ON A day in which boxing ate another of its young, there was laughter within the cinderblock walls of the Coney Island Boxing Club.
Everlast, the company whose name you see on the ring posts in just about every fight photo, sent over a couple of new leather heavy bags and a few sets of new gloves.
Hector Camacho Jr. and Jesse James Leija, professional fighters who represent what it’s like when boxing goes right, came to the gym to present the new gear, talk to some of the young fighters, and in the process perhaps sell a ticket or two to their junior welterweight bout Saturday night at KeySpan Park.
Across the river, a world away, the body of fighter killed in the ring lay in Bellevue Hospital.
But inside the Coney Island BC, the air crackled with optimism, fuled by the heady sounds of leather cracking against leather, and thudding into flesh and bone.
“A lot of them didn’t even know it happened,” said Nirmal Lorick, a former amateur standout who is one of the five trainers who run the gym. “I told them about it this morning. They seemed like they were in shock, but then, you know, life goes on.
“It’s not like they don’t take note of it, but, hey, they just don’t expect it to happen to them.”
Of course, they cannot. A boxer who fights scared is the same as a jockey who rides scared or a pilot who flies scared.
Useless. And, in real danger of being hurt.
That is why the name Beethavean Scottland, dead six days after a seemingly-routine KO loss to George Khalid Jones on the deck of the Intrepid, was on the lips of nobody in the gym yesterday.
In boxing, about the dead, one says nothing, unless prompted by a reporter.
“He died? Oh, bleep,” said Camacho, who is young and so far invincible. “That’s messed up. I watched the fight at my camp in Colorado. I feel bad for the fighter and for his family. You never expect that. It’s sad, but it’s part of the sport.”
“My wife and I talked about this just yesterday,” said Leija, 34 years old and the father of two young boys. “I was saying how I loved to fight, but whenever I watch someone else in the ring fighting, I think they’re crazy. There must be two sides of me, two personalities, I guess.”
Leija’s wife, Lisa, sat alongside. She was asked if she would allow her sons, James, 10 and Dean, 5, to box.
“No,” she said. “No way. We’re grooming them for high school and college. No boxing.”
To many in Coney Island, high school and college seem as remote as the possibility of hitting the lottery. Boxing looks like the safer bet, even if once in awhile something goes wrong and we become sickeningly familiar with names like Beethavean Scottland and medical terms like subdural hematoma.
“Yo, reporter!,” a man carrying an infant boy called out. “Report this. Report that this little guy’s gonna be a champ in another 15 years or so.”
He moved the boy’s little fists in imitation of a series of punches.
And in the ring, a reed-thin 13-year-old named Saddam Ali was punching his way through a hand-pad workout worthy of a veteran. In the gym, the trainers call Ali “little killer” and promise big things from him in the years to come.
That is why the Coney Island BC, tucked into what used to be a storage room on the ground floor of the Surfside Gardens housing project, spawning ground of Stephon Marbury, is open seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Because in a place like this, boxing does not equate to death. Rather, it represents life and the chance for the betterment thereof. It provides dreams to kids born only to nightmares and extends hope to the otherwise hopeless.
“We’re always here for the kids,” said Lorick, who along with the other trainers donates his time and sometimes, his money, to keep the dream alive.
To those kids, death is something that happens in boxing, but always to the other guy.
Yesterday, the dangerously inept New York State Athletic Commission announced that it would launch an “investigation” into the death of Beethavean Scottland. After wasting much time and taxpayer money, it will discover what any kid at the Coney Island Boxing Club could have told them a long time ago.
That boxing, like much of life, offers no guarantees and an inordinate amount of risk.
At the Coney Island BC, on the day that another fighter died, that still seemed like a risk worth taking.
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A trust fund has been established to benefit the wife and three young children of Beethavean Scottland, the boxer who died Monday night of injuries suffered in a bout last Tuesday on the USS Intrepid.
Donations should be sent to:
The Scottland
Family Trust Fund
Auxiliary to Bellevue Hospital, Room 100
462 First Avenue
New York, NY 10016