Gloves Community Centre was the idea of Amir Khan, who invested £700,000 of his personal money into the building of the centre. Amir began boxing competitively at the age of 11, with early honours’ including three English school titles, three junior ABA titles and gold at the 2003 Junior Olympics. In early 2004 he won a gold medal at the European Student Championships in Lithuania, and in South Korea several months later he won World Junior Lightweight title after fighting five times in seven days. Khan then rose to fame as Britain’s sole representativein boxing at the 2004 Athens Olympics, winning a silver medal at the age of 17. He was Britain’s youngest Olympic boxer since Colin Jones in 1976. He lost in the final to Mario Kindelan, the Cuban who had also beaten him several months earlier in the pre-Olympic match-ups in Greece. In 2005 he avenged the two losses by beating the 34 year old Kindelan in his final amateur fight.

The Gloves Community Centre provides a fully equipped boxing, health fitness complex, situated in the town centre of Bolton, Lancashire. There are currently no other facilities like this one anywhere in the town of Bolton.