be a better boxer. It gave me those life skills and if you can get through the North End, I am sure you can get through a boxing ring no problem.

BT: You went to prison for a gang-related shooting. When you go out was it hard to leave the gang?

JM: Those guys were my really good friends, so after prison I just asked them. I was like, hey boys I don't want to do this any more. I had just been in and out of jail and all I had seen was police when I had been around these guys, so I just basically said hey, can I go pursue my boxing career? They were all for it. Which was nice to hear because unfortunately you hear these stories about how you can't leave a gang, you can't do this, you can't do that and it's all BS. You can do whatever you want. The president of the gang at the time was the guy that actually brought me into the organization. He said OK, but you can't come back. I said don't worry, I am not coming back. I am done and just let me pursue my boxing career.  I got nothing to say about you guys. I am not going to ever say anything bad and I haven't. I think you should be responsible for the decisions you make and the friends you choose. I hate these guys who when they get arrested start doing the witness protection thing and start telling on their friends. I knew what I was doing every time I did it. No one encouraged me to do anything. I got my own mind and I made my own decisions. They were the wrong choices but, nobody made me do anything I didn't want to do. So, I didn't think it would be fair to blame anyone for the mistakes that I made. I just had to own up to it. I made mistakes, I screwed up and I am not proud of it and now I just want to do the best I can to make up for it.

BT: Did you know you wanted to box agin when you got out of prison?

JM: It took me about two years to get kind of reacquainted to society. I had little bit of a celebration when I was released and those sorts of things. So it took a little while to get my bearings back, to get used to real life and everyday life. I started getting back into it and it was actually my my mother in-law who got me a personal trainer. At first I was just trying to trim down and get back into a little bit better shape. Then I realized I was still young, or relatively young. I said to myself, hey once I get in to better shape, closer to fighting shape, I think I should give this a run. I don't want to be forty-two, going should I try boxing again thinking about what I could have been or what I could I have done. I don't want to be one of those guys that's trying to plug away at the sport way past my prime. As boxers we don't get paid enough to do what we do. It's sad that we get paid to a thousand or two thousand dollars to get our heads bashed in. So I took that into account as well.
 
BT: What was it like in your first fight back?

JM: I was focused in on boxing but, I lost my first fight when I got out of jail. I clearly won the fight but, for some reason in my hometown of Winnipeg it seemed they were not willing to let go of some of the things I had done in my past at that particular point. So, I lost a decision in my hometown. Chairs were flying into the ring, it was crazy, everybody was pissed off. I understood though, that maybe it was the stigma of what I had previously in my younger years was still with me. So, I decided to move out to Vancouver to get a fresh start.

BT: So what happened when you moved to Vancouver?

JM: I contacted a boxer that I looked up to when I was coming up, and is very well known in Canada. He represented Canada in the 1988 Olympics and trained with Lennox Lewis (who also fought for Canada in the '88 games). His name is Manny Sobral. He was 24-0 at one point out of Canada which is really rare, back in the early 1990s. So I looked up to him and met him a few times then, and watched him fight. I placed a call out to him with my amateur coach Reg Bruno. I asked him if he remembered me (from his amateur days)  he said yeah, he knew who I was and I told him that I really wanted to pursue boxing and he just gotten into the promotional thing and they have a casino out here where they have fights regularly at, so it was just perfect timing. Little did I know that he works with Aboriginal youth. He works with a school for Aboriginal youth that are court ordered there. They can either go to school or go to jail, so he works with these kids. So he he kind of had a soft spot for me. With me being Aboriginal and trying to turn my life around and basically that what he's trying to do everyday is help these kids and here I am asking him for this opportunity to help me change my life for the better and get my boxing career back on track. He took me in with open arms gladly and it's been great. It was the best decision I ever made in my life to move out here to Vancouver and with him as my manager, everything has been great. I am just really grateful that he was able to help me out.

BT: Has your criminal record hindered your ability to fight in the United States?

JM: Yeah it did, in the beginning it. I couldn't get out there for a long time. Because I am Canadian Aboriginal, I had to get my Indian status to qualify for something called the Jay Treaty.  As a North American Indian, not Canadian Indian, not American Indian, it's North American, the border doesn't apply to us because we founded this land. So I get to cross the border freely even with my record and as long as it is, that is amazing. It finally pays be Indian for once. Otherwise I would not be allowed, I had applied for a pardon and it got it shot down and they basically told me you're native, you can just cross the border so all I to do was prove it (his Indian status).

BT: Have you ever fought in the United States?

JM: I fought once there. I fought a guy named Lafarrell Bunting in Tacoma, WA a couple years ago [Bunting, now 18-4-1, was the winner]. So hopefully I will be fighting there again. They have fights there in Tacoma quite frequently, so hopefully I can get my feet wet there a little bit. I was scheduled to be the main event there last September but I had to pull out because my Dad (dying of cancer) took a turn for the worse, it wasn't like I could get out of that. I think that promoter is a little upset with me for the fact I had to pull out of that fight. I was also supposed to fight Ronald Johnson last year. I went to LA for a press conference at the W Hotel we had a big promotion tour but, the guy showed up and looked to be about two hundred and twenty pounds. I was looking at him and thinking how the hell is this going to make weight and as the fight got closer we never got a contract. The fight never got made for whatever reason and we were supposed to fight at the Hard Rock Casino the night before the [Floyd Mayweather-Victor Ortiz fight] but it never ended up happening.

BT: So when will you be fighting again?

JM: I don't have the contract yet but hopefully I will fight in June. If don't fight in June, I am going to go down to LA and do some training. I have some family down there and a place to stay. I talked to Freddie Roach and asked him if it would be okay to come down there and train.  He told me no problem anytime you want to come down here and train. I think it will give me an idea of where I stand because, being up here in Canada I am one of the better fighters up here so I am always coming up on the top end of the sparring sessions. I would like to see where I am with these world-class fighters.  Confidence is everything in boxing so I want to see where I am at, at that gym and training there will definitely boost my confidence and hopefully get me some more opportunities.

BT: How long do you see yourself boxing for?

JM: I would like to fight maybe two more years. Depending on how successful I am and if I am successful at the two year point and I am still going good, maybe I will keep going. I would not like to be in the sport too much longer. I am not making millions of dollars. I don't want to have a long career with forty or fifty fights. I think about taking punches these days and having kids and all, I  don't want to do that for very long. I want to make sure that I am in tip-top shape if I am going to do this because you can get hurt in this sport. I won't take a fight on short notice, I am not going to go in there and not be in shape so, I always try to make sure I am always in really good shape.

BT: What motivates you to still box after all these years?

JM: When I watch these guys on TV I always think that I can do just as good if not better. I always think that I am able to compete with these guys. I think now that at middleweight I will definitely will be able to compete. At light heavyweight the guys were pretty strong and I am not that big of a guy so I think this is more natural of a weight at 160 pounds. I would like to go spar with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and guys like that and see where I stand. He's a current middleweight champ and I think that would set a good bar if I am working with guys like that.

BT: I know there's a documentary about your life.

** directed by Evan Chan, the 28-minute film can be viewed at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM2K0inpvg4**

Are there any plans for a full-length movie?

JM: I actually just got off the phone with guy and we are finalizing the contracts now. They are going to be making a movie about my life. I am married to a Jewish girl and that's very rare with me being Aboriginal. For someone where I am from, the North End, the poor part of the city and I ended up with a wealthy Jewish girl from the nicest part of the city. That became a huge story in my hometown of Winnipeg. It's very unique that a native guy, an Aboriginal ends up with a prominent person in the community. I have been received really well though and they have all been really good to me. My mother and father in-law have been my biggest supporters and I couldn't have been doing all of this with them supporting me.  That's one thing you need when going through all this is a great support system around you.

BT: Do you have a foundation or charity?

JM: No, not really I just try to work with everyone in all the Aboriginal communities. I just try to help in any way I can. I go back to my reserve, I am originally from Winnipeg so I am going back there this summer to give back to my community.

Junior's website is www.juniormoar.com.

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