Benjamin Thomas Watt

Benjamin Thomas Watt (born June 13, 1992, Greenhithe, New Zealand) is the world's first openly gay professional boxing judge.^[4]

Watt started his career in boxing as an editor of Boxrec.com for New Zealand.^[5] In April 2015, the Australian Boxrec editors forward Watt onto the New Zealand Professional Boxing Association after he expressed interests of becoming a referee and a judge. Watt spent four months training as a shadow judge and doing corporate boxing fights. In August 2015, Watt judged his first two professional fights of his career. It was on a small boxing promotion called Weekend Warriors II, promoted by Craig Thomson.^[1] Watt was shortly recognized after as the worlds first openly gay professional boxing judge.^[6][7]

Personal life

Watt went to Westlake Boys High School However he left school at the age of 17 to pursue a career in Hospitality. Shortly after leaving school Watt came out as gay and received much support from family and friends.^[8] Watt is the son of the singer-songwriter, Dr Allan Charles Watt.

Q12 The Tour

In 2012 Watt traveled the North Island of New Zealand for project called Q12 the tour where he did audio interviews with over 70 LGBT people. The aim of the project was to archive the information for future research on what it is like to live as a LGBT Person in 2012.^{[9][10][11][12][13]} Watt got first noticed on YouTube with his documentary called Radio Documantary on NZ Gay Youth Abuse.^[14] Pridenz.com approach him to do only twenty interviews, however due to the popularity of the concept they was decided to turn the project into a tour. The tour originally was to travel to fourteen cities and towns in ten regions. However Gisbourne, Tauranga and Taupo were cancelled due to lack of support in the local regions. Despite the cancelled dates, the tour itself concluded successfully.

Health issues

At the age of 13, Watt was diagnosed with Hepatitis A, which was caused by contaminated water. Even though Hep A generally last for 2 to 6 weeks, Watt got a rear strand of the virus that lasted 6 months before being cured.

At the age of 15, Watt was diagnosed with Scheuermann's disease. Watt stated for years he has been through painful physiotherapy however to this day he still has back problems.

In October 2015, Watt was diagnosed with lymphoma at the age of 23.^[15] In February 2016, Watt announced that after going through aggressive treatment, he is officially in remission.

Professional boxing judge record

4 Bouts[4]
Boxers	Type	Rd., Time	Date	Location	Scorecard	Title
Shay Brock vs Moses Ioelu	RTD	2 (4), 3:00	2015-12-12	North Shore Cosmopolitan Club, North Shore, Auckland
Ricky Murphy vs Ben Sisam	TKO	9 (10), 2:59	2015-11-21	North Shore Events Centre, North Shore, Auckland	80 – 72	New Zealand Professional Boxing Association (NZPBA) Light Middleweight Title
Panuve Helu vs Mose Auimatagai	MD	4 (4), 3:00	2015-08-14	North Shore Cosmopolitan Club, North Shore, Auckland	38 – 38
Shay Brock vs Sivan Hermez	TKO	1 (4), 2:22	2015-08-14	North Shore Cosmopolitan Club, North Shore, Auckland

References