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By T.K. Stewart - By the time 22-year-old Devon Alexander skips up the steps, slinks through the ropes and slides into the ring tomorrow night against England's Junior “The Hitter” Witter, his young eyes will already have seen more than most will see in a lifetime.
Recruited into the world of boxing as a seven-year-old second grader by his trainer, Kevin Cunningham, who once roamed the halls and kept the peace as a police officer at Alexander's elementary school, he has lived a life that few do. And he credits boxing with saving his life.
After streaking to an amateur record of 300 wins against 10 losses and while winning nearly every title there was in the unpaid ranks, he turned to full-time prizefighting only a few months after his seventeenth birthday.
His eyes saw the worst that the streets of North St. Louis has to offer. A place where gunshots and killing are simply part of the daily routine. On Wednesday alone, there were two murders in the neighborhood that Devon Alexander's family calls home. The St. Louis police found one man who had been shot to death while sitting in his car. The other was gunned down as he exited a halfway house.
Alexander was reared there, where violence is the norm. Where drug dealers and gangs lay claim not just to street corners, but to entire neighborhoods. It's a place where the social contract has been horribly broken. Human life has little value in North St. Louis and it's just the type of place that Thomas Hobbes once wrote about, where life is “nasty, brutish and short.” [details]
Recruited into the world of boxing as a seven-year-old second grader by his trainer, Kevin Cunningham, who once roamed the halls and kept the peace as a police officer at Alexander's elementary school, he has lived a life that few do. And he credits boxing with saving his life.
After streaking to an amateur record of 300 wins against 10 losses and while winning nearly every title there was in the unpaid ranks, he turned to full-time prizefighting only a few months after his seventeenth birthday.
His eyes saw the worst that the streets of North St. Louis has to offer. A place where gunshots and killing are simply part of the daily routine. On Wednesday alone, there were two murders in the neighborhood that Devon Alexander's family calls home. The St. Louis police found one man who had been shot to death while sitting in his car. The other was gunned down as he exited a halfway house.
Alexander was reared there, where violence is the norm. Where drug dealers and gangs lay claim not just to street corners, but to entire neighborhoods. It's a place where the social contract has been horribly broken. Human life has little value in North St. Louis and it's just the type of place that Thomas Hobbes once wrote about, where life is “nasty, brutish and short.” [details]
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