Where is kronk boxing gym

Within seconds, 10 other fighters had clambered through the ropes and set upon him, determined to teach the outsider a lesson in Detroit street etiquette. Hit one, you hit all. Is that all you got?

With its famously low ceiling, Kronk was a gym like few others. Steward presided over savage sparring sessions that became the stuff of fistic legend, most fighters testifying their real bouts paled next to what they endured in that unforgiving basement.

He routinely turned the thermostat up to 90 the first thing Andy Lee noticed when he arrived was the heat to make boxers so uncomfortable that generations of them swore the walls used to actually sweat. Those same walls fell victim to the wrecking ball last week as the city of Detroit set about reducing to rubble a building that produced 30 world champions, three Olympic gold medals, and saved the lives of hundreds more on the troubled West Side.

In another town, in a different time, a place of such historic and cultural import might have been preserved as a monument to an era when boxers from all over, Lennox Lewis , Prince Naseem , Oscar de la Hoya and Julio Cesar Chavez among them, came to work at the Kronk. All that will survive now is the legend of what once was. Some legend too. Named for John Kronk, a Polish immigrant turned Detroit political powerhouse who restricted the price of the street car to five cents to make it accessible to all.

Some regard this as his greatest achievement. Others point to a decision in to fund the building of a recreation centre that would make him world famous long after his death. Half a century after it first opened, Steward went down into the basement to coach his brother James for the Golden Gloves, and ended up changing the course of sporting history.

Enough to persuade him to give it a go as a full-time job. Within a decade, that room started pumping out world champions and Olympic contenders even as elderly constituents played bingo upstairs.

The Kronk was a place that welcomed any kid searching for a purpose or an outlet, a policy that may explain why cars parked outside were considered untouchable by local hoodlums. It was his house and, even after the mendicant city of Detroit shuttered the doors of the rec centre to save money, he continued to pay for its upkeep out of his own pocket.

Just like he often privately financed the education of fighters looking to create a life beyond the ring. A few years before his death, Steward was forced to move his operation from its first home, and, once the boxers departed, the old Kronk, like so many evocative slices of history dotted around the Motor City, was abandoned and allowed to fall into disrepair.

What this building brought for me was a chance at life. Password recovery. Forgot your password? Get help. Create an account. DBusiness Magazine. Daily News. Facebook Comments. While the building had been abandoned for a decade — a new Kronk Gym is located 6 miles away — the fire, which the Detroit Fire Department called "suspicious," and the subsequent demolition represent the end of an era. I got a chance to become somebody out of this building right here," Hearns, the first boxer to win world titles in five weight classes, continued.

Fifty amateur boxing champions, 30 world champions, and three Olympic gold medals came out of the gym. When visiting the gym last October, the smell of charred debris still lingering in the air, Hearns talked about how he trained for three or four hours a day in the old Kronk gym, six days a week.

More: Original Kronk Gym destroyed by fire. More: Fighters visit charred ruins of Kronk boxing gym after fire. Champions and neighborhood kids often trained shoulder to shoulder in the small basement gym, which was notorious for its stifling heat. But Kronk gym came into hard times in the mids, as the city struggled to maintain the recreation building and its programs.