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Ivan Valencia, Nelson Oliver and Tommy Pettiti (left to right) help the Sarasota Boxing Club get its new location in order

The door to the old Sarasota Boxing Club sits wide open, but not much is left inside. When I was here in August the place crackled with the energy of boxers, spectators and families.

It’s still hot in late October, but quiet. With one of the boxing rings and all the equipment now gone, ambitious weeds grow in through the gaps of the plywood hanging over the glassless windows. Footsteps echo off the concrete floor, metal walls and tin ceiling.

An orchard of dust and debris is scattered about the far side of the building. Coach Harold Wilen stands in the center of it all, talking on the phone. His old blue Hyundai has broken down in front of the Sarasota Boxing Club’s new location on the corner of 15th and Lime Avenue — on the edge of Newtown. He needs a tow truck before the sun goes down, and he needs a good mechanic.

My phone in hand, I rattle off the number to Jay & Dean’s and he taps it in. I mention he should save it and he looks up at me with a sheepish glance: “I’m not sure exactly how.”

He holds his phone out and I bend down, walking him through the steps of saving a contact. He thanks me, smiles and says: “Robin Givens was in for a private lesson last week.” No doubt about it the man knows how to take a punch. And he looks like he has gone a few rounds; losing the place where he’s lodged his heart for the past decade and a half to a man he trusted.

On top of that, he’s losing an ex-wife to cancer at any moment, someone still so close to him, that I feel the pain in his eyes when he tells me. The man needs to get to Lakeland, where she’s dying, and his car is not up for the trip.

A white pickup climbs backward up the ramp to the door. It seems official. They are taking the toilet — the SBC board of directors took a vote. They lost some serious donations: a boxing ring and the main support beam for all of the heavy bags, $15,000 worth of material given by their landlord, Harvey Vengroff, and revoked with their eviction. Put it all together and what do a bunch of guys with ricocheting emotions and a truck full of hand tools do? They talk about taking the damn toilet and leaving the brush, but I can see that Coach’s heart isn’t in it.

“She refers to him as ‘Michael,’” Wilen says. It takes me a second to snap back: He’s talking about Mike Tyson, Givens’ ex-husband. I nod. “She’s doing a movie here in Sarasota,” he shakes his head and looks up at me. “She’s a soccer mom, a very down to earth lady.” The man shows genuine wonder at the events that transpire around him. His ex will have died within 24 hours, and he will have buried more than her remains in the coming week.

AT THE NEW SARASOTA BOXING CLUB, there are two doors. One slams and seals shut with an iron strap. The other slides home on a rail and seals just as soundly. Both are about a foot thick to seal in the cold air that once filled the building, back when it was a freezer. More recently it housed a broadcast studio for a weekly talk show aptly called The Freezer. Like the boxing club itself, the building has a colorful history, and reminds some of the boxing club faithful of the club’s days at the Ice House on Central Avenue, where the club started.

The boxing club and Coach Harold are putting some events, some people and some ways of doing what they do, behind them. Perhaps not burying the past so much as putting it aside to be viewed by those who care. After leaving their space on Fruitville, the club will be paying rent for the first time in its 25-year history, which will force it to face a certain economic viability, a prospect that tends to either strengthen or cripple any enterprise. But the boxing club has assets: love, strength, the dogged determination of a devoted extended family whose business is knowing how to fight.

I watch a string of Latinos haul boxes of old files from the un-lit, un-cooled building into the afternoon. Some of them clearly are not fighters. “I am here because of Coach Harold,” Nelson Oliver tells me in halting English, as he dumps a load of paper into the dumpster. Oliver has two kids training under Wilen: a son, 15, and a 10-year-old daughter. Another guy, twice Oliver’s size but a third his age, follows him out and in perfect American slang says, “Me too man,” nods, dumps his load of boxes and turns back into the building.

They’re not alone. A list of famous and not-so-famous, former and current fighters and volunteers are mentioned. Serena Williams had a private training session; Maria Sharipova, too, back in 1998; and last week, of course, Robin Givens. “That Russian kid” — whose name no one can pronounce, that can take a punch like nobodies recently seen, that lives in an estate at Roberts Point Road on Siesta Key — is in a couple times a week. The names are mentioned with excitement and expectation, it being innately understood by the people here that they are working with a gem that will shine brightly given the proper amount of effort. And despite day jobs, new businesses and failing loved ones, effort is coming and locals are lining up to do their part.

Big House Promotions and former fighter Brian Porter have volunteered to pay one third of the rent. Erin Johnson, a Ringling College graduate with a degree in illustration, heard about the club and has volunteered to do a mural on the outside wall, with paint donated by Matt Mashke of West Coast Paint. Johnson will design the mural and wants to work with Ringling to coordinate a team of up to 10 artists to finish the job. Johnson’s mom, “the maven of grant writing,” as coach refers to her, is planning to look into grant applications and federal funding.

Sarasota Mayor Richard Clapp will be at the mural’s unveiling Dec. 12, cutting the ribbon in honor of the club’s renewed commitment to improving the lives of inner-city kids and their families. There will be music and a fashion show with models from supporter Tommy Pettiti’s modeling and talent agency. A string of local businesses are donating services and products to raffle, and their names and time to the event, with the hope that the club can raise enough money to cover the rent for one year, enough time for the club to get its footing.

The boxing club seems determined to employ its methods and forge a path for itself through uncertain times. As muralist Erin Johnson said: “I’m supporting an American tradition.” That’s true in more ways than one.

Photos by Robert Johnson

Full disclosure: Creative Loafing Editor Cooper Levey-Baker’s wife works in the Student Life department at Ringling College of Art and Design.

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