Once Ozell Nelson decided he wanted to work with young people on the art of boxing, it wasn’t long before one of those kids reminded him of just what was at stake.
Nelson had begun working with young people at what would become Central Arkansas Boxing Club in Little Rock and was, he believed, doing his part to keep the kids who would wander into the gym on the straight and narrow. But it was also another punishingly hot Arkansas summer, and the conditions threatened to turn the facility into a sweatbox. Nelson was planning to shut the gym down, and didn’t think he would hear many complaints.
He was wrong.
“I had some kids come up to tell me to not close the gym down, that they’ll get in trouble,” said Nelson.
Nelson was unmoved. He told the young boxers that if they got in trouble, well, they’d be in trouble. And that was that, served with a reminder that they all knew right from wrong. But one kid from the disappointed group persisted. No, it wasn’t enough to bid them all adieu with a reminder about right and wrong. Life for many of the kids in Nelson’s gym was complicated, a life of desperate poverty and unstable family dynamics. “Right and wrong” was reserved for those who had the luxury of a support network, not for a group of young people simply trying to survive.
So one of the kids, the bravest, stopped Nelson in his tracks. It wasn’t a confrontation; he simply repeated what he knew: “If you close the gym down, we’re going to get in trouble.”
That kid was Jermain Taylor. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. Taylor would go on to become an Olympian and eventually an undisputed middleweight champion on the professional boxing circuit.
But Nelson is not a beloved member of the Arkansas sports community for showing Taylor the ropes. He is embraced because, for over 30 years, he worked with each and every young person in the gym exactly how he worked with Taylor. Nelson wasn’t looking to cherry-pick the best boxers, not then and not now. Very soon after starting his career as a trainer, Nelson learned that Taylor was right. Kids needed structure, they needed discipline — and for some of them, Nelson was the lone source of all of that.
Today, Nelson remains as he did back then — with an eye for talent, sure, but with a mission larger than simply developing boxers. Kids don’t simply learn to throw a good right hook with Nelson. They learn how to work, how to look someone in the eye and how to attack seemingly insurmountable challenges in their daily lives.
Oh, and he keeps the gym open now.
“I think that, over here, a lot of kids come from different backgrounds and different situations,” Nelson said. “You’ve got to sit down and just talk with them individually, because you never know what these kids are going through.”
Central Arkansas Boxing Club is located at 800 W. 8th Street in Little Rock. Get in touch by phone at (501) 240-5993 and keep up with the latest on Facebook.
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