When filmmaker Alonzo Beckett began putting together a series of documentaries on legends from the Connecticut city of Hartford, it was only a matter of time before John “The Iceman” Scully became a subject.
Scully, the former amateur standout, world title challenger and current trainer to world champions, has been synonymous with boxing in Connecticut’s state capital for decades. Now, his life and journey have been chronicled in a new documentary on Tubi entitled “The Ice Never Melts,” which seeks to shed light on a unique boxing figure who has transcended the status of local legend and been awarded the BWAA’s Marvin Kohn Good Guy awardee in 2023.
Despite being in the public eye for decades, the 58-year-old Scully says he has gotten lots of feedback from fans saying they learned a lot about him from the hour-long film.
“So far, the feedback from the movie has been tremendous because, for one thing, there are people who I have known for a very long time who have contacted me to tell me they found out something in the movie that they are shocked they didn't know already,” said Scully, who fought professionally from 1988 to 2001, accruing a record of 38-11 (21 KOs). “I have also had people contact me to basically tell me they knew I was a boxer and now a trainer, but they didn't realize to what extent and they were pleasantly surprised to find out. One thing that has been pretty cool is that so many different people have mentioned different parts of the movie that stood out to them specifically.”
The documentary, which debuted on the platform last month, follows Scully from his times as a popular amateur, when he won the 1987 Ohio State Fair and PAL National Championships before losing in the finals of the National Golden Gloves the following year, and to his ongoing evolution as a trainer who has had a profound impact on the young athletes he takes under his wing.
The latter role he fills drew favorable comparisons between him and Johnny Duke, the local Hartford trainer who mentored some of the area’s most vulnerable youth for more than five decades, while training champions like Marlon Starling. In one anecdote, another former amateur boxer, Rocky Gonzalez, shares how Scully would bring kids who weren’t good enough to compete – many of whom had come to the gym after being bullied – to national tournaments like the Ohio State Fair, just to boost their confidence.
“Scully just had a good heart and he would just bring these guys to the tournaments,” said Gonzalez. “They’d be at the Ohio State Fair with kids that don’t even box.”
Said Scully: “To be mentioned alongside [Duke] in terms of working with amateurs and having an impact on kids will always, always be a super-special compliment for me. The stories I and hundreds of other people around here could tell about him are so amazing that they are almost mythical in a way. You listen to the stories, and it's like we are talking about a character from a movie that some Hollywood writer with a deep imagination invented in his mind.”
The documentary includes interviews with boxing heavy hitters like Roy Jones Jnr, journalist Ron Borges and trainer Russ Anber, but also has perspectives from former Scully boxers like Sammy Vega and Orlando Cordova. Among those boxers is Lawrence Clay-Bey, the 1996 U.S. Olympian who relates the story of Scully willing him to continue fighting during his 2005 fight with Derek Bryant, convincing his boxer to not quit on his stool in his final fight, and instead pushing through to the finish line for a draw.
If it felt like there was an absence of oppositional perspectives in the documentary, Beckett says it wasn’t from a lack of searching.
“I do a lot of docs, but he's one guy that no one said they didn't like him. That was incredible in itself, just doing the doc and realizing how many people love the guy,” said Beckett, whose other documentaries in the Hartford Legends series includes “You Can't Rock Da Pub,” featuring Hartford basketball legends Marcus Camby and Kendrick "Silk" Moore.
“Just the love that he receives. It’s not a money thing either. Most people revere people because they're rich and they're famous, but he's truly loved. But no one knows about this love. So that was another reason for doing a doc – just to show that man. This is a great dude, man. So whatever he gets, he deserves.”
Not even those Scully had issues with in the past are likely to have any cross words to say about him. The documentary touches on Scully's infamous post-fight brawl with Joey DeGrandis, the future world title challenger whom Scully beat in the 1988 New England Golden Gloves finals. Scully shared how the two have become friends in the years since then.
“For a long time, there was a lot of tension every time he and I were in the same place at the same time, but I would say time has healed those wounds,” said Scully. “I saw Joey just a few weeks ago in Boston at a reunion I did at Dana Rosenblatt's bar, Sullivan's Tap, across from the TD Garden, and it was all good. We had a nice hug and we hung out all night laughing and reminiscing.”
Beckett says the idea of a Scully documentary came up organically, as he had originally been working on a documentary on Starling and Duke, and through that process he noticed that Scully’s name had come up repeatedly. He says that the year-long process of reporting out this film taught him a few things about how Scully works.
“Scully is a very intentional person,” said Beckett. “Everyone knows certain things about how you can get to a point in life. He actually does those things. And he holds himself accountable. With Scully, the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, because he's going to do what he says and he's going to mean what he says, too.
To this day, Scully remains true to the depiction of him in the documentary, giving equal priority in the gym to pros he trains (such as former light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev and Canadian fan favorite Steven Butler) and the young amateurs he works with at Charter Oak Boxing Academy in Hartford.
“I make time for any and all,” Scully said. “When I've gone away to camp with Artur, it's been OK at the gym because there are several other trainers working there, so the kids always have someone to work with them on a daily basis.”
In addition to his work in the gym, he continues to raise funds for former fighters in need, like Gerald McClellan, Wilfred Benitez, Prichard Colon and Ebo Elder, auctioning off boxing memorabilia signed by his friends in the sport to help with their ongoing medical care costs.
“I'm keeping myself pretty busy,” said Scully.
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.