Fight hasn't gone out of gym's trainer

Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 10:58 am

Fight hasn't gone out of gym's trainer

Angela Cara Pancrazio
The Arizona Republic
May. 19, 2005 12:00 AM

CENTRAL BOXING CLUB - It didn't matter to Harwood Hamilton that a couple of Mike Tyson's friends had traveled from England to drop in on the former heavyweight champ or that a couple of boxing writers had swooped in from New York for an interview.

Hamilton wasn't opening the door until the boxer finished his training.

The red-brick Central Boxing Club that sits on a neglected corner on West Van Buren Street at 18th Avenue near the state Capitol is best known for being Tyson's training gym.

Tyson may hold court, but it is Hamilton, the club's soft-spoken trainer, who calls the punches.

Hamilton is much more than the guy who manages the gym. He's the one with the quiet knowing, the one on the outskirts, similar to what the "corner man" means to a boxer in the ring.

Rather than bring attention to himself, Hamilton stays in the background, training his focus on the middle ring. Like the corner man, he's always waiting with his salve for the mental and physical wounds.

He also calls the gym home, living in a room above the training floor.

When he wakes up in the middle of the night, driven with desire to throw a punch at the heavy bag, he simply marches downstairs and laces up his gloves. It's only him, his thoughts and the heavy bag.

Hamilton, 30, a Georgia native, grew up watching the Rocky movies. The light heavyweight is a former champion on the Toughman non-professional boxing circuit. His dream of turning pro ended when he broke his neck in a car accident.

During the day, he's hired to make that same dream come true for future champions.

At night, in the steam left behind by the heat of the sun and sweat, Hamilton chooses either watching Rocky or cranking up the soundtrack.

This is when Hamilton still lives the dream, this is when he says, "I visualize myself being a fighter again."

Last year, he thought he might have a shot at Sylvester Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard's reality boxing series, The Contender, but he didn't make the cut.

"I tried out and got beat," he said.

It would have been, Hamilton said, an affirmation of his decision to leave Georgia to manage this by-the-wayside gym. Instead, he's still here.

And when everyone is gone, he works to polish his straight right, his left, his hook and upper cut.

"Boxing applies to life, life applies to boxing," Hamilton said.

"Life is a fight, you're always preparing yourself for the next day; that's what boxers do, preparing themselves for the next bout," he said. "You never stop . . . inside or outside the ring."

When Tyson finished sparring that day, Hamilton opened the gym's door.

As the clutch of Tyson's friends, trainers and sparring partners circled around the heavyweight, Hamilton sat alone on a chair, outside the ring.

"It's not the triumph," Hamilton said. "It's the struggle. I'm not done."