If you’ve been a boxing fan in Canada for the better part of 50 years, Russ Anber has been a part of your life.

At certain points, he’s been omnipresent in your life. Regardless of how you chose to engage with the sport, as a fan or participant, Anber has been the man. The man who was and is: In the corner of the world champion (coaching them or closing their cuts), training the country’s top amateurs, commentating the Olympics, hosting the nationally televised boxing studio show that kept you updated on the sport and physically created the equipment that you and your favorite fighters use to participate in the sport.

Even that summary isn’t fully sufficient in celebrating Anber’s past and continuing contributions to the sport. The only way to do that is to enshrine him in the International Boxing Hall of Fame, which was made official in an announcement from Canastota last week.

Anber becomes the very first Canadian trainer to be inducted into the IBHOF, and the third person from Montreal, alongside Arturo Gatti and Guy Jutras, two men who were in his orbit during the humble beginnings of his career at the Olympic Boxing Club and later the Saint Laurent Boxing Club. Despite the breadth of his resume, it is coaching – or better yet, teaching – that is at the root of all facets of Anber’s career.

“It’s something that I always felt was my gift,” Anber told The Ring. “There’s athletes that are blessed with certain gifts that, no matter all the teaching in the world, you can’t teach somebody to do that. All the phenomenal athletes, they have that extra something that the mere mortal does not have. I unfortunately was never blessed with that as an athlete, as much as I desperately wanted to be one. I knew that I was never going to be that star athlete. But I felt a certain calling, a certain something that made it so easy for me to coach.”

After a brief three-fight amateur career as a fighter, Anber’s true calling as a professional trainer began as an 18-year-old, when he worked the corner of middleweight contender Vinnie Curto as he scored a decision victory over Marciano Bernardi.

As a young prospective trainer at the Olympic club, Anber formed a friendship with Curto that has endured to this day, and became a part of his training camp as he prepared to fight Eddie Melo. Less than two years after working the corner in the main event of a bout at the legendary Montreal Forum, Anber was given the keys to the Saint Laurent gym – literally and figuratively – by Claude Hebert. At the age of 20, Anber had his first Canadian champion, Howard Grant, the brother of Otis, who would become Anber’s very first professional world champion 16 years later.

When he isn’t physically working a corner, Anber is still using his half century in gyms that began with carrying buckets as a teenager to inform his work, both the knowledge he shares and how he delivers it.

When he’s creating new equipment for Rival Boxing, which he founded in 2003, it’s knowledge that stems from running a boxing gym since before he could legally drink in the United States, and wrapping thousands of hands along the way. When he’s on the air – where the broadcaster called six Olympic Games and was the host of “In This Corner” on TSN – he’s simultaneously the trainer in the ear of the viewer, telling them what the fighters they’re watching ought to be doing, and their guide as to what they should be appreciating on their screen as a fan.

The commonality is always Anber, the boxing lifer and one of the sport’s remaining links to the golden eras of the past, offering his wisdom for the sake of the sport – to make it better, safer and easier to understand.

“My gift that I was given was that ability to coach and break things down and analyze and make people understand how things work,” Anber said.

Anber’s work and success has expanded far beyond the borders of his home province and country, becoming a vital figure in the corner of some of the most successful fighters of the generation, namely Oleksandr Usyk and Vasyl Lomachenko. Anber’s Swiss Army Knife collection of skills makes him particularly valuable in a corner where he can be a hand wrap technician and a master cut man, but also act as a supplemental coach to whomever is in the lead role.

Induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, as the name suggests, is meant to celebrate achievement on an international level, but it also exists to champion those who had an undeniable impact on the sport in their own nation. In the case of Anber’s homeland of Canada, it’s impossible to answer the question of why the country – and particularly the province of Quebec – is as rabid about its fight fandom without crediting Anber.

Beyond his work with many of the country’s great fighters of the last several decades, Anber has also been perhaps the thought leader in the country when it comes to boxing. For good chunks of the 1990s and 2000s, Canadians were spoiled by its national sports network, TSN, having an agreement with HBO and ESPN to air the networks’ non-pay-per-view bouts across the country.

In addition, Anber hosted “In This Corner” alongside the late Darren Dutchyshen, a studio show not dissimilar from “Inside The Ring,” covering the sport. During the show’s run, Anber was to boxing what Don Cherry was to hockey in the country, a made-for-TV, charismatic presence rooted in old school ethics who could also teach you the finer points of technique. Being a plugged-in, educated boxing fan was never easier. And if watching boxing made you want to try it out yourself, there was the Title Boxing DVD hosted by Anber ready to show you how.

“All of it has been done at the highest level possible,” Anber said. “I think it’s fair to say that nobody in the history of the sport, not just Canada, has done all the things that I've done at a world class level. I’m proud to say that I didn’t pay my way into the Hall, I didn’t [expletive] my way into the Hall, this is pure merit. There’s no political correctness. I’m proud to say that at least my accomplishments are merited.”

It’s a full circle moment for Anber to join Gatti and Jutras on the walls in Canastota. When Anber first linked up with Curto, Gatti was a 7-year old amateur starting out in the gym. As he aged and became a dominant member of the Quebec provincial amateur team, Anber gave Gatti the nickname “The Professor” for his exceptional technical prowess, and the two remained friends until his tragic death in 2009.

In the case of Jutras, now 94, Anber has now reached the stage in his career in seniority and achievement to become the welcoming elder statesman Jutras was for him in the early 1980s.

“Guy is the only living, remaining soul from my day one in boxing,” Anber said. “Guy was with me in the very beginning and always respected me. After fights would happen at the Paul Sauve Arena, after the fights we would go across the street to Beaubein Deli and we would sit and rehash the fights. This guy, he's a world class referee, and he’s sitting with me having smoked meat sandwiches, and I’m a 17-, 18-year-old kid. I remember him saying, ‘This kid knows boxing.’ I’m a child, and he’s giving me that attention. It’s great company for me to be in there.”

Anber’s induction certainly isn’t a sign that he’s ready to enter the “legacy act” territory of his career, however. At the age of 64, Anber’s acclaim as a boxing mind in whatever capacity it can be of use has likely never been higher. Rival Boxing has also emerged as one of the leading boxing equipment manufacturers in the world.

But as fruitful as Anber’s career has been, it’s also something he insists he was just as fulfilled doing when he was living in poverty in a basement apartment, scrounging free meals from local restaurants to give himself the time and flexibility to be in the boxing gym teaching fighters and learning himself.

“Bro, I’ve been retired since I’ve been 18 years old,” Anber said. “People retire to do things they love, to go on vacation. This is my vacation. This hasn’t been one bit of work for me. None of it has been work. It’s been a pleasure. I’m doing things now that I used to do for free. I’m doing things now that I used to do for less than free, I would have to pay to do it, and I did it.”

Anber will get his plaque, and he deserves his flowers, but don’t give him his gold watch quite yet.