George is throwing a combination, adding sound effects with each punch. He stops and looks at the line of teenagers and young adults in front of him. Then he takes up his boxing position, brings his hands up near his face, and throws the jab-straight right-hook combination again.

“Pa-pow!” (Pause) “Pow!”

He throws the punches, then moves smoothly back into place, bouncing a little on his toes, hands held in front of his chest now.

“Make all three punches one punch,” he says. “Pa-pow!” Again that pause before the hook. “Pow!” He scopes out the line, looking into faces, seeing if they’re getting it, understanding the rhythm. He starts pacing back and forth. “Your opponent already told his momma and his girlfriend and all his neighbors and his dog that he’s going to take somebody down tonight. That somebody is you. He’s after you. You got to be quick. Be determined. Be first. Don’t be mechanical — if he covers up the head, you go to the body with that hook! You hit somebody in that floating rib, they’re going to feel it. They are going to feeeeel that, yes! They’ll make that sound when you hit that rib — uhhhh! You hear that little sound — uhhhh! — and you know you hurt somebody!”

George is on a roll now, talking, coaching, drawing on possibilities, and the boxers use this time to rest, sweat, and listen. “If you got him on the run, you keep pun—chin! You keep boxing him! You keep your hands up and you keep throwing punches! Pow! Pow! You got to be determined! And if he comes back at you, you got to go with the flow of the punch. You got to back off, you got to box him! All right now, boxing stance!”

The boxers turn, obliquely facing the long mirror, presenting less of a target that way, bringing up their hands to protect their faces, elbows in close to their ribs.

“Drill one. Hold it out there. One!”

Twenty jabs shoot out, kiss the air, linger, wait for the next command.

“Good, good. Now bring it back. Drill one. Hold it out there. One!”

Learning to box

Tuesday and Thursday evenings are the sessions when George McDowell usually leads the week’s formal workouts at his Candler boxing gym. On the other nights the boxers train on their own, guided by George or one of the other coaches. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays young men and a few women arrive at the gym expecting to be pushed hard physically and to gain some practical boxing skills.

Tonight several of the regulars are missing, and there are fewer than a dozen boxers punching the air, jumping rope, and lifting weights. No one comments on the absent fighters. One unspoken philosophy in both the gym and the sport in general is that boxing depends on the individual. George provides the opportunity to box, but it’s up to the boxer to better himself, to take responsibility for both victory and defeat.

“Boxing is not football,” George says frequently. “It’s not soccer. It’s not basketball. You are alone in that ring. I can coach you, but you have to box. What you do is up to you. When you make a mistake, that mistake belongs to you.”

He neglects to mention that the boxer making that mistake often pays for it with pain.

The amateur boxers who gather at the gym are different from one another in many ways, but are united by their desire to learn and practice what someone long ago called “the sweet science.” Osbaldo Sabino, for example, is a short, compact man who works construction, is married, has two children, and has come to the gym for nearly a year.

“I like fighting and exercise,” he says.

Mark Ferenc, the “Czech Lion,” has lived in the United States for two years and works in the Ingles Grocery store on Tunnel Road in Asheville.

“My father was a boxer in the Czech Republic,” Ferenc says. He is in solid shape and throws the 20-pound medicine ball the way most people throw a basketball. “I love this sport.”

Lynn Williams, whose eyes are as lively as her jab, works for Wizz Records in Asheville.

“I love the discipline and I want to fight competitively someday,” she says.

Loren Wooten, a mechanic for Prestige Subaru, comes to the gym three times per week for training, but has a different motive for his sessions.

“I’m doing Toughman contests in January and February,” he says. “I’ve got to be ready.”

Lucious Kennedy, who is fairly new to the gym, has already shown great promise as a middleweight with quick hands, a fluid style, and a buoyant attitude.

Anthony Tillman, whose wife Melissa and daughter Jala are here watching him train tonight, speaks in a soft voice but throws some hard punches. He has fought two recent amateur matches, winning one and losing one, though the loss may be blamed in part on the fact that he had the flu the night of the fight.

“I’ve wanted to box since I was a kid,” he says.

Not all the fighters are older. The three Minick brothers — Jake, 17, Jon Patrick, 14, and Jeremy, 7 — are here tonight. All three young men are nearly qualified to begin sparring. Usually several other young men in middle school and high school are present on these training nights, looking for the right to spar and then to box in amateur matches.

“You can’t spar until you’ve come at least three months,” George tells newcomers. “And even then you can’t get into the ring without a coach’s approval.”

Rope a dope

The buzzer sounds. We start jumping rope for three three-minute rounds. I’ve watched little girls jump rope, and they make it look easy, but I break a sweat in about two minutes. I watch myself in the mirror, a middle-aged guy with a bowling ball belly skipping rope. It’s not a pretty sight, it is in fact quite humorous, and I’d laugh if somebody would hand me my breath back.

“Muscle is nothing,” George says in the background. “Speed is everything. I want you to fight that man with the muscle cause if you got speed you’ll get him.”

I fight the pain of jumping rope by focusing on the black-and-white portraits lining the top of the mirror. There’s Jack Dempsey and Sugar Ray, Floyd Patterson and Jack Johnson, Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Jake LaMatta. Tonight I stare at Marvelous Marvin and try to forget about all the fun my body is having.

By the end of round two the insteps of my feet feel broken. By the middle of round three I am stopping about every 20 seconds to catch my breath and give my feet a few seconds more of life.

That final raucous buzzer sounds as sweet as a birdsong in my ears.

George of the gym

George’s Boxing Gym is in a suburban Candler neighborhood. Within the building there is a reception room, two offices, a room for gloves and equipment, a kitchen, and the gym.

The gym is where it happens. In the center of this room with its concrete floor and metal walls is the ring. Surrounding the ring are the various light bags, heavy bags, and speed bags that build up a boxer’s strength, agility, and punching power. In one corner are some racks of hand weights and weight machines. On the wall by the office are a water cooler and a stereo. When George isn’t talking, when the team is punching bags or jumping rope, a mixture of rap and rock music blasts from the stereo. Nobody here boxes to the music of Mozart, Elvis, or the Beatles. I’m not a fan of rap music, but I can’t imagine exercising to anything else.

On the walls of the gym are all sorts of different posters. Fatigue makes cowards of men. If you want to box, train. If you want to win, train harder. There are posters in the bathroom, posters down the hall. There is a poster warning against bad language. There is even a poster featuring one of Napoleon’s dicta: He Who Fears Being Conquered Is Sure Of Defeat.

George McDowell, known to everybody at the gym as George, is in his twenty-sixth year of coaching boxing in the Asheville area. He stands right around six feet tall, a pleasant, muscular man with a moustache who is still quick on his feet. After growing up in Hillcrest Apartments, he entered the Army and served at Fort Bragg, where he fought as a heavyweight on the Fort Bragg boxing team. When he came back to Asheville in 1976, George began working for the postal service but wanted to help train other young men in boxing. Since then he has coached in different places — the Reed Center, Swannanoa, and now the new gym in Candler.

“We’re still non-profit,” he says. “There’s a monthly fee for the classes and the use of the gym on the other nights, and that helps pay the utilities and rent. We’re always looking for sponsors, too. We can always use people who want to contribute to the cause.”

George’s Boxing Gym recently moved to its present location in a suburban neighborhood at 10 Duckett Road in Candler. The phone number for the gym is 665.0335.

Determination

Jumping rope is over. Six inches — it’s the old exercise from high school where you’re on your back with your feet and legs off the floor, that torturous drill that might have been invented by some slave master in a Cambodian reeducation camp — is over. Sit-ups with the medicine ball are over. Now the line of boxers is drilling again.

“You got to do it,” George is saying. “It doesn’t matter whether your opponent is black or brown or white. It doesn’t matter how mean he talks or how he looks at you before the match. It doesn’t matter how big his muscles are. All that stuff don’t mean a thing. It don’t mean nothin’. You’ve got to do it. It’s the third round and you’re tired and you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to be determined. Throw those punches. Be strong. Be determined. Throw those punches. Be first. Win.”