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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
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 5th 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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LAS VEGAS, NV — The first meeting between Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan last September at Madison Square Garden was punctuated with drama before the first punch was thrown. When the smoke cleared, Mayer had become a world-title-holder in a second weight class, taking away Ryan’s WBO welterweight belt via a majority decision in a fan-friendly fight.
The rematch tonight at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas was another fan-friendly fight. There were furious exchanges in several rounds and the crowd awarded both gladiators a standing ovation at the finish.
Mayer dominated the first half of the fight and held on to win by a unanimous decision. But Sandy Ryan came on strong beginning in round seven, and although Mayer was the deserving winner, the scores favoring her (98-92 and 97-93 twice) fail to reflect the competitiveness of the match-up. This is the best rivalry in women’s boxing aside from Taylor-Serrano.
Mayer, 34, improved to 21-2 (5). Up next, she hopes, in a unification fight with Lauren Price who outclassed Natasha Jonas earlier this month and currently holds the other meaningful pieces of the 147-pound puzzle. Sandy Ryan, 31, the pride of Derby, England, falls to 7-3-1.
Co-Feature
In his first defense of his WBO world welterweight title (acquired with a brutal knockout of Giovani Santillan after the title was vacated by Terence Crawford), Atlanta’s Brian Norman Jr knocked out Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas in the third round. A three-punch combination climaxed by a short left hook sent Cuevas staggering into a corner post. He got to his feet before referee Thomas Taylor started the count, but Taylor looked in Cuevas’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw and brought the bout to a halt.
The stoppage, which struck some as premature, came with one second remaining in the third stanza.
A second-generation prizefighter (his father was a fringe contender at super middleweight), the 24-year-old Norman (27-0, 21 KOs) is currently boxing’s youngest male title-holder. It was only the second pro loss for Cuevas (27-2-1) whose lone previous defeat had come early in his career in a 6-rounder he lost by split decision.
Other Bouts
In a career-best performance, 27-year-old Brooklyn featherweight Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington (15-0, 9 KOs) blasted out Jose Enrique Vivas (23-4) in the third round.
Carrington, who was named the Most Outstanding Boxer at the 2019 U.S. Olympic Trials despite being the lowest-seeded boxer in his weight class, decked Vivas with a right-left combination near the end of the second round. Vivas barely survived the round and was on a short leash when the third stanza began. After 53 seconds of round three, referee Raul Caiz Jr had seen enough and waived it off. Vivas hadn’t previously been stopped.
Cleveland welterweight Tiger Johnson, a Tokyo Olympian, scored a fifth-round stoppage over San Antonio’s Kendo Castaneda. Johnson assumed control in the fourth round and sent Castaneda to his knees twice with body punches in the next frame. The second knockdown terminated the match. The official time was 2:00 of round five.
Johnson advanced to 15-0 (7 KOs). Castenada declined to 21-9.
Las Vegas junior welterweight Emiliano Vargas (13-0, 11 KOs) blasted out Stockton, California’s Giovanni Gonzalez in the second round. Vargas brought the bout to a sudden conclusion with a sweeping left hook that knocked Gonzalez out cold. The end came at the 2:00 minute mark of round two.
Gonzalez brought a 20-7-2 record which was misleading as 18 of his fights were in Tijuana where fights are frequently prearranged. However, he wasn’t afraid to trade with Vargas and paid the price.
Emiliano Vargas, with his matinee idol good looks and his boxing pedigree – he is the son of former U.S. Olympian and two-weight world title-holder “Ferocious” Fernando Vargas – is highly marketable and has the potential to be a cross-over star.
Eighteen-year-old Newark bantamweight Emmanuel “Manny” Chance, one of Top Rank’s newest signees, won his pro debut with a four-round decision over So Cal’s Miguel Guzman. Chance won all four rounds on all three cards, but this was no runaway. He left a lot of room for improvement.
There was a long intermission before the co-main and again before the main event, but the tedium was assuaged by a moving video tribute to George Foreman.
Photos credit: Al Applerose
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William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0
No surprise, once again William Zepeda eked out a win over the clever and resilient Tevin Farmer to remain undefeated and retain a regional lightweight title on Saturday.
There were no knockdowns in this rematch.
The Mexican punching machine Zepeda (33-0, 17 KOs) once more sought to overwhelm Farmer (33-8-1, 9 KOs) with a deluge of blows. This rematch by Golden Boy Promotions took place in the famous beach resort area of Cancun, Mexico.
It was a mere four months ago that both first clashed in Saudi Arabia with their vastly difference styles. This time the tropical setting served as the background which suited Zepeda and his lawnmower assaults. The Mexican fans were pleased.
Nothing changed in their second meeting.
Zepeda revved up the body assault and Farmer moved around casually to his right while fending off the Mexican fighter’s attacks. By the fourth round Zepeda was able to cut off Farmer’s escape routes and targeted the body with punishing shots.
The blows came in bunches.
In the fifth round Zepeda blasted away at Farmer who looked frantic for an escape. The body assault continued with the Mexican fighter pouring it on and Farmer seeming to look ready to quit. When the round ended, he waved off his corner’s appeals to stop.
Zepeda continued to dominate the next few rounds and then Farmer began rallying. At first, he cleverly smothered Zepeda’s body attacks and then began moving and hitting sporadically. It forced the Mexican fighter to pause and figure out the strategy.
Farmer, a Philadelphia fighter, showed resiliency especially when it was revealed he had suffered a hand injury.
During the last three rounds Farmer dug down deep and found ways to score and not get hit. It was Boxing 101 and the Philly fighter made it work.
But too many rounds had been put in the bank by Zepeda. Despite the late rally by Farmer one judge saw it 114-114, but two others scored it 116-112 and 115-113 for Zepeda who retains his interim lightweight title and place at the top of the WBC rankings.
“I knew he was a difficult fighter. This time he was even more difficult,” said Zepeda.
Farmer was downtrodden about another loss but realistic about the outcome and starting slow.
“But I dominated the last rounds,” said Farmer.
Zepeda shrugged at the similar outcome as their first encounter.
“I’m glad we both put on a great show,” said Zepeda.
Female Flyweight Battle
Costa Rica’s Yokasta Valle edged past Texas fighter Marlen Esparza to win their showdown at flyweight by split decision after 10 rounds.
Valle moved up two weight divisions to meet Esparza who was slightly above the weight limit. Both showed off their contrasting styles and world class talent.
Esparza, a former unified flyweight world titlist, stayed in the pocket and was largely successful with well-placed jabs and left hooks. She repeatedly caught Valle in-between her flurries.
The current minimumweight world titlist changed tactics and found more success in the second half of the fight. She forced Esparza to make the first moves and that forced changes that benefited her style.
Neither fighter could take over the fight.
After 10 rounds one judge saw Esparza the winner 96-94, but two others saw Valle the winner 97-93 twice.
Will Valle move up and challenge the current undisputed flyweight world champion Gabriela Fundora? That’s the question.
Valle currently holds the WBC minimumweight world title.
Puerto Rico vs Mexico
Oscar Collazo (12-0, 9 KOs), the WBO, WBA minimumweight titlist, knocked out Mexico’s Edwin Cano (13-3-1, 4 KOs) with a flurry of body shots at 1:12 of the fifth round.
Collazo dominated with a relentless body attack the Mexican fighter could not defend. It was the Puerto Rican fighter’s fifth consecutive title defense.
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Rematches are the bedrock for prizefighting.
Return battles between rival boxers always means their first encounter was riveting and successful at the box office.
Six months after their first brutal battle Mikaela Mayer (20-2, 5 KOs) and Sandy Ryan (7-2-1, 3 KOs) will slug it out again for the WBO welterweight world title this time on Saturday, March 29, at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas.
ESPN will show the Top Rank card live.
“It’s important for women’s boxing to have these rivalries and this is definitely up there as one of the top ones,” Mayer told the BBC.
If you follow Mayer’s career you know that somehow drama follows. Whether its back-and-forth beefs with fellow American fighters or controversial judging due to nationalism in countries abroad. The Southern California native who now trains in Las Vegas knows how to create the drama.
For female fighters self-promotion is a necessity.
Most boxing promoters refuse to step out of the usual process set for male boxers, not for female boxers. Things remain the same and have been for the last 70 years. Social media has brought changes but that has made promoters do even less.
No longer are there press conferences, instead announcements are made on social media to be drowned among the billions of other posts. It is not killing but diluting interest in the sport.
Women innately present a different advantage that few if any promoters are recognizing. So far in the past 25 years I have only seen two or three promoters actually ignite interest in female fighters. They saw the advantages and properly boosted interest in the women.
The fight breakdown
Mayer has won world titles in the super featherweight and now the welterweight division. Those are two vastly different weight classes and prove her fighting abilities are based on skill not power or size.
Coaching Mayer since amateurs remains Al Mitchell and now Kofi Jantuah who replaced Kay Koroma the current trainer for Sandy Ryan.
That was the reason drama ignited during their first battle. Then came someone tossing paint at Ryan the day of their first fight.
More drama.
During their first fight both battled to control the initiative with Mayer out-punching the British fighter by a slender margin. It was a back-and-forth struggle with each absorbing blows and retaliating immediately.
New York City got its money’s worth.
Ryan had risen to the elite level rapidly since losing to Erica Farias three years ago. Though she was physically bigger and younger, she was out-maneuvered and defeated by the wily veteran from Argentina. In the rematch, however, Ryan made adjustments and won convincingly.
Can she make adjustments from her defeat to Mayer?
“I wanted the rematch straight away,” said Ryan on social media. “I’ve come to America again.”
Both fighters have size and reach. In their first clash it was evident that conditioning was not a concern as blows were fired nonstop in bunches. Mayer had the number of punches landed advantage and it unfolded with the judges giving her a majority decision win.
That was six months ago. Can she repeat the outcome?
Mayer has always had boiler-oven intensity. It’s not fake. Since her amateur days the slender Southern California blonde changes disposition all the way to red when lacing up the gloves. It’s something that can’t be taught.
Can she draw enough of that fire out again?
“I didn’t have to give her this rematch. I could have just sat it out, waited for Lauren Price to unify and fought for undisputed or faced someone else,” said Mayer to BBC. “That’s not the fighter I am though.”
Co-Main in Las Vegas
The co-main event pits Brian Norman Jr. (26-0, 20 KOs) facing Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas (27-1-1, 19 KOs) in a contest for the WBO welterweight title.
Norman, 24, was last seen a year ago dissecting a very good welterweight in Giovani Santillan for a knockout win in San Diego. He showed speed, skill and power in defeating Santillan in his hometown.
Cuevas has beaten some solid veteran talent but this will be his big test against Norman and his first attempt at winning a world title.
Also on the Top Rank card will be Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington and Emiliano Vargas, the son of Fernando Vargas, in separate bouts.
Golden Boy in Cancun
A rematch between undefeated William “Camaron” Zepeda (32-0, 27 KOs) and ex-champ Tevin Farmer (33-7-1, 8 KOs) headlines the lightweight match on Saturday March 29, at Cancun, Mexico.
In their first encounter Zepeda was knocked down in the fourth round but rallied to win a split-decision over Farmer. It showed the flaws in Zepeda’s tornado style.
DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also includes a clash between Yokasta Valle the WBC minimumweight world titlist who is moving up to flyweight to face former flyweight champion Marlen Esparza.
Both Valle and Esparza have fast hands.
Valle is excellent darting in and out while Esparza has learned how to fight inside. It’s a toss-up fight.
Fights to Watch
Fri. DAZN 12 p.m. Cameron Vuong (7-0) vs Jordan Flynn (11-0-1); Pat Brown (0-0) vs Federico Grandone (7-4-2).
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. William Zepeda (32-0) vs Tevin Farmer (33-7-1); Yokasta Valle (32-3) vs Marlen Esparza (15-2).
Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Mikaela Mayer (20-2) vs Sandy Ryan (7-2-1); Brian Norman Jr. (26-0) vs Derrieck Cuevas (27-1-1).
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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