With his hockey career behind him, stepping into the ring is a natural fit for former NHL tough guy Nathan Perrott

Posted on | September 7, 2009 | No Comments

Joe O’Connor, National Post Published: Saturday, September 05, 2009

Most hockey players have a nickname. It is part of the game’s culture, part of the language of every NHL dressing room.

Take Nathan Perrott, for example. Everywhere Perrott went in professional hockey he was known as “Rock.” And the name fit, since Perrott did not really have an ounce of fat on his 6-foot-1, 235-pound frame. During NHL stints with Nashville, Toronto and Dallas, he was an enforcer: a Rock.

The 32-year-old figures he must have had at least 350 fights in his hockey career, a journey that ended in Russia at the end of last season, where Perrott was playing out the string as a tough guy for Chekhov Vityaz of the Continental Hockey League.

Perrott is retired now, and so is his nickname. But the man and his nickname are making a comeback of sorts next Friday night in Philadelphia when the former NHL pugilist will make his professional debut as a heavyweight boxer.

“Everyone in hockey always called me Rock,” Perrott said yesterday, moments before slipping through the ropes of a New Jersey gym for a sparring session. “I was sitting talking with my trainer, Joe Grier, just the other day. On the fight application it asks for your alias. I told Joe I’d always been Rock in hockey, and he liked it, so we’re going to stick with it.”

Nathan Perrott had two competing dreams when he was growing up in Chatsworth, Ont., a small town about two hours drive north of Toronto. One dream involved being a hockey player. The other was to be the heavyweight champion of the world, like Mike Tyson or Lennox Lewis.

Perrott’s pursuit of his boxing dream possessed a practical component. He was a big kid, with an even bigger older brother, Dylan. And Dylan — as older brothers sometimes do — liked to pummel young Nathan. Perrott was also a big kid in a small rural town, which has some attendant risks.

“I started boxing when I was 15,” Perrott says. “I was always getting in fights with guys a lot older than me and catching a pretty good beating. There are a lot of big strong farm boys in that part of the world. So my getting into boxing was pretty much for self-preservation. I wanted to know how to defend myself.”

Soon after stepping into the ring, Perrott stepped out of it again, leaving home to chase his NHL dream with the Oshawa Generals. Over the years, he would hit the heavy bag every now and again, although it was not until he was 29 years old that Perrott’s boxing aspirations reappeared in his life.

The former tough guy was working out — for hockey — at an upscale boxing gym in Santa Monica, Calif., owned by singer Bob Dylan. The gym featured a coffee bar –and a synagogue–and a trainer who thought Perrott had the raw talent and right work ethic to be a pro boxer.

A friend of a friend of the trainer’s arranged an introduction between the NHL enforcer and legendary fight guru, Lou Duva. Duva told Perrott to look him up if he ever wanted to get serious about boxing. So that is what Perrott did when he went to training camp with the New Jersey Devils in 2006.

He would not survive the Devils’ cuts, but his experience in Jersey included a special perk: the tough guy was able to train with Duva’s son-in-law, Tommy Brooks. Perrott brought the lessons he learned back to Toronto where he kept training and had four amateur fights — he was 3-1 — before landing a final job in hockey with Chekhov Vityaz.

“Russia was very weird,” he says. “Magnitogorsk is a beautiful town — if you are blind. But I am glad I went over. It was a good experience, and the money was good. But I don’t know if I want to emigrate to Russia any time soon.”

Naturally, Perrott found a boxing gym in Chekhov. The gym’s proprietor owned the hockey team. The gym even housed a famous resident in Alexander Povetkin, the 2004 Olympic gold medalist in the super-heavyweight division.

Perrott started working out with the former Olympian’s Russian trainer. There was never much dialogue between the two.

“You learn to listen with your eyes, if that makes any sense,” Perrott says. “Boxing is just so different. A long fight in hockey may be a minute and a half, and the average one is over in about 45 seconds. I have to be ready to go for 12 minutes over four rounds in boxing, and you are working hard the whole time. There are also two referees in a hockey fight who want to break it up, where in boxing there is only one referee — and he wants you to keep fighting.”

Perrott’s Russian odyssey lasted two seasons. He did some fishing around for an NHL job this summer, but there were no nibbles, just a bunch of: No thanks, you’re too old.

But Perrott isn’t so sure. He kind of feels like a rookie again, corny as it sounds. He is even renting a room from a family in Clifton, N.J., while he prepares for his big debut at the Legendary Blue Horizon, right on North Broad Street in Philadelphia, against hometown favourite Makidi Ku-Tima.

“Some guys start out and you hear about these easy fights they have, and I was thinking, ‘What about me?’ ” Perrott says. “I am going into the lion’s den.”

Perrott would not guarantee victory or provide a knockout predication for the fight. He is a work in progress and he knows it. He has no idea whether his first fight will be his last or the start of something new.

“Let me tell you after Sept. 11,” the Rock says with a laugh. “But I think I can make a career out of boxing. And if things don’t work out, at least I can say I tried. I am just learning — and there is not a lot of money in it –but I love it.

“That’s why I am doing it.”

The show will be streamed LIVE!!!! All over the world on www.gofightlive.tv

Ticket prices for this great night of boxing are $200 for Queen Seating, $125 for Presidential seats, $65 for VIP, $55 for Ringside, and $45 for General Admission and can be purchased by calling The Legendary Blue Horizon at 1-215-763-0500. Doors open at 6:30 PM / 1st bout begins at 7:30 PM

The Legendary Blue Horizon is located at 1314 North Broad Street in Philadelphia, PA

For more information, log on to www.legendarybluehorizon.com