Devon Alexander: Ink

Nice little write up in the NYT August 6, 2010 Trained to Escape the Streets, and to Go Back By PETER OWEN NELSON ST. LOUIS — On the steps of an old police station, Kevin Cunningham looked out into the impoverished streets of north St. Louis. Cunningham, a boxing trainer and former narcotics detective, first stood on these steps 15 years ago and had a grin on his face as he spoke. “A white woman driving all slow around here is going to get pulled over on suspicion to buy crack,” he said. A few feet away, Cunningham’s prized trainee, Devon Alexander, was waiting: for his fight, Saturday on HBO; for mainstream recognition; and for the arrival of a regional Fox Sports host, Katie Felts, to film a segment in this Hyde Park neighborhood where Alexander, the junior welterweight unified champion, grew up. Felts had become lost and had been pulled over, apparently on the suspicion that she was seeking to buy drugs. After the misunderstanding was sorted out, Officer Elfonzo Hayes shepherded her to where Alexander had been waiting. “I thought I had one,” Hayes said, shaking his head. “I know you did,” Cunningham shouted back. Coincidentally, the two attended police academy together in the early 1990s. Hayes now patrols the neighborhood where in 1995, Cunningham, then an officer, founded an amateur boxing program for some 30 elementary school children, including 7-year-old Devon Alexander. Cunningham trained those children in the basement of the old police station where he was standing 15 years later. “This place brings back a lot of memories,” he said. His smile eroded into a heavy sigh. Not all of his memories of Hyde Park have been happy ones. Of the 30 children from the 1995 team, Cunningham, now 45, believes that nine may be dead (at least six are confirmed), with the rest roughly divided among prison, the Bloods and the Crips. “It’s unfortunate,” Alexander said, adding, “But it motivates me even more to set the right example to kids now.” With Cunningham as his trainer and manager, Alexander has not only survived but excelled. Last year he became a world champion with an undefeated record. “Devon wasn’t the most naturally gifted or talented kid I trained, but he was always the hardest working — the first to come and last to go,” Cunningham said. On Saturday, Alexander will defend his World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation titles against the former champion Andriy Kotelnik at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis. If the result is as dazzling as his knockout of Juan Urango in March to win the title, Alexander, 23, may not be waiting as long for the recognition he wants. After that fight, in the locker room, Alexander was handed a cellphone to hear Floyd Mayweather Jr. on the other end, saying, “When I pass the torch, I’m passing it to you.” Long before there could be torches, however, there was a botched drug deal. Cunningham recalled working for the narcotics division around 1994. “I was trying to buy a 1/16 of crack from the Blaine Street Bloods,” he said. “I did the deal, but then one pulled out a pistol and robbed me after.” With a gun pointed at his temple, Cunningham attempted to knock the weapon from the hand of the dealer, who then ran away with others amid gunfire and directly into the narcotics backup team. His clothes bloodied, Cunningham returned home and woke his wife, Sheila, who looked at him and asked that he leave the narcotics division, saying, “You got a family now, and I don’t want to lose my husband.” The request for a transfer landed Cunningham as a patrolman at Clay Elementary School in St. Louis’s Fifth District. Soon after, in a former police shooting range, Cunningham put together the Hyde Park Boxing Program. In this community, Cunningham found the children eager to have a positive male role model. Cunningham was missing his 10-year-old son, whose mother married and moved with the boy to Germany, and he soon found himself the father of 30. “Of all the kids,” Cunningham said, “I became closest to three: Devon, his older brother Vaughn, and Devon’s best friend, Terrance Barker.” Today, Vaughn Alexander is serving an 18-year sentence for armed robbery and Barker is dead, having shot himself in the head on Sept. 2, 2009. Cunningham’s influence is not lost on Devon Alexander. “Kevin’s like a father to me,” Alexander said. “Had it not been for him, coming from that neighborhood I’d probably be dead. I walked through fire every day.” For his part, Cunningham credits Alexander’s parents, who were one of the few families in the area with a mother and father present. They had 13 children, and although one brother is now incarcerated, none joined a gang. Alexander’s father died in 2004 on the day of Alexander’s second professional fight, which he won by unanimous decision. When Cunningham founded the boxing program, he knew he had a steep task ahead of him. “I saw a lot of good in all these children, but they have no choice,” he said. “In Hyde Park you were either Blood, Crip or dope dealer, and you couldn’t like the police because that’s the rule.” Cunningham forged ahead, training his first world champion with Cory Spinks, the son of the former heavyweight champ Leon. Spinks’s career has since faded, as has his rapport with Cunningham. He will now fight on Alexander’s undercard. Having for a time been like a big brother to many children in Cunningham’s program, Spinks is proud of Alexander’s success, saying, “I’ve always said Devon’s a beautiful fighter, and now he’s proving it.” For the past seven weeks, Alexander has been honing his strategy and style in Las Vegas, where he has been sleeping in Mike Tyson’s bed. In a gated Las Vegas community not far from the Strip, Don King, Alexander’s promoter, owns a house. It has been years since he let a fighter set foot inside it. A few days before Saturday’s event, riding through St. Louis in a white S.U.V., King said: “I never used the house for a fighter since Tyson. With Devon, the mantle has been passed.” Despite the sleeping arrangements and Alexander’s piercing uppercut, Cunningham has been making sure his ward stays grounded, repeating to him five words: You are not Mike Tyson. Much about Alexander is an inverse profile of a prizefighter. He’s a southpaw. He has never been in a street fight. He goes to Las Vegas not to fight but to train, believing it helps him “get away from distractions.” Saturday night in St. Louis will be a test to see if Cunningham’s guidance and Alexander’s skill have produced another contemporary boxing oddity: a fighter who can sell tickets. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/sports/07boxing.html?ref=sports