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Cameron Beltran is a recent graduate from UTC, aspiring writer and currently employed at the greatest hot sauce company of all time — Hoff & Pepper.
The carpet floors of Red Bank Boxing Club are spotted with vomit and blood stains. The modest building is tucked away behind Red Bank High School connected to the campus by a gravel road. It consists of little more than a single boxing ring and a handful of punching bags.
Alfred Odell talks in a slow, southern accent with an occasional whistle in his words. He began boxing in 1955 at 16 years-old when every high school in the Chattanooga area had a boxing team.
“Back then it had a lot more interest than it does now,” Odell says. “They’d fill up the Memorial Auditorium downtown. The Golden Glove tournament would last for four days. Some nights the fire marshal would have to turn people away because the crowd was so big.”
Now 80, Odell volunteers his time and helps coach at the Red Bank Boxing Club for no profit other than growing the sport. He coached his sons from the age of eight until they were traveling across the country competing. After fifteen years of coaching, Odell had to step back; his new job required him to travel five days a week.
After retiring in 2009, Odell was convinced to return to the sport and help Skipper Fairbanks coach. Fairbanks began boxing in 1947 when he was 13 and started coaching in 1955.
The Red Bank Boxing Club’s walls are filled with memorabilia from Fairbanks’s boxing career. Newspaper clippings and photos depict a scrappy young man winning match after match. The five-time Golden Glove winner, now 84, coaches dozens of boxers, including Will Carson.
Growing up, Carson participated in a variety of sports—baseball, lacrosse, football, track, tennis, wrestling — he tried his hand at everything. One fateful day in high school, his best friend’s older brother poked his head into the room and asked if anyone wanted to spar with him.
Carson volunteered and got his ass handed to him.
But, from that point forward, the older brother began training Carson, giving him critiques and advice on his fighting skills.
Carson began training at the Red Bank Boxing Club a little over a year ago. Since then, Carson’s stamina and form has improved as well as his ability to read his opponent.
Odell and Fairbanks are past the years when they could get in the ring and spar their pupils. Instead, the more experienced boxers, like Carson, will volunteer to spar with the high schoolers and middle schoolers while the coaches look on and offer advice. A buzzer loud enough to shake your bones goes off every three minutes, signaling an end to each round. While sparring against the teenagers, the buzzer goes off nine or ten times before sweat begins to appear on Carson’s shirt.
Of his three amateur boxing matches, Carson has won only one. On the day of a fight, you wake up and are instantly vibrating with uncontrollable adrenaline—and the fight isn’t for another ten hours. By the time you make it into the ring, you’re exhausted.
You don’t know anything about your opponent. You know their name, win to loss ratio and nothing else. The thought of your friends and family in the crowd is nerve-wracking. In Carson’s first official fight, his opponent was shorter and faster than him.
“He was one of the hardest-hitting people I’ve ever met in my life,” Carson says.
It wasn’t until his second fight Carson managed to earn his first win. He had no time the day of his second fight to even worry about the match. Despite having spent the entire day working (his day job is as a locksmith), Carson defeated his opponent because he had superior cardio.
In the ring, you have no one to rely on except yourself. Odell argues boxing is 90 to 95 percent cardio. You’ve got to be able to keep your hands up after taking blow after blow. If you lose, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you win, you, alone, are responsible. But, Carson claims whether you win or lose, you feel good afterward.
