Boxing world Game for PC Archives

This past Halloween, on an unseasonably warm evening, the new Mack Lewis Boxing Gym, nestled in the shadows of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 900 block of North Bond Street, was alive with its usual activity.

The night's soundtrack: the thud of padded fists crashing into heavy bags, a buzzer that sounds every three minutes, the grunts and groans of men pushing themselves to their physical limits and the staccato wisp of jump ropes. Seated in a corner near the entrance, wearing a radiant smile, was Lewis himself. The legendary trainer's eyes sparkled with energy, as sweat-soaked fighters of all shapes and sizes moved around him, like orbiting planets around the sun - from middle-aged men working to stay fit to world-class professionals training for a shot at championship glory.

One of those fighters once was Hasim Rahman, the Baltimore heavyweight who defends his World Boxing Council crown Saturday in Atlantic City, N.J., and who got his start at Lewis' old, ramshackle gym.

On that October night, Lewis, now 87, undeniably was still in charge. He occasionally yelled out instructions, but mostly observed as a handful of former pupils passed along the lessons he once sternly advocated. When Lewis stepped outside the gym, though, he really took over.

Former junior middleweight champion Vincent Pettway, who drives his former trainer and mentor home each evening, found his car had a flat tire. Before Pettway could arrange another ride home for Lewis, though, the trainer was barking out orders.

"Hey! Help Pettway fix this tire!" he shouted toward a group of fighters and trainers as they begin to pile in their cars. Within minutes, someone found an air pump. As the tire filled, Lewis entertained his rapt audience with tales of Jack Johnson.

"Never leave a man when he's in trouble," Lewis said with a wink, climbing into the passenger seat as the small crowd scattered.

One such troubled man was the young Rahman.

In 1993, Rahman climbed up the 20 rickety stairs in the dilapidated building on the corner of Broadway and Eager Street in East Baltimore that housed Lewis' old gym.

The problems that dogged Rahman on the streets did not follow him through the rusty gate of Lewis' gym, where, for more than 50 years, fighters trained without running water, heat or air conditioning.

"I liked him from the first time I met him," Lewis said. "He was very mannerable, strong, dedicated and always willing to do whatever he was asked to do."

Under Lewis' stewardship, Rahman honed his raw talent, pounding speed bags reinforced with duct tape and sparring in a plywood-based ring covered by old carpet and a dingy gray mat.

Although he went to train with Kevin Rooney, Mike Tyson's trainer, at the tail end of his amateur development, Rahman acknowledged his debt to Lewis when he returned to Baltimore in 2001 after his improbable knockout of Lennox Lewis to capture the undisputed heavyweight crown.

"Mack Lewis gave me an outlet and probably saved my life," Rahman said.

Early start

An avid reader as a child, Lewis devoured stories about his favorite fighters, Johnson and Kid Chocolate. He frequented the New Albert Theatre on Pennsylvania Avenue, staring wide-eyed at the grainy black and white images of Depression-era black boxers.

When he was 13, his father would pit him in back-alley fights against other neighborhood kids. He joined the boxing team at the city's segregated Dunbar and Douglass high schools, played football, baseball and soccer, and he managed himself on the local amateur boxing circuit.

Attending Morgan State College, Lewis played football on the school's undefeated team in 1940. He enlisted in the Army after one year at Morgan, eventually being assigned to the Special Services boxing team.

After about 100 fights and two punctured eardrums, Lewis was discharged in 1943. Returning to Baltimore, he joined Mickey O'Donnell's gym at Broadway and Eager, becoming the first black fighter to do so.

But Lewis' damaged ears stalled his career as a boxer. O'Donnell took him on as a partner, and Lewis commenced to training young men. He scraped together $1,000 to purchase the facility in the early 1950s.

Lewis and his wife, Pearl, have lived in the same humble rowhouse on Lanvale Street for more than 40 years. The cramped living room on the first floor overflows with plaques and certificates from his career as a clerk for the Internal Revenue Service. An oil painting by renowned artist Joseph Sheppard, whom Lewis once trained, hangs on one wall. It depicts a handsome, muscular, wavy-haired teenager from the 1930s squaring off in a classic boxer's stance.

"That's me," Lewis said, before pointing to other pieces in the house - a letter from President Nixon, the ceremonial first pitch baseball he tossed out at a recent Orioles game and a 1994 picture of Lewis with Pettway and perpetually smiling promoter Don King after Pettway won the International Boxing Federation crown.

Although the Lewises never had children, any fighter who anted up the admission price of hard work and discipline at the gym at Broadway and Eager automatically gained entry into Mack Lewis' family.

"I've had lots of kids over the years, all boys," Lewis said. "All of them are like my sons."

Raising Pettway

When Pettway was 8, an older boy stole some money from him while he played outside. Furious, Pettway chased after the culprit to no avail. His anger visibly boiling, he grabbed a pipe and stationed himself behind a pole on the corner of 43rd and Wrenwood, waiting to exact revenge.

"I was waiting to bust that guy in the head with that pipe," Pettway said.

A neighbor who once boxed for Lewis noticed Pettway brandishing the weapon and coaxed him into the gym. Moments after meeting Lewis for the first time, the trainer asked the young boy a question.

"Do you think you can fight?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah?!"

"I mean, Yes, sir!"

Pettway found himself in the ring before the day was out, fighting against older and bigger boys. Mack Lewis had adopted another son.

"I watched these people, the sparring and the competition. It was amazing and beautiful all at the same time," Pettway said. "I came into the gym on Tuesday and won my first official amateur fight on Friday."

Lewis would toss Pettway into the back seat of his car when traveling to Atlantic City to work the corner of one of his professional fighters. He dragged the boy up and down the East Coast. If he couldn't bring him home, he assigned the task to someone else.

And after every fight and workout was the lecture on everything from the proper training diet to earning respect in and out of the ring. Before any fighter left the gym for the night, Lewis made sure Pettway and his other fighters at least had money for something to eat.

Plenty of proverbial sharks circled around Pettway during his career, trying to steal him away from Lewis. When being fitted with the championship belt, he was wearing it not only for himself.

"It was a dream come true for Mr. Mack to have a world champion," Pettway said. "This man treated me and every other kid in the gym like his own son. People offered me things to leave him, but that's not who I am and who he taught me to be."

New facility

The new gym opened in summer 2002. The 4,200-square-foot facility, complete with an upstairs computer lab for academic tutoring, was a gift to Lewis by a host of city benefactors, including clothing chain magnate Leonard "Boogie" Weinglass, developer Struever Bros. Eccles and Rouse and the city's major labor unions, among others.

"They did all this for me," said Lewis, surveying his modern digs. "I'm just a man that tried to help somebody. I must have done something good."

Large mirrors from the old place sit inside the renovated Rite-Aid building. Tattered fight posters dating to the 1950s hang on the walls. Pictures of Alvin Anderson, Larry Middleton, Vernon Mason, Ernie Knox, Reggie Gross, Boom Boom Lester and hundreds of other local boxers offer a glimpse into the gym's past.

"This here is a country club compared to the old gym," Ed Griffin, a Lewis protege who had a 26-fight pro career, said.

Pettway, Griffin, Kenny Blackstone and Kenny Wilson are now training the next generation of Mack Lewis' boxers. But Lewis is still there, looking for the next champ.

Push-button boxing, in subtle, almost imperceptible fashion, has arrived.

And the new method of scoring amateur bouts has worked so smoothly thus far in the U.S. Olympic Festival’s boxing tournament, it’s almost as if no one has noticed.

Yet decades from now, particularly if computer scoring is next applied to professional boxing, historians will call this Festival a starting point for one of the most significant changes in the sport in the 20th Century.

Although its introduction at the Festival’s Saturday and Sunday sessions was so free of controversy that it went largely unnoticed, some coaches are unhappy with the idea of electronic buttons replacing scorecards. They fear computerization of the sport will alter Olympic-style boxing.

Favoring the system are judges and amateur boxing administrators, who see it as greatly improving the quality of judging as well as eliminating biased scoring in international competition.

Pat Nappi, the three-time head coach of U.S. Olympic boxing teams, has accepted the advent of computers.

“I hate it, but I’m stuck with it,” he said Sunday.

Nappi and other old-line amateur coaches believe the new scoring system will cause coaches and boxers to abandon the traditional style of amateur boxing; that it will encourage boxers to rely on more easily seen single, powerful punches instead of amateur boxing’s traditional emphasis on multiple scoring blows, speed and combination punching.

“I’m still learning the system, and what I’ve learned about it so far I don’t like,” said Roosevelt Sanders, head coach of the Camp Lejeune, N.C., Marine boxing team and a candidate for the 1992 Olympic coaching job.

“When I see one bout scored 10-9 and another 90-11, I don’t understand that. None of the people in charge of the system has taken the time to meet with the coaches and explain it to us, and we need that.

“My impression is this system will gradually take away the finesse, speed, the art of boxing, the hit-and-don’t-get-hit technique from our sport. I don’t want amateur boxing to become an all-power, puncher’s game.”

Electronics came to the sport after the 1988 Olympics, when International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch ordered the International Amateur Boxing Federation to either eliminate biased scoring or face expulsion from the Olympics.

Computer scoring was used first in international competition at the 1989 world amateur championships at Moscow. But this week’s application at the Festival is the first time it has been used in the United States.

Highlights of the computer system:

--Five judges sit in front of a black console, index fingers poised on red and blue buttons, one for each corner.

--If the boxer from the red corner registers a scoring blow, the judge pushes his red button. But for the punch to count, the button must be depressed within one second of the blow by at least three of five judges, or the central computer will not accept the point.

In a nutshell, if a boxer wins a decision by, say, 31-20, it means at least three judges credited him with 31 scoring blows, his opponent 20.

In the event of a tie, the high and low scores are eliminated.

Under the old method, judges scored rounds on a 20-point must system. A close round would be scored 20-19, with 20-18 or 20-17 to more one-sided rounds.

So how will the computer prevent biased or incompetent judging in future Olympics?

“The judges’ supervisors seated at the display terminal can see very clearly how a judge is scoring a bout,” said Marco Sarfaraz of La Crescenta, an electronics engineer and longtime amateur boxing referee/judge.

“The system won’t eliminate biased or incompetent judging, but it will reduce it to the point where it’s virtually impossible to manipulate the system,” Sarfaraz said.

“The unique part of this is that a judge scoring a bout often has no idea who he’s scored as the winner. The system puts a lot more pressure on the judges. It makes them more alert and greatly raises their concentration level.

“It puts a little fear into them. No one likes to be embarrassed, and you know your work is being closely scrutinized afterward by people reading the computer printouts.

“I think eventually as they get used to it, the coaches will like it, too. Right now, the system is forcing them to understand how a computer works, and they don’t want to know.”

Sarfaraz acknowledged that computer scoring might change the style of amateur boxing. “I think you’ll see our kids going more to the stand-up, European-style, with a lot more straight punches and harder jabs,” he said. “The kids who’ve scored heavily with in-fighting, a lot of combinations . . . it’s a little harder to see all those punches, and it’s even harder to hit the button for all of them within one second.”

Because judges sit on all four sides of a ring, some will score blows that are unseen by counterparts across the ring. But there are exceptions to that, too.

“In Oscar de la Hoya’s bout Saturday, he scored with seven consecutive punches at one point, and all five judges agreed,” Sarfaraz said. De la Hoya’s margin over Dezi Ford was 37-6.

By comparison, judges scored a much closer bout Saturday when light-heavyweight Denard Trapp defeated Richard Bonds, 39-38. The widest margin of the tournament was light-middleweight Raul Marquez’s 90-11 victory over Kevin Bonner on Sunday.

An amateur boxing appeals board has upheld the suspensions of Glendale boxer Pepe Reilly and San Pedro trainer Al Stankie.

Reilly, 20, tested positive for steroids after winning a title at the national amateur boxing championships in March at Colorado Springs, Colo. Stankie, 50, was suspended at the 1990 nationals for alcohol abuse.

Stankie and Reilly appealed the suspensions, but both penalties were upheld Saturday night by a USA Amateur Boxing Federation appeals board. Reilly also was stripped of his 1991 national championship.

He placed third at the 1990 nationals as a bantamweight (119 pounds) but won it as a welterweight (147) a year later. His nine-month suspension prevented him from competing in the Olympic Festival, but he will be eligible to box in next summer’s Olympic trials, a USA/ABF spokesman said. His suspension will be lifted next March, but he must pass a drug test then. Stankie is suspended until October of 1993.

Of the 24 finalists who will box tonight for 12 Festival championships at the Forum (7 p.m.), only Raul Marquez, the hard-hitting, light-middleweight (156 pounds) from Houston, has indicated a desire to compete in the Pan American Games in August at Havana.

“That’s big TV (ABC) coverage, and I’m interested in getting both exposure and also tough competition before the Olympics next year,” he said.

Boxers who win Festival championships have their choice, the Pan-Am Games or the world championships tournament in Sydney, Australia, in November. Most are opting for Sydney, where the Cubans also will compete.

Van Nuys heavyweight John Bray, who will box Melvin Foster for a Festival title tonight, cites three reasons for choosing Sydney over Havana:

“First of all, the USOC gives a $2,500 grant to U.S. world champions and Pan-Am champions don’t get anything,” he said.

“Second, there’s a weeklong training camp in Hawaii for the world championship team. And third, for me to beat Felix Savon (Cuba’s world champion heavyweight) in Havana, I’dhave to knock him out for 10 minutes.”

Sugar Ray Leonard, on Oscar de la Hoya: “He goes to the body like a pro. He can get off a great shot to the ribs and maintain his balance. A lot of pros can’t even do that.”

Amateur boxing sources say the three top candidates to coach the 1992 U.S. Olympic team are Joe Byrd of Flint, Mich., whose two sons, Chris and Patrick, will box tonight in the finals; Nappi, of Syracuse, N.Y., Olympic head coach in 1976, 1980 and 1984; and Sanders, Nappi’s Olympic assistant coach in 1984 and head coach of the U.S. team at the 1987 Pan-Am Games.

Championship Bouts

U.S. Olympic Festival championship boxing match-ups tonight at the Forum: 106--Eric Griffin, Houston, vs. Bradley Martinez, Ft. Huachuca, Ariz. 112--Tim Austin, Cincinnati, vs. John Herrera, Corpus Christi, Tex. 119--Sean Fletcher, Norfolk, Va., vs. Aristead Clayton, Baker, La. 125--Ivan Robinson, Philadelphia, vs. Kenneth Friday, Offut AFB, Neb. 132--Oscar De La Hoya, Los Angeles, vs. Patrice Brooks, St. Louis 139--Terronn Millett, St. Louis, vs. Steve Johnston, Colorado Springs, Colo. 147--Ross Thompson, Miami, Fla., vs. Patrick Byrd, Flint, Mich. 156--Raul Marquez, Houston, vs. Ravea Springs, Cincinnati 165--Chris Byrd, Flint, Mich., vs. Michael DeMoss, Camp Lejeune, N.C. 178--John Ruiz, Chelsea, Mass., vs. Denard Trapp, Ft. Hood, Tex. 201--John Bray, Van Nuys, vs. Melvin Foster, Washington +201--Larry Donald, Cincinnati, vs. Samson Pouha, Kearns, Utah