Devon Reti’s five years in boxing have been successful
Calgary’s own Devin Reti is ready for the challenge ahead of him in making the 2016 Rio Olympics. Reti is 22-years-old and has been boxing for five years. In his five-year tenure he has accumulated 73 wins with only 12 losses to his record.
Reti fights at the middleweight division (152 lbs) and is known for his fast, counter punching style. But before Reti was the slick boxer he was a feisty undersized hockey player.
“I kind of got pushed around a lot, I didn’t make the team I wanted too,” says Reti. “I was devastated. I was a dirty hockey player with a lot of penalty minutes so my dad brought me to a boxing gym.”
The boxer says one of the best things to have happened in his career is breaking his right hand in a sparring session. Reti threw an overhand right landing on top of the head; the headgear didn’t cover the whole head, so the bone on skull collision caused it to snap. 
Photo by Trevor Solway
Reti was fortunate enough to not have injured his left hand. The jab is the most important punch in boxing. It’s the punch you throw the most and set up all your combinations with. Having a solid jab is crucial to any boxing champion.
“I never use to jab a lot and my coaches use to always tell me ‘you should jab more cause you have a good jab.’ Once I got the cast off it was just instinctive, I was jabbing lot it came to play in lots of fights and I won some matches with it.”
Reti trains under head coach Kevin McDermott of the Calgary Boxing Club.
With 30-plus years of boxing and training experience McDermott inherited his predecessors, Mansour Esmail’s style of coaching. Boxing is rigorous through nature and the style emphasizes on rest and recuperation.
“I like to stick with what’s winning, and we’ve been very successful with our model” says McDermott.