GLEASON’S GYM: Fighters spar below a poster of Muhammad Ali at Gleason’s Gym in New York. — AFP photo
NEW YORK: In Gleason’s Gym, under the Brooklyn Bridge, everybody remembers Muhammad Ali, “The Greatest,” one of the many champions who have passed through this mythical New York gym where men and women of all ages still train and box with passion.
An unmarked door in an unremarkable building in the gritty southeast New York borough opens into a space that just breathes boxing: walls covered with posters of champions, four rings, heavy training bags, speed bags, jump ropes.
The images of Muhammad Ali, who many consider the greatest boxer in history and who turns 70 today, are everywhere in Gleason’s and the gym’s owner, Bruce Silverglade, proudly remembers the ties that unite them.
“He came up here and prepared himself for the fighting that stunned the world,” Silverglade told AFP, referring to the 1964 heavyweight title bout with Sonny Liston, which made a legend of Ali, then known as Cassius Clay.
“It was a very anticipated fight. He was fighting Sonny Liston, who was a ferocious person and he was someone who was feared in the ring. And you had this young Ali coming around, doing his poetry, yelling to everybody. So everybody wanted to watch this fight,” recalled Silverglade.
Silverglade, now 75, later had the opportunity to meet Ali on several occasions, and came to admire him not just as a prizefighter but as a man, one who for years now has endured the ravages of Parkinson’s disease.
“Ali is different. Everyone knows Muhammad Ali. And being Ali, the most famous person in the world, he is just a nice person as he has always been. When he comes in Gleason’s Gym, he makes time to talk to everyone, to go around, to shake hands,” he said.
The gymnasium currently has 1,050 members, including 450 amateur boxers. Among the 600 people who box there for fun are 320 women. And for many of the gym’s denizens, Ali is a source of veneration and inspiration.
“I taped him up to make a bronze fist (mold) about five years ago. He’s come here again several times. Even sick the way he is now he is one of the greats, a good person. He came and he hit the speed bag well, with no problem,” said 73-year-old Hector Roca, a Panamanian trainer and another of the gym’s living legends.
Roca, who has trained 19 world champions, was teaching the rudiments of the art to 10-year-old Joseph McCurdy, a shy, blonde-haired boy whose mother brings him in once a week to train.
“It’s really cool to be here. I would like to be champion. Hector is very good with me,” McCurdy said during a break.
Not far from them is Don Aragon, a 32-year-old who began learning to box last year to stay in shape. — AFP