Disappearing Gyms
“It’s a proper gym.” — Harold Knight
When I first started working out with Gerry Cooney a couple of years back, we trained at a small gym called the Shadow Boxing Academy in Fanwood, NJ. It was just a converted commercial garage, barely big enough to house a small ring, four heavy bags, a couple of speed bags and some clanky barbells. But it was, surely and purely, a boxing gym. Fight posters adorned the walls, hand wraps and skip ropes hung from various hooks, and a bell sounded in the obligatory three-minute, one-minute pattern. Owned by former junior lightweight contender Harold “Shadow” Knight (19-1 as a pro; had to retire when he failed a CAT scan at age 25; worked with Lennox Lewis for many years), the “Academy” usually seemed fairly busy: a few serious-looking teenage amateurs, preparing for cards in Paterson or Newark; younger kids just learning the moves; a regular trio of sweatsuited women working off the pounds on the heavy bags; our group of middle-aged klutzes. It wasn’t Stillman’s in the 1940s, but it was earnest and legitimate.
But then there were the leaks in the roof and the heat going off and then one Saturday morning we learned that the landlady had chosen not to renew the lease. The next Saturday the gym was locked and dark and a couple of weeks later it was closed for good. We sparred for a couple of weeks in Cooney’s backyard, learning to spin and grab when our backs hit the garage door, and then relocated to a store-front “martial arts facility” in a nearby town. There were bags and mirrors on the wall and room to skip rope, but no real ring. We settled in, but we’re still looking for a real gym.
And that brings me to the point: There aren’t a lot out there any more. Not news, I know, but it seems worse than ever. I work in New York. I used to be able to go down to the Times Square Gym and hang out on my lunch hour, or, even just a few years ago, to Michael Olajide’s gym near the Port Authority. Now, there’s Gleason’s and Church Street and a couple of others, but it’s not all that easy to get there – and half the time when you do somebody’s closed off the gym to shoot a fashion spread or a commercial. And that’s New York. Where do you go in New Jersey, or Boston (Carlo? Charles?) or anywhere else, if you want either to learn how to box or to learn about boxing?
There’s a web site, boxinggyms.com, that lists gyms by state, but it appears to be — while well-intentioned — woefully out-of-date. Shadow Box Academy is still on the list for New Jersey. It’s probably hard to keep up with the closings. My local gym — a New York Sports Club — offers a weekly “boxing” class (right next door to the spin classes), but I’ve never been to it. I wonder whether any of the participants would even consider going to a real boxing gym.
Thinking about all this today, I tracked down a number for Harold Knight. I reached him as he was leaving for work. He’s a corrections officer now, over in Pennsylvania. We talked about gyms. He said he’d just read that Jimmy Montoya’s place on the west coast was closing, and so was another big one. “It’s tough,” he said. “There’s not enough serious boxers out there.” He said he hung in as long as he could. “But then I started dipping into my daughter’s college fund to pay the upkeep and I knew I couldn’t go on.” He still works one-on-one, he says, and runs an occasional training camp in the Poconos. He has visited Larry Holmes’s Gym as well (“It’s a proper gym.”) and says he hopes maybe he can contribute to Holmes’s amateur and professional programs. “I’m a survivor,” Knight said. “And I love boxing. It’s what I do.”
The trouble, of course, is that it’s not what a lot of other people do anymore. I asked him whether, with all the boxing programs popping up in the mainstream health clubs, he saw any chance for a crossover. “They more or less go for the cardio,” said Knight. “They’re not hard-core boxing people.”
And so the vicious cycle continues. Fewer hard-core boxing people means fewer gyms means still fewer hard-core boxing people, and so on. All this is obvious and, as I said, far from headline news. But I started thinking about it today. And when you actually go out and try to find a gym, it starts to hit home. Knight took down my number and email address and said he’d like to keep in touch. I’ll be interested to learn where he goes from here.
posted by Richard O'Brien @ 2:10 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Rich, you're on a roll, two excellent post. As far as the gyms go, I was stagnated by not having access to a boxing gym growing up in South Jersey towns like Haddonfield & Cherry Hill. Had I had access to a gym earlier, I would've started boxing at 12 or 13 instead of six months before I turned 17.
The only reason I started before I turned 17 was because the Cherry Hill Pal opened, and Joey Giardello was the boxing coach/instructor. I remember the first time I saw the ring before I began training. I climbed into it and started moving around imitating Ali, saying to myself, "nobody can beat me in here." I had a thousand thoughts going through my head, such as this is what it's really like to be in this thing I've seen on TV so many times.
Once I started, guys from my junior class thought they wanted to box and tried it a few times. Soon they realized it wasn't as easy as they thought. When I had my first couple amateur fights, they all came to The Cherry Hill Arena to watch me fight. Luckily I won the four or five they came to, and I was like a Fucking celebrity at school until I graduated. After I got my drivers license, Giardello called George Benton (at that time I never knew they actually fought) at Frazier's in Phila Pa. Joey told him he has a white middleweight who's strong and determined, he just has to learn how to fight, and that he couldn't advance him any further in Cherry Hill. The next day I was at Frazier's on North Broad Street. At that time I had a 1976 Caprice Classic Convertible. It was aqua blue with a white top and seats, along with wire rimmed wheels.
The first lesson I got before Benton taught me how to throw a jab or shadow box was, not to leave the change I had for the Ben Franklin bridge on the dashboard of my car. I'll never forgot, he walked me outside and said "is this your car?" I said yes. He then said, "it's beautiful, IF you want to keep it that way, take that Fuckin change off the dashboard and hide it somewhere. The motherfuckers that walk by here wouldn't think twice about smashing the windshield and taking the change."
Five minutes later he was knocking the shit out of me showing me how to block and slip punches. Oh yes, some of the best memories of my Life.
Too bad there aren't more gyms around for other guys to share that wonderful experience. The more big name fighters that I passed in the gym, the harder and more intent I worked out and concentrated.
Lastly, I have no doubt IF there were more Boxing Gyms around, there'd be more guys into Boxing. Resulting in a bigger talent pool for Boxing to draw from.
Frank,
What a sharp, evocative picture of your first days in the sport. You really bring it alive. Giardello and Benton? Wow, that's quite a way to start out. Those opportunties just aren't around these days. And, whle I'm sure you were something of an exception among South Jersey white boys, in terms of your interest in the sport -- you'd be even more so now. A shame, really.
Michael Olajide's Kingsway Gym is at 1 West 28th Street in Manhattan, at 5th Avenue. Their web site is http://www.kingswaygym.com/. A lot of pros train there, including fighters visiting NY for cards at the Garden.
More pros seem to train at Gleason's (http://www.gleasonsgym.net/). A lot of the local pros live in Brooklyn or Queens, and it is not that far from lower Manhattan. Manhattan anyway is becoming increasingly gentrified, even in the ethnic residential edges, and you obviously never got many boxers from the condo and trust fund sets.
Irish Ropes had a gym in Queens, but that was closed in some dispute with community “leaders”. The Sunset Park Boxing Club was kicked out of its facility last year by New York’s parks department (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/nyregion/06boxing.html).
Maybe if these gyms ran high-priced hooker operations, the politicians would let them be.
Rich, I only knew of two decent gyms in the Boston area. The Petronelli brothers had their place in Brockton, which is where I spent most of my time. It was very much a no-frills gym, but had a good atmosphere. The Somerville Boxing Club (where John Ruiz learned to fight) was also a solid professional gym. Gabe La Marca, who operated out of the place, was a good trainer. In New York, I really only knew Gleason's. By the time I got out of the business in the mid-1990's, it had already deteriorated badly. Tommy Gallagher was being passed off as a real trainer, which gives you an idea as to how pathetic things had gotten. I'm sorry to hear about Jimmy Montoya's gym going under; he brought a lot of good fighters through his place. And, of course, Johnny Tocco's in Vegas is gone. That probably says more about the general decline of hardcore boxing gyms that anything else.
Frank, having been trained by two of the smartest middleweights you could ever find, I'm curious as to whether Giardello and Benton showed you similar things or whether they took different approaches. Did they confine themselves to the basics or did either try to show you subtle things? How quickly did you figure out that these guys knew a lot about boxing? Did you suddenly find yourself wondering whether Benton might still be a pretty dangerous guy with whom to tangle?
Charles, I spent more time under Benton than I did Giardello. Joey helped me with my foundation and basic fundamentals. Had I not been shown how to hold my hands, and throw a punch by Joey, who knows IF George would've even spent any meaningful time with me. What George did was help tighten up and add to what I learned from Joey.
Joey was patient the first couple times he showed you something, but became a little frustrated IF you didn't pick it up as quickly as he thought you should. Joey was a little easier to con IF you wanted to bluff him that you got it when maybe you didn't, or maybe he didn't take it as serious as George. Benton you couldn't bluff and it was more like, I hope he doesn't ask me to do that again. In defense of Joey, it was the PAL and there were little kids around wanting to learn how to Box. He had no idea who'd be there the next day. And when all was said and done, only myself and a guy named Tony Russ (welterweight) ever made it to actually having sanctioned amateur bouts. Joey liked me because I was tough and strong and didn't give a Fuck once the Fight started. What I liked about Joey was his honesty. He knew with only having Tony to spar regularly, that I'd stagnate. He saw every time he took me to a Philly gym, I progressed after getting my ass kicked.
In regards to Benton, he was clearly a better trainer. He had a firm type patience, and you wanted to do good for him. What stands out about what I learned from him was, how he showed me how to take away the other guys left-hook and upper-cut, by subtley moving my right hand up to my ear, or bring it down under my chin. Once I had that down, I wasn't vulnerable as much to guys who threw a lot of hooks and uppercuts. Which is the reason guys like Parker, Caveman Lee, Briscoe and Braxton/Qawi didn't eat me up all the time. To this very day, I could get in the ring and practice successfully not getting hit with hooks & uppercuts.
He also spent plenty of time teaching me how to slip and parry the jab and the right hand. Being a swarmer, I knew how to fight them, but guys with a good jab and cross could reach me. Every time my jaw went out, it was from a right hand behind a jab. In the simplest terms, I was much better and parrying them than I was slipping them.
I seldom worked the pads or had Joey throw punches for me to slip that much. However, I did with George. And that motherfucker hurt when I blocked his shots. I've told the story of him going through that drill with Ray Leonard before he fought Tony Chiaverini. And George was throwing at Ray like he did me and everyone else. Only Leonard fired back like a machine gun. In the middle once when they stopped to get position again, George said, you're gonna kill this guy Leonard. To which Leonard said, "George, IF you hit me any harder, you're gonna kill me."
So in answer to your questions, I wouldn't want to get hit by Benton with a glove or a bare fist even when he was 47, and it didn't take long to know they knew a lot about Boxing, especially Benton.
I could add to this, but maybe I'll save it for an article someday.
Sometimes, it takes a tragedy to make a miracle: Kelsey Smith was a beautiful young lady who was kidnapped outside of a Target store in Overland Park, Kansas in affluent Johnson County. Her body was found over the state line at Longview Lake in Missouri a couple of days later.
Her father recently decided to return to the community the love and support shown to his family during their darkest hours by having a local boxing gym open its doors for a special day of teaching all sorts of self-defense (including basic boxing techniques) to anyone who felt that they, too, could be caught in a vulnerable situation. In turn, the gym has been enjoying quite the resurgence of activity and recognition. Folks in the area are remembering boxing's importance, both as a sport and as a means of protection.
So I'd like to toast Kelsey Smith's father---and for anybody who does the kinds of things that help keep gyms going, no matter what.
KC, although it's a terrible thing that Mr. Smith was impelled to start his gym based on personal tragedy, here's hoping that he's able to bring something useful to people as a result. A good boxing gym benefits people in all kinds of ways, many of them having no direct relationship to professional boxing. I wish him well.
Post a Comment
<< Home