Boxing History Went Up in Flames in Blaze That Destroyed Kronk Gym

worked with 41 world champions, 30 of whom he helped develop at that city’s shrine to the sweet science, the Kronk Gym, the most famous alumnus

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Published

7 years ago

October 9, 2017

Bernard Fernandez

As a trainer, the late, great Emanuel Steward always believed he could help guide his prized pupils to victory when everything seemingly was on the line. That sense of supreme confidence proved more than justified as Steward, sometimes referred to as the “Godfather of Detroit boxing,” worked with 41 world champions, 30 of whom he helped develop at that city’s shrine to the sweet science, the Kronk Gym, the most famous alumnus of whom is five-division world titlist Thomas Hearns, who turned his career and, more importantly, his life, over to his beloved father figure when the future “Hitman” was just a scrawny boy with a grown-up dream.

“The man changed my life. He made me a different person. I owe him a great deal, more than I can ever repay,” Hearns, now 58, said upon learning that Steward had passed away at 68 on Oct. 25, 2012, after undergoing surgery for diverticulitis in Chicago, a procedure made more precarious by a weakened Steward’s ongoing battle with colon cancer.

“Manny told me as a kid I’d be a world champion someday,” Hearns continued. “He molded me, shaped me. Manny had the eye (for spotting talent).”

On Sunday morning, Hearns, again visibly distraught, stood before the burnt-out husk of the facility where, under Steward’s patient tutelage, he and so many other elite or near-elite boxers – Hilmer Kenty, Milton and Steve McCrory, Jimmy Paul, Duane Thomas, William “Caveman” Lee, Michael Moorer and Gerald McClellan among them – had heard and followed their shared destiny. Given the ravages of time and indifference that had taken place since the Kronk Gym was closed by the City of Detroit, which lacked the wherewithal to make needed improvements or even to keep it open as-is, such an ending for the onetime civic treasure probably was inevitable.

David Fornell, a deputy commissioner with the Detroit Fire Department, said the blaze was called in at 9:25 on Saturday night and that it was “suspicious” enough to warrant an investigation as to its cause. Firefighters were on the scene for 4½ hours, but their good intentions to enter the graffiti-defaced building were thwarted by fear that the roof would collapse, which it eventually did. Regardless of whatever information the investigation yields, there is no chance of another boxing gym, and little chance of anything else, rising on that site.

“It’s just sad that people didn’t value this place like we did,” Hearns told the Detroit Free Press. “What this building brought to me was a chance at life. I got a chance to become somebody out of this building right here. This was a safe haven to me.”

Sylvia Steward-Williams, Steward’s daughter, seconded Hearns’ sense of personal loss, telling the Detroit News that “my father’s heart lived in that gym. He’d still pay for it (the property) even after we moved out because his heart was so much with those kids who wanted and needed that space to train. We never expected this. It’s devastating.”

Built in 1921 and named for a Detroit city councilman named John Kronk, the Kronk Gym, located in the basement of the since-shuttered Kronk Community Center on Detroit’s economically depressed west side, was never a showplace even in the best of times. It was merely functional, and, truth be told, it did not age gracefully. By the time Steward was named its director of boxing in 1971, the paint had already begun to peel off the walls and the non-air-conditioned building could be insufferably hot during the summer. But the tools of a boxer’s trade were inside, and none of the aspiring champions complained much about the lack of amenities because, hey, they weren’t there to be comfortable. They came to learn, and the main man doing the teaching was Steward, a former Detroit Golden Gloves titlist whose gift for imparting knowledge to his young charges soon would become legendary.

In his own way, Steward had been as much of a student as were Hearns and the other kids who wore Kronk’s gold-and-red colors as a distinctive badge of honor. Born in Bottom Creek, W.Va., little Manny moved with his family to Detroit when he was a child and he was taught to box by Luther Burgess, a disciple of the venerable Eddie Futch, at the Brewster Community Center, where the iconic heavyweight champion Joe Louis honed his craft. The Brewster was, in a sense, the Kronk Gym before there was a Kronk Gym.

“The Brewster is on the east side of town right in the middle of the Brewster Projects,” Steward told Newark Star-Ledger sports columnist Jerry Izenberg in 1992. “The east side was poor then and it’s poor now. But when I was growing up, every kid in Detroit knew that Joe Louis trained there.”

And so it would be with the Kronk, with Hearns serving as its Joe Louis and Steward as its Eddie Futch. But as the Kronk’s neighborhood slowly withered away, and the number of kids who had once flocked there to tug on their first pair of boxing gloves decreased, Manny’s role transformed from that of stay-close-to-home professor to roving troubleshooter for hire. Instead of getting in on the ground floor with young fighters he accompanied all the way to the top, he applied his magical touch when requested to such seasoned pros as Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Julio Cesar Chavez, Oscar De La Hoya, Miguel Cotto and Wladimir Klitschko.

But the struggling Kronk Gym was never far from Steward’s thoughts, and he undertook several initiatives to raise enough money to keep it operational and, hopefully, more than that. But what Steward did not have was unlimited financial resources or as much success at rallying local support for the city-owned gym as he had in developing such homegrown ring stars as Hearns, Kenty and the McCrorys.

“Without additional funding, the Kronk Recreation Center will simply not be able to remain open,” Manny told me in January 2006. “Shuttering the Kronk Gym would be devastating to Detroit and the youth of this city.”

But Detroit had priorities then, and it still does, and some of those supersede an expensive-to-maintain gym where young boxers can learn the proper way to hook off the jab. As Fornell, the deputy fire commissioner, noted, the loss of the Kronk Gym is “a part of history that was destroyed” and “it’s unfortunate that we are losing these architectural gems, but also, they’ve been vacant for years. Nobody stepped up. Right now the city is working on getting street lights, lowering response times (for calls to the police and fire departments). There are a lot of priorities in the city.”

Makes sense from a strictly practical standpoint, but still one wonders why boxing – as much a part of Detroit’s identity as, say, a chart-topping song – was given such relatively short shrift in comparison to Motown, where a visionary named Berry Gordy Jr. served as the rhythm-and-blues counterpart to Steward and was accorded so much higher a place of distinction in the city’s sense of self-identity. Motown, also known as “Hitsville USA,” was founded by Gordy in 1959 and served as the springboard to superstardom for such performers as the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas and Mary Wells. Although Gordy moved his operation to Los Angeles in 1972, the original Motown headquarters at 2648 West Grand Blvd. since 1985 has housed a museum that has become a popular tourist destination, located on the renamed Berry Gordy Jr. Blvd.

Tight operating budget or not for the City of Detroit, fight fans will continue to wonder why no such effort was undertaken to commemorate the life and times of the much-beloved Steward, and to preserve, to some minimally acceptable degree, the proving ground from which he sent Hearns and his Kronk brethren forth to proudly carry the municipal banner.

Then again, other cherished heirlooms of boxing have also been allowed to go fallow or to be removed altogether. The 5^th Street Gym in Miami Beach, where Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) trained for his first fight with Sonny Liston, was partially razed and dormant from 1992 to 2009 when it reopened with little fanfare. The Grand Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, site of the 1932 Olympic boxing competition, was purchased in June 2006 and now houses the Glory Church of Jesus Christ, a Korean-American congregation. Philadelphia’s Sesquicentennial/Municipal/John F. Kennedy Stadium, where Gene Tunney wrested the heavyweight championship from Jack Dempsey on Sept. 23, 1926, and Rocky Marciano seized it from Jersey Joe Walcott exactly 26 years later, was demolished in 1992 to clear the ground on which the Wells Fargo Center now sits. And the Blue Horizon in Philly has, like the Kronk Gym, been shuttered and decaying for a decade now.

Boxing will survive because, hey, it always does. But the fire that consumed the Kronk Gym left in ashes more than what had become a dilapidated building. It burned a hole in the fabric of fight fans’ collective memories, and all we can do, like Tommy Hearns, is shed a tear for what once was and can never be again.

Above the Kronk rec center as it appeared in 2006 before vandals rendered it uninhabitable. The boxing gym was in the basement.

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Bernard Fernandez

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 303: Spotlights on Lightweights and More

Published

19 hours ago

November 1, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila-Perspective-Chap-303-Spotlights-on-Lightweights-and-More

Those lightweights.

Whether junior lights, super lights or lightweights, it’s the 130-140 divisions where most of boxing’s young stars are found now or in the past.

Think Oscar De La Hoya, Sugar Shane Mosley and Floyd Mayweather.

Floyd Schofield (17-0, 12 KOs) a Texas product, hungers to be a star and takes on Mexico’s Rene Tellez Giron (20-3, 13 KOs) in a 12-round lightweight bout on Saturday, Nov. 2, at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada.

DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotion card that includes a female undisputed flyweight championship match pitting Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz and Gabriela Fundora.

Like a young lion looking to flex, Schofield (pictured on the left) is eager to meet all the other young lions and prove they’re not equal.

“I’ve been in the room with Shakur, Tank. I want to give everyone a good fight. I feel like my preparation is getting better, I work hard, I’ve dedicated my whole life to this sport,” said Schofield naming fellow lightweights Shakur Stevenson and Gervonta “Tank” Davis.

Now he meets Mexico’s Tellez who has never been stopped.

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes,” said Tellez.

Even in Las Vegas.

Verona, New York

Meanwhile, in upstate New York, a WBC junior lightweight title rematch finds Robson Conceicao (19-2-1, 9 KOs) looking to prove superior to former titlist O’Shaquie Foster (22-3, 12 KOs) on Saturday, Nov. 2, at the Turning Stone Resort and Casino in Verona, N.Y. ESPN+ will stream the Top Rank fight card.

Last July, Conceicao and Foster clashed and after 12 rounds the title changed hands from Foster to the Brazilian by split decision.

“I feel that a champion is a fighter who goes out there and doesn’t run around, who looks for the fight, who tries to win, and doesn’t just throw one or two punches and then moves away,” said Conceicao.

Foster disagrees.

“I hope he knows the name of the game is to hit and not get hit. That’s the name of the game,” said Foster.

Also on the same card is lightweight contender Raymond Muratalla (21-0, 16 KOs) who fights Mexico’s Jesus Perez Campos (25-5, 18 KOs).

Perez recently defeated former world champion Jojo Diaz last February in California.

“We’re made for challenges. I like challenges,” said Perez.

Muratalla likes challenges too.

“I think these fights are the types of fights I need to show my skills and to prove I deserve those title fights,” said Fontana’s Muratalla.

Female Undisputed Flyweight Championship

WBA, WBC and WBO flyweight titlist Gabriela “La Chucky” Alaniz (15-1, 6 KOs meets IBF titlist Gabriela Fundora (14-0, 6 KOs) on Saturday Nov. 2, at the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. DAZN will stream the clash for the undisputed flyweight championship.

Argentina’s Alaniz clashed twice against former WBA, WBC champ Marlen Esparza with their first encounter ending in a dubious win for the Texas fighter. In fact, three of Esparza’s last title fights were scored controversially.

But against Alaniz, though they fought on equal terms, Esparza was given a 99-91 score by one of the judges though the world saw a much closer contest. So, they fought again, but the rematch took place in California. Two judges deemed Alaniz the winner and one Esparza for a split-decision win.

“I’m really happy to be here representing Argentina. We are ready to fight. Nothing about this fight has to do with Marlen. So, I hope she (Fundora) is ready. I am ready to prepare myself for the great fight of my life,” said Alaniz.

In the case of Fundora, the extremely tall American fighter at 5’9” in height defeated decent competition including Maria Santizo. She was awarded a match with IBF flyweight titlist Arely Mucino who opted for the tall youngster over the dangerous Kenia Enriquez of Mexico.

Bad choice for Mucino.

Fundora pummeled the champion incessantly for five rounds at the Inglewood Forum a year ago. Twice she battered her down and the fight was mercifully stopped. Fundora’s arm was raised as the new champion.

Since that win Fundora has defeated Christina Cruz and Chile’s Daniela Asenjo in defense of the IBF title. In an interesting side bit: Asenjo was ranked as a flyweight contender though she had not fought in that weight class for seven years.

Still, Fundora used her reach and power to easily handle the rugged fighter from Chile.

Immediately after the fight she clamored for a chance to become undisputed.

“It doesn’t get better than this, especially being in Las Vegas. This is the greatest opportunity that we can have,” said Fundora.

It should be exciting.

Fights to Watch

Sat. ESPN+ 2:50 p.m. Robson Conceicao (19-2-1) vs O’Shaquie Foster (22-3).

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Floyd Schofield (17-0) vs Rene Tellez Giron (20-3); Gabriela Alaniz (15-1) vs Gabriela Fundora (14-0).

Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy

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Bakhram Murtalaziev was the Fighter of the Month in October

Published

2 days ago

October 31, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Bakhram-Murtalaziev-was-the-Fighter-of-the-Month-in-October

As we close the book on October, let’s look back at the month’s stellar performances. Kenshiro Teraji added another exclamation point to his brilliant career with an 11^th-round stoppage of Cristofer Rosales. England’s Jack Catterall, considered no more than a decent domestic-level talent for most of his career, showed that he had been underrated with a comprehensive 12-round decision over declining Regis Prograis. But the top performance, by a landslide, was delivered by Bakhram Murtalaziev who annihilated Tim Tszyu on Oct. 19 in Orlando, Florida.

Murtalaziev was undefeated (22-0, 16 KOs) and the reigning IBF junior middleweight champion, but he was the underdog and the “B” side. As champions go, and there are roughly five dozen across the 17 weight divisions, the California-based Russian ranked among the least well-known. He had won his title in Berlin with an 11^th-round stoppage of an unexceptional 38-year-old German-Ecuadorian campaigner, Jack Culcay, and he would be making his first defense.

Managed by Egis Klimas who also handles Oleksandr Usyk and Vasiliy Lomachenko, among others, Bakhram Murtalaziev came from a good barn in the vernacular of a horseplayer, but on paper that alone was insufficient to get him over the hump against Tim Tszyu who a few short months earlier was widely considered the best 154-pound boxer in the world.

That was before he met up with Sebastian Fundora who blemished his record, but that setback could have been written off as a fluke.

As we recall, Tszyu was scheduled to fight Keith Thurman in the initial PBC offering on Amazon Prime Video, but Thurman suffered a biceps injury in training and Fundora was bumped up from the undercard to fill the breach. With only 12 days’ notice, Tim Tszyu went from fighting a five-foot-seven fighter who fights out of an orthodox stance to fighting a southpaw who stood almost a full foot taller. The “Towering Inferno” has his limitations, but poses a special problem to anyone, let alone an opponent with little time to formulate a good game plan.

Tszyu was hampered in the Fundora fight by a gash on his hairline that hampered his vision. The injury happened in the second round when he ducked under Fundora and walked into an elbow. The gash bled copiously throughout the fight and yet the best that Fundora could do was win a split (albeit fair) decision.

To say that Tszyu failed to rebound from the Fundora misadventure would be putting it mildly. Murtalaziev steamrolled him, knocking him to the canvas four times in all before Tszyu’s corner tossed in the towel at the 1:55 mark of the third stanza. It was painful to watch. Referee Chris Young was faulted for allowing the match to continue as long as it did. Compounding Tszyu’s misery, his celebrated father, a first ballot Hall of Famer, was ringside. Kostya Tszyu hadn’t seen his oldest son fight in the flesh since Tim’s pro debut in 2016.

Although the dichotomy is imperfect, Tim Tszyu, who turns 30 on Saturday, is more of a puncher than a boxer. That may work against him so far as clawing his way back to a position of prominence. The noted boxing coach Stephen “Breadman” Edwards, a keen student of the history of boxing in the modern era, expressed this sentiment in a Q and A story for Boxing Scene. “Destructive fighters usually don’t come back to full capacity after bad KO losses,” he said, citing John Mugabi, Mike Tyson, George Foreman, Sonny Liston, and Naseem Hamed to illustrate his point. Moreover, added Edwards, “No one will ever be afraid of him again.”

But there were two stories that emerged from the Murtalaziev-Tszyu fight. Tim Tszyu crashed, but Bakhram Murtalaziev emerged from obscurity, announcing his presence (pardon the cliché) as a force to be reckoned with. As for his next assignment, the best guess is that it will come against Sebastian Fundora or Errol Spence Jr. who are expected to meet early next year. And based on Murtalaziev’s stunning performance in Orlando, it will be impossible to bet against him.

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Foreman-Moorer: 30 Years Later

Published

3 days ago

October 30, 2024

The Sweet Science

Foreman-Moorer: 30 Years Later

By TSS SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT JAMIE REBNER — In sports, middle-aged athletes are not supposed to beat opponents who are half their age and in their athletic primes. Only the greatest ones can use guile, technique, and experience to compensate for the dulling of speed, reflexes, and athleticism that have unavoidably eroded with time.

That is why George Foreman’s feat of reclaiming the heavyweight title at 45 is so impressive. It was thirty years ago this coming Tuesday, Nov 5, 1994, that Foreman scored a monumental upset in knocking out Michael Moorer to win back the title he had lost twenty years prior against Muhammad Ali in The Rumble in the Jungle. In doing so, Big George became the oldest heavyweight champion, breaking the record previously held by Jersey Joe Walcott, who had won the title at 38.

When Foreman beat Moorer, he was in the twilight of his second career, a comeback that began in 1987. George had retired in 1977 after losing to Jimmy Young and experiencing a spiritual awakening in his locker room. That led him to become a minister and devote himself to his family and congregation. During his retirement, he opened a youth center in Houston, which required much financial support, prompting him to return to the ring.

After winning 24 straight fights from 1987-1990, Foreman lost his first title shot by decision to Evander Holyfield in 1991. He rebounded from that loss with three more wins before getting a crack at the WBO title against Tommy Morrison in 1993. But his performance against Morrison was disappointing and he lost another decision. After that, Foreman was out of the ring for 17 months before he was gifted another title shot against Moorer.

Foreman got that gift because Moorer, due to his sullen demeanor and curtness with the media, was not a draw with the fans. He was also an unproven champion, having beaten Holyfield for two belts only seven months prior. So. Moorer needed a name opponent who could bring in the crowds for his first title defense. And the other top heavyweights like Oliver McCall (WBC champ), Lennox Lewis, and Riddick Bowe didn’t have close to Foreman’s drawing power. So. deserving or not, Foreman was chosen as the challenger to make a fight that would be worth the public’s attention and pockets.

Even Foreman was surprised by getting selected to fight Moorer. “I never in my wildest imagination thought I’d get a title shot again,” he told Associated Press sports columnist Tim Dahlberg. Still, George was determined to make his third time a charm.

But as motivated as George was, there was an irrefutable gap in speed between himself and the much younger champion. From the opening bell, Moorer used his superior quickness and reflexes to make Foreman look stiff and slow. And although George landed punches early on, he fired them one at a time while Moorer countered with multiple shots. But despite Moorer’s advantage in connects, his trainer Teddy Atlas advised him from the get-go not to stand in front of Foreman and make himself a stationary target for a right-hand bomb.

But Moorer failed to heed that advice as he continued to outwork Foreman in the middle rounds. Although he was winning, Moorer’s overconfidence kept him at close quarters, and he continued to circle unwisely to his left and into Foreman’s dangerous right hand. And despite absorbing many quality shots, Foreman never appeared hurt or discouraged thanks to his granite chin and unyielding resolve. He was determined to win and he was willing to walk through as many flush shots as he needed to do so.

With Moorer content to stay in range, Foreman gladly returned his firepower and he landed some telling right crosses, uppercuts, and plenty of thudding body blows during the battle. And while Moorer continued to pile up points and rounds, as long as George was marching forward and throwing shots, he had a puncher’s chance.

And with a minute to go in round ten, that punch came. After missing a three-punch combination, Foreman scored with a one-two, with the right hand landing on the forehead. He immediately repeated that combination but this time aimed the right hand lower on Moorer’s jaw. That slight adjustment caused his bulldozer right to collide perfectly with Moorer’s chin, sending the champion crashing to the canvas and sprawled onto his back. The champion couldn’t beat the count, and just like that, the fight was over, Moorer’s short-lived title run ending before it ever truly began.

With a single, shattering blow, Foreman etched his name into boxing history. Wearing the same trunks from Zaire 20 years before, he was now heavyweight champion of the world once again. It was a shocking result that defied conventional wisdom since seldom do 45-year-old boxers score knockouts over champions in their athletic primes. But Foreman reminded us that he was anything but your typical quadragenarian. He was special, and he had two distinct heavyweight championship reigns to prove it.

—

About the author:

Jamie Rebner lives in Toronto, Canada. He has been a freelance boxing writer since 2016 and his writing has appeared in The Fight City, Boxing News Online, The Ring, and Ringside Seat magazine. His Substack blog is Fight Fundamental, and he is currently writing a book about George Foreman’s comeback. He is also a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Follow him on Twitter @J_NReb.

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