Interview Dated October 2004

Kenny Weldon

Walking into the Galena Park Boxing Academy is like walking into history. All the posters are there: Dempsey, Louis, Marciano, Duran, to more contemporary boxers who've trained in the building: Pazienza, Wilford Scypion, James Pipps, "Termite" Watkins, Evander Holyfield.

HBScene - Where are you from originally?

KW - Galena Park, Texas.

HBScene - This is where you're from. How'd you get started into boxing?

KW - My grandfather was a pro fighter, my father was a pro fighter. I had four brothers so I just sort of grew into it.

HBScene - You had an amateur career?

KW - I had 127 amateur fights. I had nine losses and two draws back when they allowed draws.

HBScene - And you turned pro when?

KW - I turned pro in 1967.

HBScene - Tell us about your pro career.

KW - I had 57 pro fights. I had 50 wins and six losses and a draw.

HBScene - Fight for any titles?

KW - I was N.A.B.F. Junior Lightweight Champion for two years and Texas Featherweight Champion for five years.

HBScene - You opened this gym in 1967. I guess this is probably about the oldest gym in the city.

KW - It's not the same facility but it was in Galena Park right here and it's where McDonald's now stands. As a matter of fact McDonald's parking lot was where my first gym opened in 1967.

HBScene - When did you move to your current location?

KW - We've been here about six years I guess. We've gone back and forth across the Ship Channel 14 times over 38 years. Our sponsor, Bass & Meineke Auto Parts & Meineke Mufflers has been with us for a lot of years and they lease a lot of buildings along the Ship Channel so they move us around.

HBScene - A lot of history in this place.

KW - A lot of blood and sweat and a lot of years and a lot of fun too. We're the most productive amateur boxing club in America. We've had 28 national champions, three olympians, four world amateur champions. We've had the elite boxers of the world train at our facility for a lot of years.

HBScene - Give me a couple of names.

KW - Meldrick Taylor, Pernell Whitaker, Mark Breland, Vinnie Pazienza, Mike Tyson, Evander, Tyrell Biggs, Raul Marquez. I could go on and on.

HBScene - Some of the fighters that you've brought along. Tell me some of your favorite guys. I guess that's kind of like picking from among your children.

KW - "Termite" Watkins was my first national champion so of course Termite is a favorite. He lives right down the road from me. James "Little" Warrior Pipps, world rated for years and years from Vidor, Texas. I had Mike Phelps, we fought for the world Flyweight title. Wilford Scypion fought Marvin Hagler for the title. We've had so many national Junior Olympic champions and National Golden Glove champions and we've never changed our program.

HBScene - Let's talk about that. Describe your philosophy if there is such a thing as a trainer.

KW - It's sad that you would ask that because you say that in an "if" manner. Of course there's a philosophy. But it's not my philosophy. I believe that if I had could site here and talk to Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Pep, Bob Foster, James Brown, just a few of the greatest fighters that's ever lived, if I asked them what their philosophy was on boxing it would be the same as mine. Because took a philosophy from Bill Gore who trained Willie Pep, Joe Maxim, Joe Brown. I've had long conversations with George Gainsford who trained Sugar Ray Robinson, Cuyo Hernandez who trained 12 world champions out of Mexico, was a sparring partner for Benny Leonard. All these guys, Kid Chocolate went back to Cuba and took the same philosophy back over there with them and it's still the same philosophy that's whipping the Americans' tails right now over in Athens, Greece, because we no longer have the knowledge of boxing that we once had. All the old guys have died off. But I'm a young protege.

HBScene - So tell us about this philosophy that has gone away.

KW - Boxing is the art of hitting an opponent from the furthest distance away, exposing the least amount of your body while getting in position to punch with maximum leverage and not getting hit. You know where that came from?

HBScene - Sugar Ray Robinson?

KW - Not in particular. Benny Leonard said boxing was the ability to hit your opponent from the furthest distance away, exposing the least amount of your body. Jack Dempsey said, "while getting in position to punch with maximum leverage" and Willie Pep said, "and not getting hit".
So if you want to proclaim a philosophy, their philosophy would be, I mean those are considered the greatest boxers throughout the history of the world. And if I had to train from a philosophy that would be their philosophy. And Bill Gore who trained nine world champions, trained my father and then I come along after my father and he trained Willie Pep, Joey Maxim, Joe Brown, Bob Foster, I mean on and on and on. So a philosophy therefore is something that I would describe as fundamental correctness. A philosophy of fundamental correctness would be, yes there is a correct way to throw a left jab, a correct way to throw a right hand, a correct way to get in your stance, a correct way to move in all four directions. There's ten punches that you must learn to execute in order to be a complete boxer. If you lack in any of those areas that is what's getting the United States boxing teams beat of late because they are fundamentally inept. They are fighting on natural abilities and those natural abilities cannot stand up to a guy that's got fundamental correctness and good natural ability. So therefore you've eliminated boxing and the sweet science as we know it in this country for the last 30, 40 years. Ali was the beginning of the end. When he came along in a time of no heavyweights that could fight. I mean Joe Frazier was the same height as me. Joe Frazier couldn't whip my mama and that's the best guy Ali fought, maybe him and George Foreman. Compared to the heavyweights of the past that were fundamentally correct like Joe Louis and Jersey Joe Walcott, Rocky Marciano, they all fought according to their stature but they also fought according to fundamental correctness that allowed them to be as great as they were. Ali, had he been fundamental, would have still been champion today because he had the natural assets of any boxer in the history of the world. But he never was taught the fundamentals of boxing. He just boxed and what he had was a great sense of range and speed that nobody could beat unless they were fundamentally correct and understood the fundamentals of boxing and made that ring get really small really quick. And a lot of the heavyweights in the past would have done that. But since that time the boxing world seemed to worship Muhammad Ali and that has destroyed the science. He never was a scientific boxer, he was just a natural boxer and people tried to copy him. Boxers don't have the natural abilities he had to make that work. The only one that did was Larry Holmes. He fought off the same natural ability. He wasn't as well schooled a fundamentalist but as a matter of fact I'd say he was a better boxer than Ali. He was a better fighter than Ali.

HBScene - That would probably surprise a lot of people.

KW - I don't care. You've got to remember that I was training in the same gym with Ali when he was fighting here in Houston for a year. I done roadwork with him each morning out at Herman Park. I'm not a guy who didn't know who Ali was. I'm not a guy who didn't like Ali. I loved Ali. I loved his spirit and I loved what he stands for. But what he stood for more than anything else is a social and a cultural thing as opposed to boxing. Boxing is an art and a science and it's sort of like having 30 yards of track on a railroad track pulled up and a train can't run over it. That's what he's done to boxing. They've got to repair that track. They've got to get back to the fundamentals of that train going down that track and that's what's happened to boxing. Nobody can get over that hump right now and rather than striving to go forward through fundamental correctness they've gone backwards to natural abilities and it's killing our boxing programs throughout the country.

HBScene - So you've got 50, 60 guys a night coming in here. Tell me a little bit about that.

KW - We are different than every boxing gym in the country just about. We are very innovative in what we do yet we are extremely traditional and for years we have been here on the Ship Channel and we work with kids from this area, blue collar workers, now a lot of Hispanics. We have a great foundation. We show them pictures on this wall. Guys that went from right here to fight for world championships. We work with the courts in the Pasadena/Galena Park area with communit7y service kids, kids that are still in school. We have the schools send them to us. A lot of families in the community here we help out. We do boxing shows to raise money different families. We do shows to work with the churches in the area. We are Galena Park and the surrounding area, Pasadena, that's who we are. We represent that and we have a long tradition of winning not because we're so much smarter about boxing but because we have the best program in the world for what we do.

HBScene - I saw a sign out there that I hadn't seen in any gym before. No excessive talking.

KW - You better know it. When you come to a workout here you've got 60 kids working out. They are all working through the program. We have a program that you won't see a bunch of people standing around talking. They'll be working. They'll be going through a rotation system teaching the art of boxing, the science of boxing. No program in the world conditions its boxers any better than we do because we believe that knowledge of the science dictates how good a boxer is going to be and through the process of a workout here you learn every single day. When you come back the next day you're not going to come in here bored. You'll be coming in here wanting to learn what's next. The people are very enthusiastic here because they can see in front of them and working right along with them, world champions and people who are recognized around the world for their boxing knowledge and their boxing ability so it makes a lot of difference.

HBScene - And you have a huge pool of talent obviously to work with and you just took some guys to Kansas.

KW - We went to the Ringside World Amateur Championshipsin Kansas City. We took six boxers and won five medals. That's unheard of. We had one world champion 72 pounds, 12 years old and two silver medalists and one bronze medalist. We had one person that didn't medal out of six boxers. It's the largest entry ever in an amateur boxing tournament anywhere in the world. 1282 boxers entered in the tournament. My junior welterweight had 27 boxers entered in his division.

HBScene - And you mentioned they were from six countries.

KW - From six countries. We had six boxing rings going at the same time for a whole week. So when you come back and you win or you medal in that kind of situation it'll tell you that maybe we're doing something right.

HBScene - You've got some pro, Lewis Wood obviously there was an unfortunate development recently in which he was scheduled to fight and that fell through but now he's on another card coming up this month.

KW - He fights September the 25th in Beaumont at the Ford Center. It will be the first of ten professional boxing shows that will be promoted there using boxers from the Houston and Beaumont community.

HBScene - And who's he fighting?

KW - He will face Johnny Villanueva from Odessa Texas.

HBScene - And as far as your facility is concerned big changes coming here.

KW - Yeah we are about to begin probably in the next month building our new facility here. We have been given a matching grant from Houston Endowment matched and we have three other foundation supporting what we're doing and we are going to build a $2 million facility where this one sits.

HB - And you mentioned 75 boxers going at a time

KW - 25 dorms will house 75 boxers at a time and we will be having camps here all year round with boxers coming in from all over the country to train here and we will also probably do 200 more community service kids a month than what we're doing. We do 1200 a year and we're going to triple that.

HBScene - Sounds like this is the mecca of boxing.

KW - It's the mecca of the sweet science. Boxing, as a matter of fact I was reading Kronk Gym's website and they got all these guys, boxing discussions and I read through every one of them and they're all talking about which fighter they like and how this guy was going to beat this guy and all this stuff and I mean, hundreds of people write on that website and not one of them ever discussed the science, and why this boxer was going to beat that boxer. It was like, "Cause he's my guy, cause he's stronger we think," but none of them could describe what it was that this boxer couldn't do that this boxer can do that is going to allow this boxer to beat the other. It's always, "He's tougher, he's stronger, he's in better shape, or he's coming off of this loss or that loss or this win and that win," and stuff like that. Never, "He's good but he has a hard time with left handers", or "He's good, but he can't fight tall boxers and the reason he can't fight tall boxers is this or the reason he can't fight left handers is this". That's how the odds are figured in different areas of the country with knowledgeable boxing people. So that's part of what we do here. When a boxer leave here, people leave here with knowledge and he will want to coach boxing or he'll be a boxing fan forever because he understands the intricacies of the sport.