On a recent Tuesday night, the venerable Golden Gloves Gym is nearly empty. Located a stone's throw from government housing, the gym looks more like an urban barn than sanctuary—nondescript but for the odd blue and yellow paint job.
Pictures of the boxing giants who've trained here (Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, Pernell Whitaker) line the entrance of the former steel warehouse, leading to a cavernous, brightly-lit gym. Inside, the sounds of the sweet science.
Badum-badum-badum—punches tagging a speed bag. Explosive thwacks from gloves meeting mitts. Pitter patter of moving feet, bobbing in and out of trouble. "Fwhoo, fwhoo, fwhoo"—air under the feet of a jump roper. Gruff barks from trainers: "One more minute. One more minute. Don't give up, men."
Of the half-dozen fighters, most are Hispanic and most are young. They've come to learn about pugilism—bobbing, weaving, "kill the body, the head will follow"—and in the process of sculpting bodies, building better lives. It could all come to an end by Tuesday.
Infighting in the Fraternal Order of Police, which owns the Gragson Lane facility where Golden Gloves has operated since 1981, could KO the program, which has catered to thousands who've sought solace within its sweaty confines. Like the girl who used boxing to erase memories of an abusive childhood, who found her voice in controlled violence. Or the troublemaking boy from the projects who now behaves himself and and excels in school, says Joe (wouldn't give last name), a volunteer trainer.
"It's a shame adults can get their heads together," he adds. Calls to the Fraternal Order of Police weren't returned.
An extension of deceased owners Hal and Faye Miller's benevolence—they paid most of the bills—Golden Gloves operates on a take-'em-all-in philosophy (can't pay, no problem) that is part of the problem. Dwindling membership, once topping several hundreds but now in the dozens, has siphoned revenues. Hopes for a new, $500,000 facility promised by local media magnate Jim Rogers (KVBC Channel 3) have all but been scuttled by the FOP beefs.
"The place don't make any money … we have no funding, we are trying to get a grant, but right now we're against the wall," Joe says. "We can send these kids to other gyms, but lots of them aren't licensed drivers, they don't have anyway to get there."
Meanwhile, the same Tuesday night, at the Nevada Partners Sugar Ray Leonard boxing gym, trainer Woody Fields is making the rounds in a crowded gym. Amateurs and pros hit the bags, teens spar, older men and women lift weights and run on the treadmill. Parents in folding chairs watch as daughters and sons, gloves nearly as big as their torsos, duke it out. A young girl, slightly rotund and painfully shy, waits as Fields talks to grown-ups. "She just wanted to thank me for teaching her how to box." Another boy is eager to learn more. "We'll go over that tomorrow," Fields tells him. An older man, a trainer: He wanted to talk strategy for a teenage steward.
The 8-year-old Lake Mead Boulevard gym just emerged from a similar tiff. Hall of Fame boxing judge Richard Steele, who championed the gym, says expansion of the Culinary Union Training Academy—which shares the building—has cramped space, often causing the gym to close for days at a time. Nevada Partners board members met to discuss its fate. Talk of closure grated on Steele.
"It's about building character first and fighters second," he says, noting that youths must maintain a C average to participate, there are parent meetings and college students provide mentoring and tutoring. "We have done a lot of work to keep these kids on track. Boxing is really the carrot that brings them in. We work to prepare them for life via workshops."
Nevada Partners CEO Steven Horsford says board members hope to amass enough funds to relocate the gym by April.
"The gym needs to be in its own place," Horsford says. "It's just a matter of getting in a position where it can be self-sufficient ... that it has a large enough facility to be self-sufficient and can offer enough services."
Steele says he hopes both gyms remain open. The alternative, Fields adds, is for kids to spend all day in their neighborhoods.
"In a few days [of closure], two or three of them would get killed [by violence]."