MANY places around the world have just claim to being synonymous with the sport of boxing. London, in particular the East End, has long been a veritable production line of amateur and professional fighters, while Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast are likewise regarded as fight towns in the UK.

Further afield, Mexico City’s tough Tepito barrio – known as “bravo barrio” (fierce neighbourhood) – is so associated with the sport of boxing that it’s subway stop sign is a boxing glove. It was in Tepito’s renowned gyms where the likes of Carlos Zarate Serna, Kid Azteca, Ruben Olivares, and Marco Antonio Barrera learned their craft prior to being unleashed on the world.

Central and Latin America in general are parts of the world where boxing has long enjoyed massive popularity and purchase, viewed as a means of escape to a better existence than the hellish one millions have been consigned to here in the name of progress.

However of all the cities and parts of the world synonymous with boxing, none are more so than Detroit, New York, Boston and Philadelphia in the US. 

When it comes to Detroit, the world famous Kronk Gym instantly hovers into mind. The original gym closed its doors in 2006, and was located in one of the roughest and most dangerous neighbourhoods in the city at 5555 McGraw Avenue, between 33rd and Junction Streets. It was the kind of place where, per Hugh McIlvanney, those who took a wrong turn and found themselves down there by mistake often left again in plastic bags.

Some of the most dangerous characters in this part of Detroit in the 1980s and ’90s were to be found inside Kronk, a temple of pain and sweat where the blood flowed as readily as punches and combinations. There is footage, for example, of a young in-prime James Toney sparring Gerald McClellan and the two of them going at each other like two tidal waves colliding. Here is also where the towering legend that is Tommy Hearns honed his trade, built from scratch by Kronk owner and renowned trainer Emanuel Steward. 

Other notables to come out of or who spent time training at Kronk include Wladimir Klitschko, Michael Moorer, Hector Camacho, Julio Cesar Chavez, Naseem Hamed, Lennox Lewis, and Jermain Taylor. Even Tyson Fury once made the pilgrimage to the Kronk Gym, spending two weeks there as a novice heavyweight back in the day.

New York’s answer to the Kronk is Gleason’s Gym. It first opened its doors in the Bronx in 1937, established by flyweight turned bantamweight Peter Robert Gagliardi. Gagliardi changed his name to Bobby Gleason so as to appeal to the predominately Irish New York fight crowd at the time. 

In the ’40s and ’50s “Raging Bull” Jake LaMotta trained at Gleason’s. It was there he prepared for his world middleweight title shot against Marcel Cerdan in 1949, which he subsequently won. Muhammad Ali based himself at Gleason’s for his first fight against Sonny Liston in 1964 in Miami, while the legend that is Roberto Duran, once also set up shop there, winning three world titles in the process.

Other prominent champions and contenders who’ve passed through Gleason’s include Larry Holmes, Mike McCallum, Michael Spinks, Milton McCrory and even Ireland’s Barry McGuigan.

Today the gym is located in Brooklyn, retains much of the character of the original incarnation, and remains popular.

Philly boxing has long been an entity all by itself. The City of Brotherly Love is where one of boxing’s most iconic fighters hailed from. That he happens to be the entirely fictional character of Rocky Balboa, created and played by Sylvester Stallone in a raft of Hollywood movies, matters less than the fact he helped to cement Philadelphia’s status as a fight town for generations to come.

Not that Philly hasn’t produced its fair share of “real ones”. Joe Frazier, Tim Witherspoon, Bernard Hopkins, Danny Garcia, Meldrick Taylor, Matthew Saad Muhammad attest to that fact, and going back in time the likes of Tommy Loughran, Benny Bass, Battling Levinsky and Joey Giardello also fought out of Philly, helping to establish a rich boxing legacy that few if any other town, city or place can match.

What Boston may lack in quantity when it comes to its own ring legends, it more than makes up for in quality. In fact, not only some of boxing’s most legendary figures, but actual boxing royalty has emerged from Boston and the Greater Boston area. John L Sullivan, the great 19th-century heavyweight, was a Boston man. Marvellous Marvin Hagler, one of the all time greats, emerged from the bricks and mortar of Brockton with bricks and mortar in his fists. Then you have Rocky Marciano and John Ruiz, two heavyweight champs from Brockton and Boston respectively.

Micky Ward, meanwhile, stems from Lowell. His trilogy of fights against Canada’s Arturo Gatti between 2002 and 2003 still stirs the blood, they were so ferocious.

What all of the aforementioned cities and places covered here have in common is a large working class for whom boxing is the sport that comes closest to reflecting and representing their actual lived experience. Distilled in the ring is the struggle for survival many re forced to engage in against the seemingly immutable forces of capitalism. It’s why they identify so closely with the sport and have done throughout its long history.

It bears repeating. Those who would ban boxing need to first ban poverty; the former has and will always be sustained by the latter.