Four men who volunteer every day at a Manchester boxing gym cite love of the sport, the satisfaction of giving back and the chance to help kids like them dodge life-changing mistakes.
And Paul Cichon.
“The thing about Paul, he’s open arms for everyone,” volunteer trainer Eric Gooden said of the founder of Manchester Ring of Champions Society, the Main Street gym that grew out of the former Police Athletic League boxing program.
“You could be the best fighter, or you could be the worst fighter — he will open his arms for you,” Gooden said. “He’ll tell you the truth. If he feels like you’re going down the wrong road, he won’t sugar coat it.”
Gooden, who knows more than most people about the wrong road, along with fellow volunteers Matt Serrano, Miguel Ayala and Mykquan Williams have been with Cichon since they were little fighters in training. All four are at the gym every evening now, sparring with kids and adults, teaching them how to throw a punch and duck a punch.
“You want to drive home?” Gooden asked a young man leaning on the corner ropes, a bit dazed after taking hard pops to the head from a more experienced fighter. “Move your … head!”
Cichon, 63, of South Windsor, said he’s grateful to have a steady, experienced crew at a nonprofit gym that survives on donations. Talking about transformations, he said he is most proud of Gooden, 33, who started boxing in the PAL program at age 8 and went on to win a gold medal in the 1998 Nutmeg Games.
But the Manchester kid turned teenage delinquent, then adult criminal (drugs, robberies, home invasion) and was sent to prison for 10 1/2 years. Now Gooden works as a warehouse supervisor and volunteers at ROCS.
“He’s here every day,” Cichon said.
Some evenings, he’ll arrive to find Gooden washing the gym floor or doing some other menial task. His dedication, Cichon said, lifts his spirits.
“They help me more than I help them,” he said of Gooden and the other volunteers.
“I just felt like I can’t let someone make the same mistakes I did,” Gooden said.
When he first returned to the gym, he said he wondered whether he could “get it back” and contend in the ring again.
“Because I love the sport,” Gooden said, “but then I said, ‘Nah, this is what I’m here for — to talk and teach.’ This is my passion.”
On a recent evening, Gooden climbed into a ring and served water from a squeeze bottle to a sweaty Serrano, who was working with 9-year-old Jessiah Martinez of Manchester.
Serrano, 30, of East Hartford, has been under Cichon’s tutelage since age 14. The silver medalist at the PAL national championships in 2015 says he likes to work with young people, “to see what they could become and to help them make better decisions.”
Boxing is complex and demanding. It can be humbling, even humiliating. Lots of people, Cichon says, think they want to box until they get punched in the face. So resilience is one of the main lessons at ROCS.
“I tell ’em from the beginning, I explain to them that it is tough, but you keep coming and you keep applying yourself, it will get easier,” Serrano said.
He held hand pads, or mitts, for Jessiah, coaching the boy to jab, one-two punch, double jab, duck, jab again, ingraining the rhythm. Jessiah smiled the whole time. His father, Emilio Martinez of Manchester, said he rough-houses at home with the boy and his other son, Emilio Jr., 13, but he wants them to learn the art of boxing.
Ayala, 35, started boxing at age 8 in Cichon’s PAL program and went on to win titles in the Junior Olympic national championships in 2001 and ’02. He was a promising fighter, Cichon has said.
But Ayala took a wrong turn, too, got locked up for selling drugs, and his promise in the ring withered. Now he works for a moving company and volunteers at ROCS every evening.
“I just love being there,” he said. “I love just helping kids out and giving back.”
The father of three says Cichon has been a father figure.
“I haven’t had a father since I could remember,” Ayala said. “I don’t even know my father like that.”
Heavily tattooed, gray-bearded and barrel-chested, Cichon wears a gold earring and a pair of golden boxing gloves on a necklace. In appearance, the tough guy from Holyoke, Mass., is about as far from Ward Cleaver as a father figure can get.
But all of his volunteers say the same thing: He fills a role for kids whose fathers weren’t around.
“I think it’s like that for all of us young kids coming from poverty, kids at risk pretty much who could be in the streets,” said Williams, 23, whose biological father was shot and killed in Hartford soon after he was born.
Williams is Cichon’s star, a professional fighter with a 16-0 record (one draw, seven knockouts). A mural of “Marvelous Mykquan” fills one wall at the gym. But Cichon describes his prized fighter as a humble guy. When he’s not training himself, Williams helps train some of the 20 kids and adults who regularly come to the gym.
When he first started boxing, his nickname was “Mad Myke,” Cichon said in a previous interview, “because he was always angry about stuff.”
“I used to say to him, ‘Who loves you, Mykey?'” and he’d look up at me with this sheepish grin and say, ‘You do.’ And I’d say, ‘Darn right I do.'”
Williams and his girlfriend are expecting their first child in October.
“He’s gonna be a great father,” Cichon said.
Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant.com.
