The GTD Challenge Live Professional Boxing

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By Doni Glover, Publisher

(BALTIMORE – August 4, 2023) – BMORENews.com interviewed Upton Boxing Coach Calvin Ford this week at the gym on ‘the Avenue’.

People familiar with this part of town understand the dynamics. Rapper Biggie Small expressed that in order to escape such a concrete jungle, a young Black man has to sell “crack rock” or have a “wicked jump shot.”

There is some truth to that.

However, it’s far from totally true.

Gervonta “Tank” Davis made it out of this neighborhood. Born in the belly of the beast, Coach C (as he likes to be called) has been there for “Tank” and countless other youngsters who find solace in boxing.

People in this current generation will pick up a gun faster than they will resort to hand-to-hand. Older folk like me grew up in an era where we had to use our hands. Win or lose, rarely did anyone catch a bullet.

This is a fatherless generation. One elder recently stated that this is now the first motherless generation.

All one need do is peep the current prison stats. In a nation that only has 5% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the inmates. Blacks comprise 13% of the US population and nearly 40% of the prisons. Clearly, there has been a war against Black people in America since our first encounter with Europeans.

And the struggle continues.

Maybe that is why Ford, Coach Kenny Ellis, and the other men and women give their time to the youth at Upton Boxing: Because they give a damn. Because they know these streets and the trappings that await our beautiful young people. Because they have seen the trauma, the consequences, and the death firsthand.

We must celebrate Coach C. Easily, he could have forsaken Pennsylvania Avenue. He can take his celebrity and move anywhere in the world. Instead, he walks to Legends Subshop on Laurens Street almost daily – sure to engage with our young street hustlers who peddle weed and whatever else. He doesn’t speak down to them. He mostly stands as a reminder that he made it, Tank made it, and they can make it, too.

I am so grateful Coach C has not turned his back on us. We need him and many more like him. There is a mission afoot to save our young people in Baltimore from premature death because of violence and drugs. And this fight is not for the faint of heart. It is for soldiers, like Slimmyko – a mother of two boys who works at Upton Boxing also.

These responsible citizens mentioned, including Coach Leon and others – help save lives. You will not hear their names in the mainstream media. You will not see them glorified like Fox does the indicted Donald John Trump who is clearly responsible for the death of 5 people on “January 6^th”.

And that’s precisely why BMORENews.com is in existence: to tell these and other stories that the so-called big boys gladly omit.