How I Got Started

How I got started in boxing.

A look back...

     Ever since I was a kid, I was fascinated by martial arts.  Watching guys like  Bruce Lee kick, punch and throw their adversaries around with ease really appealed to me.  I had begged my parents, year after year, to let me enroll in a martial arts school.  I was close to an adult when they agreed.

     At 17 years old, my parents gave me the thumbs up to start my martial arts training.  They told me to find a school I want to attend.  The first thing I did was figure out what it was I wanted to learn.  I had a fascination with a martial art called Kenpo Karate.  Karate is known as a Japanese martial art, but Kenpo actually originated in China.  I knew Kenpo Karate focused a  lot of time on hand techniques.  That was what I was looking for as I felt that kicking served little purpose in a street fight.  So I grabbed a phone book and started flipping the pages to the martial arts instruction section.  I made a few phones calls and settled on a place called the Integrated Martial Arts Academy, training under Ray Longo and Michael Ryan.  They no longer work with one another.  Ray Longo opened his own gym called the International Martial Arts Academy and Michael Ryan opened a martial arts & fitness center.

     When I got to the Integrated Martial Arts Academy I saw something that bothered me...  They spent a lot of time boxing.  I never cared for boxing.  Never had a desire to do boxing.  Didn't understand why it was part of this martial arts curriculum.  The trainers explained to me that they were teaching Jeet Kune Do concepts, a watered-down  idea developed by Bruce Lee, which was to study  several different martial arts, to absorbed what was useful and reject what was useless.  So I was being taught Jun Fan Gung Fu, Thaiboxing, Kali, Kenpo, Dumog, Shootwrestling and at the core was boxing. 

     I jumped into this thinking I'm going to hate anything boxing related.  After a few months of training, I focused my attention on the boxing aspect.  I was blown away at the effectiveness and efficiency of boxing.  It was, to me, the most effective form of a martial art.  I fell in love wth boxing.  I wanted to know all the techniques and even the history of the great fighters like Henry Armstrong, Robinson, and Marciano.

     After a couple years I asked Ray if he would agree to train me for the Golden Gloves.  He did, but because of college and a move to the country, I couldn't.  I moved to a small town in North East Pennsylvania in 1997.  There wasn't a gym around.  There wasn't much of anything around at the time.  I had to drive 35 miles away just to go to the mall.

     So I trained on my own.  Stayed in shape.  Watched new and old boxing matches on VHS over and over.  Studying the moves of the fighters I liked.  Absorbed what was useful, rejected what I felt was useless.  A few years later, I was shown a gym, an hour from my house, with a boxing program.  The trainer was Larry Angeles of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  He got me prepped for my first two boxing matches.

Eventually I would train in Pittsburgh with Rick Manning and win a regional Golden Glove title.