A Boxer and a Playwright: Fighting for Success

UK and Hong Kong Champion Ian Bate started boxing across the pond when he was in middle school. Playwright and Composer David Michael Spear has been performing and creating music since he was in grade school in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Both of them are highly skilled in their crafts and are impassioned to not only share their talents with the public, but also to be successful in their livelihoods.

“There’s no greater fulfillment than affecting others positively with something that you have created – making people smile with your internal gifts,” said Spear.

After decades of working with people such as Archie Jordan, who wrote Ronnie Millsap’s “Almost like a Song”, Erwin Levine, who wrote “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” and writing and performing songs across the country, Spear’s songwriting prowess is culminating in a Broadway musical entitled, “Life’s Not an Elvis Movie”. He’s what they call a triple-threat: He has written the book, the music and the lyrics, and is ready to cast for readings. Spear was in search of a boxing instructor to help him mentally prepare for this fight to Broadway and to gain some choreography ideas for a couple of scenes in the show. While he won’t be playing the roles himself, it helps him to understand his characters entirely, even though many of them have a little piece of him in them.

“I don’t want to give away scene details, but my protagonist is hurt so badly emotionally that it causes him to react with physical anger,” said Spear. “I am very fit, but I wanted to become fighting fit because I need to be ready for the biggest fight of my life: bringing my show to Broadway.”

Spear had been looking for a boxing club with an actual ring. After trying a few boxing clubs in the area, Spear stumbled on Upper Montclair Boxing Club and when he met with Bate, he knew immediately he wanted to work with him. Spear noted, “Ian reminded me of an old school brawler, the kind of guy that would never quit in the ring, just like I never quit living my dream.”

Bate came from a rough neighborhood in northern England where it was a right of passage to fight. It was when he was 12 and interrupted the family Sunday dinner to rush out and rough someone up that his father took him to Halton Riverside amateur boxing club and said, ‘If you’re going to fight, you’re going to learn how to do it properly.’

As he progressed, he found he had an aptitude for it and had his first fight in the ring at 14 and won. From then on he fought four to five times a year with a record of 55 wins out of 77 fights with 35 KOs. In 88, he went to Hong Kong and was on the Olympic team and became a champion there. His wife’s job, however, brought them to Montclair, NJ in 2011. He became a stay-at-home dad for a few years and did overseas consulting as an engineer by trade. But he wanted to share his skill, so he started training students in his garage and then found his current location, which he continues to expand because of word-of-mouth interest.

Even though his last competitive fight was in Hong Kong in 96, he still likes getting in the ring with his students like David. “You don’t have to spar; you can learn the craft of boxing and get into shape without getting hurt,” stated Bate.

“Life’s not an Elvis Movie, so you have to do whatever it takes to be your best,” added Spear. “There’s competition in every facet of life, and I’m getting ready to win this fight, so that people can laugh and cry during the show and forget about life for a while.”

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Spear resides in Union County, NJ and also wrote “White Hot Christmas” for the English band Jive Aces and had one of the most successful videos on YouTube when he went to over 200 Starbucks locations to try and cut a live music video and got thrown out of every one. It was a publicity stunt that got millions of views originally