'World first' Peterborough punch bag machine championships raise nearly £5,000 for victims of Pakistan floods

The 'world first’ punch bag machine championships in Peterborough has raised just under £5,000 for charity.

Pizza Santino, in Lincoln Road, hosted the event on September 4, which the owners claim was the first ever of its kind.

The restaurant is also otherwise known to the community as the ‘punch bag pizza shop’ after installing a boxing punch bag machine in June.

The pizza shop raised £4,630 for Kashmir Orphan Relief Trust (KORT) – a charity supporting the estimated tens of millions of people affected by the recent floods in Pakistan.

"We had about 400 people attend and over 300,000 watch live on both Facebook and Tiktok,” Mohammed Shahid, co-owner of Pizza Santino, said.

"In June this year we brought in a fun fair type of punch bag machine to help boost footfall into our store on Lincoln Road and started an offer of beat the pizza chefs score of 850 and win a free pizza.

"The success of this blew up within hours of us posting on our Facebook page and since then we've had people traveling from all corners of the United Kingdom to have a go at becoming the title holder of ‘hardest hitter’ on our leader board that we update weekly on social media.

"Due to the success of introducing the punch bag machine, we decided to hold on the world's first Punch Bag World Championship.”

On August 14, the shop held another charity event to raise money for the Sue Ryder Hospice.

"After announcing the dates of the championship event, the tragic news of the floods in Pakistan came through and, knowing we are expecting a very good turn out on the day, we dedicated the entire event to raising funds for those displaced by the floods in Pakistan,” Mr Shahid added.

“We had contestants travel from various towns and city across the country: Halifax, Bradford, Leeds, Doncaster, Luton, Birmingham, Croydon, Southend, Norwich – and we even had someone fly in from Romania.”