![]() “Because these young guys, they’re not fighting competitive fights to grow,” Hill said. Hill does, too, mostly because he’s seen too much potential “go to waste” in recent years. He gets fired up talking about the potential he sees as a promoter in this market as well as the obstacles in the way - from venues to sponsors to media coverage. Those ideas are more than a spark now for the 36-year-old Salita, who moved with his family to Michigan in 2015 after his wife, Alona, was accepted to Michigan State’s College of Osteopathic Medicine. View Gallery: Dmitriy Salita, Javan Hill lead Detroit boxing revival … And that immediately sparked some ideas in my head.” If you know anything about boxing, you would know the guys that were meant to win and the guys that were meant to lose just by the way they were dressed. Being from New York City, I’d never been to such a low-class boxing show. “But then I went to a boxing show and it was nothing like what you’d see in the gym. “The level of fighters here - amateur and pro - was still very high,” said Salita, who fought his last pro bout in late 2013. ![]() Salita was 35-2-1 as a professional fighter - the first of those losses coming in 2009 with a world light-welterweight title on the line against British star Amir Khan - and he got his start as a promoter hyping his own late-career fights in New York while training in Detroit. And while the occasional no-show at weigh-ins or post-fight squabbles over purse money are hardly unique to Detroit, Salita was among those dismayed by what he saw. Others in the area routinely feature record-padding mismatches. To wit: A pro card at the Motor City Casino last fall included a 57-year-old squaring off against a 43-year-old, and four undercard bouts that featured five boxers with losing records. And the ones that boxing fans do get to see? Well, they haven’t been much to look at, by comparison. The number of professional boxing matches staged here annually has dwindled to barely a dozen - in the entire state - over the last decade. They just haven’t seen nearly enough of it lately here in a place that birthed Hall of Fame careers and served as a part-time training base to so many other champions, from Hector Camacho to Lennox Lewis to Wladimir Klitschko. “Detroit fans, they know what real boxing is.” “It was frustrating because people were talking bad about boxing in Detroit and I knew why, we all did,” Hill, 47, said. Yet as those memories faded - like all those old newspaper clippings on the wall - so did Detroit’s boxing reputation, a trend Steward never stopped fighting before his passing in 2012. ![]() And nearly 40 years since the Kronk became a hotbed for amateur boxing with Steward training future champions like Hilmer Kenty and Thomas Hearns, Mickey Goodwin and the McCrory brothers, Jimmy Paul and Duane Thomas, and on and on. It was 80 years ago this summer that Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling to become an American hero. ![]() ![]() In the other, there’s Hill, the former Detroit police officer everyone knows as “Sugar,” a mainstay at the Kronk showing the ropes to up-and-coming boxers for more than a decade.īut here in the basement of the former Our Lady Gate of Heaven church - Kronk’s newest home on the city’s northwest side - when the subject inevitably turns to the sport’s glory days in Detroit, both men become sparring partners. In one corner, there’s Salita, the Ukrainian-born Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn who was once a lightweight title contender - “Kid Kosher,” they used to call him - and now is a rising star as a promoter, with a roster that includes world champion Claressa Shields, Flint’s two-time Olympic gold medalist. Salita knew it, too, partly because he’d practically grown up in a place like this, learning the fight game - and so much more - from another renowned trainer, Jimmy O’Pharrow, at New York’s famed Starrett City Boxing Club.Īnd in a sport too often held hostage by matchmakers, maybe it’s fitting that this latest against-the-odds bid to revive the local boxing scene in Detroit is being led by such an oddly-perfect coupling. Javan Hill knew that long before Dmitriy Salita walked in the door at the historic Kronk Boxing gym several years ago, hoping to jump-start his boxing career with the help of Hill and his uncle, legendary boxing trainer Emanuel Steward. Watch Video: Promoter Dmitriy Salita helps keep boxing eyes on Detroitĭetroit - Looks can be deceiving. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |