Golden Gloves
In Lowell, amateur boxers learn to jab, bob, and weave, and still draw crowds who appreciate the sweet science
LOWELL - Beneath the soaring dome, the gold gilding, and the inscription, "Liberty to all," two young men are trying to knock each other down. They dance around the ring, light as grasshoppers. In this fight, the hard smack of a gloved hand hitting a body is a rare sound.
The crowd wants more. "Let's go, son!" someone yells.
"Get him! Get him!" shouts another.
But when the three rounds are over and the victor raises his hands as the announcer intones, "And your winner, by decision of the judges," everyone claps and all is forgiven. "Good fight, guys!" one spectator yells.
It's another wintry Tuesday night in Lowell and the pulse of this old mill town beats inside the elegant Lowell Memorial Auditorium. Here, for 63 years, amateur boxers have fought each other for Golden Gloves titles. As usual, most of the 2,800 seats inside the Renaissance Revival auditorium are filled for tonight's fight, one of the season's last: the New England novice semifinals.
Small groups of people stream in and hand their tickets to Del Christman, better known as the Dogman, with his wide mustache and blond hair. He stands in the Hall of Flags in front of the young women selling charity raffle tickets - often called the "50-50 girls," for the distribution of the raffle proceeds: half to the winner, half to charity.
Two ambulances are parked outside, waiting for emergencies that never come. Tonight, there will be no knockouts.
Lowell has long been a training ground for boxers, and many of the famous ones fought here as amateurs. Mickey Ward, a retired professional boxer, grew up here. Dave "Golden Boy" Andrews, a national amateur champion, trained here. Some of the biggest names in boxing passed through as amateurs: Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Hagler, Mike Tyson, Rocky Marciano.
"It's always been a fight city," said Bill Hoar, Golden Gloves tournament director. "Lowell is a city of boxing."
Last year, Lowell's team won a National Golden Gloves championship. Now a local film company, Mill City Studios, is making a documentary about boxing in Lowell. And recently, the numbers of boxers are growing. This year, the Golden Gloves organizers had to add an extra night of semifinals to the season.
"After the Olympics, in amateur boxing, there seems to be a new crop of boys and girls," said Art Ramalho, owner of West End Gym, where Lowell boxers train. "We have a lot of boxers this year that weren't here last year."
Ramalho was a chef by trade, who learned to cook in his father's restaurant, but started working with youngsters when he cooked in a reform school kitchen. He got youngsters interested in boxing, took them to Lowell's Silver Mittens tournaments for 8- to 16-year-olds.
Since Ramalho opened his boxing gym in 1968, 34 others have come and gone, he said. The kids still come to spar after school. The amateur boxers show up after work at the brick gym.
"It's not that pretty looking," said Danny Popiel, one of the boxers who train at the West End Gym. "It's like an old mill house."
Popiel, 19, started showing up because he fell in love with boxing on television, but didn't find a lot of opportunities for boxing in his hometown of Lexington. Earlier this month, he lost in the novice Golden Gloves finals.
Lowell isn't the only boxing city in Massachusetts. Many communities have boxing gyms; Fall River hosts the Southern New England Golden Gloves tournaments. Brockton is famous as the birthplace of Rocco Marchegiano, later known as Rocky Marciano.
But Lowell has a long history of boxing, populated early on by Irish and Greek immigrants.
"It's kind of a scrappy city," said Bridget Driscoll, president of Mill City Studios. "And they kind of fight to survive. And I feel that's reflective in the culture of these different neighborhoods."
Driscoll grew up in Lowell but had never been to a fight until a few years ago, when some of her journalism students at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell talked about the Golden Gloves.
"Truthfully, I just fell in love with it," said Driscoll, who now teaches at Emerson College. "I just saw the movie as I was sitting there ringside."
Driscoll, who hopes to finish her film next fall, started talking to generations of boxers who had fought in the Golden Gloves. Versus, the cable sports channel, has expressed interested in the film, she said.
Joe Downes began boxing in Lowell when he was 11 and kept getting in street fights. A retired boxer who trained kids to fight suggested Downes might want to put his skills to better use. Downes had genetics on his side: His grandfather's cousin, Michael McTigue, was once the light heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Another distant cousin was also a world champ.
"There were an awful lot of old boxers that used to come down to the gym and give us some tutelage," he said. Downes, now a chiropractor in Lowell, won some championships himself and was about to turn professional, he said, but his father insisted he return to school.
Now Downes is the chief deputy commissioner of the state Boxing Commission, and he watches a lot of fights. But he sees something lacking in the technique of many of the young boxers. They don't have the benefit, as he did decades ago, of practicing with a range of retired pros.
"They're not fighting in a smart manner," he said. "That's what I'm saying when you get a lot of sparring in different styles. You can't fight everybody the same."
But the crowds still come, no matter the weather.
"I think the show was canceled once, for the Blizzard of '78," said George Hamel, an assistant to the tournament director who oversees the Hall of Flags during Golden Gloves fights. "We had people who still came."
Season tickets to the fights have been in Jim Straticos's family for decades. At the novice semifinals, he sat in the second row with three friends. Straticos, who drives up from Medford, likes the unpredictability of the amateur fights.
"These kids have three rounds up there, two minutes per round," he said. "They put their heart and soul into it."
As soon as the boxers touch their gloves together and the first bout begins, the audience begins coaching.
"C'mon, skinny, lead with the right!"
"Use your feet, baby, use your feet!"
When the judges make an unpopular call, the crowd boos. But the fighters, who wear protective headgear, stay civil. After every bout, the opponents wrap each other in hugs.
At the end of the night, the trash cans are filled with empty beer cups and the crowd is loose. A boxer from Vermont, rounder and less chiseled than the fighters who have preceded him, is taunted by some of the spectators.
"Supersize him!" one of them yells.
But the Vermonter gets the last laugh: He wins the bout.
Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com. 
