Perth boxer has master plan for success

A WA boxer has designed a standalone training aid with a combination that is starting to throw big punches around the world.

And it came about because of his father’s dodgy shoulders.

Rai Fazio’s BoxMaster machine has been endorsed by Hollywood superstars Robert De Niro and Hugh Jackman and a host of high-profile combat sport identities such as Muhammad Ali’s daughter Laila and the son of George Foreman.

It is also being considered as a cognitive aid for people with disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

The idea is as simple as it is refined. The $3000 piece of equipment, with numbered pads at different heights and angles, replaces a boxing trainer with focus pads yelling out punch combinations.

Fazio claimed 10,000 units had been sold in the US, Asia and Europe. The Essendon Football Club was a client and there were plans for a co-ordinated push to sell more in Australia.

But it has not been an overnight idea.

Fazio, who wrote the 2008 movie Two Fists, One Heart and in 2003 was involved in a brawl with Coffin Cheater bikies in Subiaco, started working on his boxing machine in 1997.

But it began in earnest when the Golden Gloves champion went in search of a new business venture after modest box office returns from his movie.

Thoughts of his father Joe’s sore shoulders after years of training boxers and holding the focus pads for their sessions prompted Fazio to think about a mechanical replacement.

“I listened to my father complain and I just thought he was old, but by the time I was about 29 I started to get it,” Fazio said. “I was sitting at home looking at this big notepad thinking, ‘Well, the film didn’t make me any money’. So I just started tracing on bits of paper.”

After working on his movie for a decade, Fazio returned to his BoxMaster idea and in 2009 a sheet metal-working friend built him a prototype designed to replicate boxing punch patterns as well as the range of movement in the sport.

He built 12 in his garage and the machine was on the move. Despite early interest and approval from US boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard, Fazio struggled to strike an international deal. That was until 2012 when American fitness industry veteran Michael Bruno agreed to become a partner and work began in earnest to fully develop the idea and the machine.

“There was no point designing something that I couldn’t break, but a dude who was 120kg could,” Fazio said.

“I had these big guys come around with a job description to break the machines and we got it to a point where it was bullet-proof, but it took a while to educate people and show them how to use it. In the last couple of years it’s really started to grab.

“Basicall,y my long-term plan is to teach the world how to box . . . and my shoulders are feeling a lot better.”

Fazio showed Jackman how to use the BoxMaster as he trained for the most recent Wolverine movie. He said it was also being used by parts of the US military.

Ultimate Fighting Championship stars Conor McGregor and George St-Pierre are converts and its medical potential was discussed at last year’s fourth World Parkinson Congress in Oregon, where it was hailed as helping sufferers with their learning capacities.

“When I saw a video from the US of a gentleman with Parkinson’s (using the BoxMaster), I started crying,” he said.

“It was the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life. If it can help people, that’s the biggest gift of all.”

Fazio said a smaller but similar home product was close to completion.