One of the great elements of the Bengal Bouts, which will celebrate their 95th year in 2025, is the opportunity they offer young boxers. Stepping into a ring surrounded by rowdy spectators to oppose a collegiate peer — that’s something many participants will have never experienced outside of Notre Dame.
It’s fitting, therefore, that the club’s president is all about life outside the comfort zone.
Creed Leathers is from Gretna, Nebraska, a town just beyond the southwestern suburbs of Omaha. His high school experiences didn’t have much to do at all with boxing. As a sophomore, he tried his hand at pole-vaulting and was, as he put it, “horrible.” Two years later, he entered a one-act play competition — as a joke more than anything — and finished first as a group.
That’s a strange combination for a young man who also played football, but there was a method to the madness.
“Those experiences, combined with football, made me realize that it’s important in my life to have something that’s kind of constantly challenging me, mentally and physically,” Leathers said.
Down the road, that priority would of course drive his Bengals Bouts involvement. However, he hadn’t yet connected those dots when he submitted his college applications, discovering the men’s boxing club by happenstance in a way.
“When I was filling out the application for Notre Dame, I remember being told by some seniors above me that if you want to stand out as an application, and I don’t know how true this is, but when they ask you about clubs that you want to join, just find some really interesting ones and just throw it on your application because it can’t hurt,” Leathers described.
“And of course, sorting down by the hundreds of clubs, boxing [is] towards the top, and I put that first on my application and then looked into more of the club and, and thought it was something I would actually seriously want to do just outside of the application.”
Leathers kept his eyes on the club, following its Instagram and landing in the right residence hall to get started immediately as a freshman. His Fisher Hall rector just so happened to be a former Bengal Bouts captain turned coach. The two struck up a conversation about boxing before Leathers’ freshman August turned to September, and soon after Creed debuted at a Bengal Bouts practice.
At one point during a first-year practice, Leathers watched “Strong Bodies Fight.” The 2011 documentary spotlights the journey of five club members to Bangladesh, the epicenter of Bengal Bouts’ mission work. Its name draws from the motto of the men’s boxing club: “Strong bodies fight, that weak bodies may be nourished.”
“It was kind of that practice, if you will, that really flipped the switch in my mind,” Leathers recalled.
From there on out, Leathers saw something more in the bouts. In four years of boxing he envisioned four years of fundraising at the highest level. Leathers had all the inspiration he needed to make a full impact within the Bengal Bouts, and he didn’t wait around to do it.
“I point back to some of the leaders that — the old presidents and the old captains — really motivated me,” he said. “They did a really good job, and every year we’ve beaten the previous fundraising record from last year.”
“I took it almost as a game, just like how you want to win the bouts, I took that as a separate competition, too, wanting to be first in that.”
Sourcing his connections back home, Leathers pulled in astounding donations for a freshman. As a sophomore, he led the entire club in money raised. Junior year came around, and he moved into a definitive leadership role as a fundraising captain. In that position, he guided the club to a funding total of $320,000, breaking the previous year’s record by $60,000.
After spending the 2024 spring abroad in Ireland, Leathers took on the challenge of the club’s presidency. His day-to-day life, outside of an economics major and minors in energy studies and history, features more oversight of the club and its captains.
“It's definitely more of an administrative role,” he said. “I’d say it’s managing people, making sure everyone knows exactly what they have to do and trying to delegate the work out to the best of my abilities and making sure some of the guys aren’t feeling too overwhelmed or underwater at any time.”
This year, he’s helped the club seek and land sponsorships for the tournament, adding 50 pairs of boxing gloves to the equipment supply through one of the partnerships. At the same time, Leathers has his own business to handle in the ring. He says that, despite evolving technically, he still carries some of those freshman-year nerves with him whenever he enters the arena.
“I think over the last couple of years, I’ve developed into a little bit more of a relaxed stance with a lower guard, which my coaches don’t always like because I think I criticize myself — definitely get hit too much,” Leathers described. “But I’ve always been more of a power puncher and definitely not the guy with the best footwork in the club, but just trying to land some bigger shots has always worked well for me.”
He mentioned that he’ll keep the “Apollo” nickname, a nod to Carl Weathers’ character in the “Rocky” series. However, he’ll move it to the front of his name, fighting as “Apollo” Creed Leathers.
As president, Leathers noted three goals he’s looking for the club to accomplish in 2025. First, there’s once again resetting the fundraising record. Second, he and the club hope to limit concussions and other injuries throughout the tournament. Finally, Leathers aims to promote bouts of the more advanced variety.
“I’d love to see more dynamic fighting, less of just the straight punches [and] guys just trading blows with each other — those slugfests as we call them,” Leathers said. “...[We want] guys stepping off, guys using slips, rolls, using their defense to set up their offense, kind of blending defense and offense together so it doesn’t look just like two rams headbutting each other and walking in and out of the contact zone.”
The club’s visions, especially within the financial realm, depend largely on the support of the local community. Leathers’ pitch to that community invoked the idea that experiencing a new tradition at the bouts and support determined fighters can make a larger difference than most would think.
“I think in people’s four years, they should try to get involved or at least witness as many of those traditions as possible, whether it be Bengal Bouts or other things. But beyond just that, these guys have really worked their butts off, a lot of them five days a week, six days a week, practicing, making a lot of sacrifices in other extracurriculars or in their social lives to put in the time they need to be tournament-ready.”
“And then beyond all that, people’s support and them showing up and buying a ticket really does help people in Bangladesh. Just $127 can feed, house and educate a student, in Bangladesh for an entire year, so that’s six tickets, basically. It’s pretty powerful what the U.S. dollar can do.”
The Bengal Bouts will begin with the quarterfinals on Monday, Feb. 17, and continue with the showcase on Feb. 19 and the semifinals on Feb. 24. Each of those three rounds will take place at 7 p.m. inside the Duncan Student Center’s Dahnke Ballroom. The bouts will conclude with the finals at 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 29, at Purcell Pavilion.
