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David Letele

New Zealand rugby league footballer, and boxer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ21170721
Source-derived summary

David Letele (born 9 September 1979), also known as the Brown Buttabean, is a New Zealand social activist and retired professional boxer and rugby league footballer from Auckland. After retiring, Letele became a motivational speaker. He created his own fitness gym with no equipment, giving out free meals for the homeless and runs a foodbank for people in need.

Rugby league

Letele played rugby league at an early age, establishing himself very quickly. At the age of 16, Letele was already training with the Māori representative New Zealand team. However, Letele was not able to see the field due to shattering his knee in training.

Letele was signed onto the New Zealand A team, attracting the National Rugby League (NRL) team the New Zealand Warriors. However, due to knee problems, he was sidelined again.

Letele signed on to play for the minor premiership team, North Sydney Bears. While with the Bears, the team won three titles.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “David Letele” as new Zealand rugby league footballer, and boxer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1979—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1979-09-09. The account is most persuasive where David, Letele and Zealand can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as new Zealand rugby league footballer, and boxer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21170721. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “David Letele”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow David Letele primary sources, David Letele archive and David research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “David Letele”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from David Letele” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.