Boxing club helps kids stay off the streets.
Paul Ryan, owner of Bloor Fitness and Boxing and founder of BADGE, Boxers Against Drugs and Guns Everywhere, coaches 17-year-old Angelico 'Ace' Cruz.
Staff photo/LISA RAINFORD
It's after 5 o'clock on a hot and muggy Friday evening in July, but 17-year old Angelico Cruz is in the boxing ring on the second floor of Bloor Street Fitness and Boxing rather than spending a carefree night out with friends.
"He's here six times a week," said Paul Ryan, a former lightweight national champion and founder of the boxing and fitness centre near the corner of Dundas Street West and Bloor Street West.
"It's unbelievable. He's so dedicated."
The St. Clair Avenue and Oakwood Avenue area resident nicknamed 'Ace' has just two fights under his belt and is training for another one on Thursday, July 29. Being Filipino himself, Cruz, a huge fan of Manny 'Pac Man' Pacquiao - the Pride of the Philippines, first came to the popular boxing gym a year earlier.
"He had gotten into a little trouble at school," said Ryan. "His marks have since gone up."
Ryan calls Cruz a prime example of why he started the gym in the first place. In 1993, after his own boxing career ended, the university-educated Ryan knew he didn't want to enter the corporate world.
"I had to do what I loved," he said.
And so, Ryan, who had discovered the sport as a young teenager "full of piss and vinegar," decided to open his own facility. Boxing gyms, in Ryan's experience, had predominantly been run out of churches by police departments. Living in Etobicoke when he retired from boxing, Ryan took out a map of Toronto to determine where he wanted to open his gym.
"I knew it got rough east of Lansdowne and Bloor," said Ryan. "And, it had to be on the subway line. I just found this place."
At the time, it was the top floor of a transmission shop.
"I hung up a few (punching) bags - I didn't even have a sign out. There was no money for it, but the kids started coming up and told their buddies."
Christened 'BADGE' (Boxers Against Drugs and Guns Everywhere), Ryan's sole purpose for opening the gym was to provide free boxing instruction during after school hours to help kids build a skill, socialize, learn and have fun - and ultimately, keep them off the streets.
Ryan has mentored hundreds of kids since the program's inception.
"I think they reach deep down inside and find something they never thought they had," said Ryan when asked why boxing seems to have such a profound effect on youth.
"You're dealing with demons, fear. Really, you're fighting your demons not just your opponent."
Adorning the walls of the fitness and boxing gym are letters of appreciation from various organizations to which Ryan has donated time, energy and funds. However, one letter stands out for him. It arrived in February of this year from a former protege of his, Alec Armstrong.
"You were a mentor, role model, even father-figure in a time in my life when I desperately needed one," wrote Armstrong in his letter that Ryan has framed alongside a local newspaper article featuring the young fighter at 15 years of age in 2005. "You helped me achieve things I never thought possible."