Jonnydrama, Petar seems to be busy with Kore jobs
ster's doorSharon Hill, Star County Reporter
Published: Friday, September 29, 2006
COLCHESTER - Detroit's Kronk Gym, famous for training champion boxers Thomas Hearns, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, is coming to sleepy Colchester.
"This quiet town is going to become a kind of famous town once we come here," Boxing Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward said Thursday.
Steward and two of the Kronk fighters carrying their championship belts arrived in a white limousine at the Colchester marina to announce that Kore International plans to build a US$1-million Kronk Gym in the village on Lake Erie.
Kore International is assembling land in the village for a more than $20- million development it describes as quaint and European, said Kore's director general Peter Vucicevich. The company is looking for about 20 acres of land for the gym, which it hopes to open in six months, he said.
There aren't many limos driving down Colchester's main drag, which boasts two restaurants and an Esso gas station. Steward said the Colchester gym would be the first Kronk Gym in Canada and a "major landmark" that could serve as a tranquil training camp for pros.
The original Kronk Gym in the steamy basement of a City of Detroit recreation centre closed in January. Detroit's budget woes and the theft of copper pipes that supplied the gym's water could mean the end of boxing at that site, but Steward said Kore is talking of buying another spot in Detroit for the legendary gym, which has also spawned a gym in Ireland.
Steward said he would come over to the Colchester gym once a week. The gym could have two or three rings and accommodate 30 fighters.
Josh Canty, president of the Border City Boxing Club in Windsor, said the gym would be great for Essex County. Border City boxers already head over to the Dearborn Kronk Gym once a week to spar with fighters.
A Kronk Gym could put Colchester on the map and draw people, said 18-year-old Amanda Pedro, a waitress at Kervin's Restaurant on the road into the village.
Steve Nykiforuk, a 61-year-old Colchester resident since 1979, said it's a great idea as long as the seedier side of life doesn't arrive with the boxers. He said he was surprised by the announcement in a bedroom community he estimated has 600 residents in the winter. "To come here, it's certainly going to change a lot of things."
© The Windsor Star 2006
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