Professor Chuck Marbry
AN “OLD SCHOOL BOXING” SHRINE OF SORTS
Liberty,NC– Off of 36th Street in Charlotte, North Carolina, in an empty section of closed down Johnston Mills, Lou Kemp (Carangio) had a cavernous room that he had transformed into Old School Boxing Nirvana. From the second I stepped in, I was hooked. No pretense. Old wooden floors. One boxing ring on a six inch platform, four heavy bags, four speed bags, (well, two speed bags, one “peanut” bag and one “elephant” bag), some mirrors on the wall enough room to jump rope, huge windows covered with gray dust from yesteryear, the smell of leather, sweat, adrenalin and determination.
SOMETIMES MORE RHYTHM THAN THE MOTOWN STUDIOS
There was a rhythm to the routine at Lou’s gym, Lou’s rhythm. There were no clocks on the wall, no electric timers. Just Lou with his trusty stop-watch around his neck, yelling “time!” Funny thing, in all the years I trained and worked with Lou, I seldom saw Lou actually look at the stop-watch, but when I began training fighters myself, I found Lou’s timing was eerily right. There was an order to the workout in Lou’s gym. First was loosening up and stretching. Fifteen to twenty minutes at a minimum, and the larger or more out of shape you were the more loosening and stretching you did. Then came shadow boxing. How much shadow boxing depended on how advanced a boxed you were, or when you had a fight scheduled. If you were to spar, sparring was next. After sparring, another round of shadow boxing or two, then two to four rounds on the heavy bags. Then the speed bags, and then some calisthenics. And always in that order.
LIKE OCCUPY CHICAGO, THERE WERE NO SHOWERS
There was a toilet at the gym, but no showers. About twenty sets of hand-wraps were hung in various places around the gym to dry. With all the characters we had in and out of the gym, I was always amazed that the hand-wraps didn’t get stolen, but they didn’t. In the summer, Lou would begrudgingly open some windows, but the temperature still hit 95* by mid afternoon. In the winter, we would all chip in to buy heating oil to knock the chill off ( there were no membership fees), but usually a former fighter who had made it big in the corporate world would see to it we didn’t die of hypothermia (Thanks to Ferguson Box Company, and Humpy Wheeler, former CEO of Charlotte Motor Speedway).
TRIED TO ABSORB LOU’S KNOWLEDGE LIKE A SPONGE
Since I drove an hour and a half to get to Lou’s, after working out, Lou and I would stop a cafe for a bite before the drive home. Then the education would begin as Lou talked and I would listen. And I absorbed as much as I could from this Italian fount of knowledge. Lou and boxing taught me more about life and myself than any class or any “shrink” could ever begin to. At the end of the day the Manly Art of Self Defense isn’t about punching or parrying a blow, it’s about overcoming insecurity and fear. It’s about hard work and digging deep inside and finding something you didn’t even know was there.
KEMP SPARRED INTO HIS SEVENTIES
The last time I actually technically sparred was with now-late Lou (Kemp) Carangio when he was 74 years old, and he still had a trick or two up his sleeve. And that, my friends, is Old School!
Professor Chuck Marbry