Brooklyn gave me everything. The toughness, the work ethic, the belief that if you want something badly enough and work hard enough, you can have it.
Brooklyn gave me everything.
The toughness. The work ethic. The belief that if you want something badly enough and work hard enough, you can have it. The understanding that nobody is going to hand you anything, and that's okay, because the things you earn taste better than the things you're given.
I grew up in Brooklyn in a time when Brooklyn was Brooklyn. Before the artisanal coffee shops and the rooftop bars and the real estate prices that would make your grandfather weep. When Brooklyn was still a place where people worked with their hands and took pride in it.
Boxing was everywhere in Brooklyn when I was coming up. Every neighborhood had a gym. Every gym had characters — old trainers with cauliflower ears and stories that went back to the golden age of the sport. Men who had trained champions, who had seen the great ones up close, who carried the knowledge of the craft in their hands and their eyes.
I learned from those men. I absorbed everything I could. And when I opened Trinity Boxing Club in Manhattan in 2004, I brought Brooklyn with me.
The culture of Trinity is Brooklyn culture. It is the culture of hard work and straight talk and no nonsense. It is the culture of showing up every day and doing the work whether you feel like it or not. It is the culture of respecting your elders and teaching the young.
Brooklyn gave me everything. Trinity is my way of giving some of it back.