Sikh boxer had life threatened

CBC Radio News has learned that the Canadian boxer fighting to change boxing's rules about beards, says his life was threatened at the recent Canadian championships in British Columbia.

Pardeep Nagra is a devout Sikh who can't shave for religious reasons. He was finally allowed to compete Friday night in St. Catharines, Ont., after he won a court order.

He suffered a setback in his hopes of representing Canada at the Olympics. He lost to defending champion Dominic Filane.

The fight went without incident. But that's not what happened at the Canadian championships last month in Campbell River, B.C.

There, a man came within centimetres of Nagra holding a razor, knife and scissors. Nagra's coach, Dwight Fraser, quickly took them out of the man's hands.

After that incident, Nagra says he started taking all kinds of precautions. One of the first was not to talk about what had happened in Campbell River, until now.

Fraser says they had a reason for downplaying the incident and not reporting it. They didn't even go to the police.

"We didn't want, the next day, to see in the paper that people were coming to the bout with weapons. When you report that, sometimes, that gives other people ideas to do silly things," Fraser said.

Nagra was worried enough about his personal safety that he asked CBC Radio to delay its report on the incident until he was finished boxing in St. Catharines -- because, he said, he was afraid it might happen again.