Members range from tweens to 68-year-olds, looking for a good workout in an ‘authentic’ atmosphere.

When you descend into the cavernous basement where the Gamache Boxing Club resides, there is a moment of temporal disorientation. Is it 2016? 1976? 1945?

The gym, with its perennial gloom and battered concrete walls, feels like it belongs to another age. The windowless walls are plastered with fight posters from which boxers from bygone eras snarl out at the world. The floors are chipped and scarred. The walls themselves seem to perspire.

Every few minutes there’s a harsh clang of bells, an instantly familiar sound that has filled boxing gyms across the country for generations. There’s the sweet smell of sweat, the thump of feet dancing on canvas and the sharper, more evocative sound of fists on flesh.

The grunts and curses and barked commands from the trainers give no clue as to the era in which they were uttered. It’s not until you turn your attention to the people training that the time period becomes clear.

Down here, boxing is not just for inner-city boys anymore.

On this day at the Gamache Boxing Club, there are more girls than boys, for one thing, and some of those girls have not reached the age of junior high.

In one corner, a 68-year-old man throws punches at the air with slow, careful movements. Across the ring, a 12-year-old school girl jabs and moves, jabs and moves. In between are men, women and kids in all shapes and sizes and at all levels of intensity.

“We get a little bit of everything down here,” says trainer Scott Frost, a former Golden Glove champion. “We’ve had kids as young as 7 or 8 years old who come in to train.”

“It’s a melting pot,” says Dan Escobar, also a trainer. “That’s what makes it great.”

The gym is dungeon-like and nobody tries to pretend otherwise. Everyone knows there are more modern gyms with fluorescent lights, air conditioning and fancy equipment. The people who come to train at the Gamache Boxing Club in the basement of the Lewiston Armory aren’t here in spite of those differences, though. They’re here because of them.

Ken Chutchian, 58, school teacher, of Harpswell

As he entered his middle age, Chutchian saw the health of his parents decline.

His mother made the descent from depression, to dementia to Alzheimer’s. His dad, a once vigorous man, fell into ill health and died in 2010.

The loss of his parents provided Chutchian with a new perspective. He researched on his own. He talked to his doctor. He was always active, but now he really got to work on staving off the ravages of aging, both mental and physical, as long as possible.

His training was underway.

“I”m very serious about this,” Chutchian said, his face slicked with sweat after 45 minutes in the ring. “I’m not trying to stay young forever. I’m not trying to be something I’m not. I just want to feel vigorous and alive as long as I can.”

Like many at the gym, Chutchian trains as a boxer, but doesn’t actively fight. Those who want to fight get special attention from Glenn Cugno, a former prize fighter who runs the Cugno Boxing Team out of the gym.

For Chutchian, it’s all about the intensity of the workout, the social aspect of the group and the gym itself.

“For me the appeal of the place is that (A) it’s authentic, right down to the lack of air circulation and the smell; (B) Scotty Frost; and (C) the mix of people there, from high school kids to Bates (College) kids to a few guys in between jail sentences.

“Seriously,” he continues. “There are some local guys in their 20s who work out, plus a few old coots like me. You never know which combination of people will show up on any given night – maybe a few middle-schoolers and even a . . . 5th-grader or two, with mom watching and clutching her purse tightly. But I’d say over the past few months it’s been mostly high-schoolers, a few Bates kids, some young adults (a few with competitive boxing aspirations), one or two guys in their 40s. Plus me, born in ’57.”

Chutchian tries to get to the gym at least twice a week. He also runs and plays golf, but nothing quite matches the rush of training in a boxing ring with seasoned trainers and a mixed group.

“I come out of here feeling like a million bucks,” he says. “I go home and I’m bouncing off the walls.”

Chutchian has been working out at the club for more than four years and says he has never been tempted to move on to a more modern and glitzy club. The authentic and timeless feel of the basement gym is among the best parts of the experience.

“For the first three-and-a-half years I went there, access via the back door was achieved by ringing a doorbell with no casing, hanging by a lonely wire connected to God-knows-what, against a brick wall facing the recreation field,” Chutchian recalls. “It felt like a drug deal in an alley, and it was hilarious. To me, anyway.”

He adds, “Gamache Boxing Club is one of the coolest places in the world.”

Al Huntington, 55, Sagadahoc County sheriff’s deputy/volunteer trainer  

The ring workout starts the same for everybody. There’s a half-hour basic workout with jumping jacks, running in place, shoulder exercises and core exercises. The fighters throw punches in the air while the trainers assess their form. There’s sparring and footwork and good-natured trash talk — all of the things you’d expect to see in a boxing gym.

When the fighters-in-training line up to practice their gut punches, that’s where Huntington comes in – it’s his gut being punched.

Huntington, who fought at the basement gym when he was a younger man, says he comes in to help because he enjoys the workout and he likes being around fighters. It’s in his blood, you might say. He’s been fighting all his life.

On this day, Huntington, of Lisbon Falls, is helping out with some of the fighters who need specialized training. There’s a 17-year-old named Travis, for instance, who has a fight coming up. Huntington is helping to strengthen Travis’ core by throwing a medicine ball into his gut while Travis lies prone on the floor.

Silently, grimacing, Travis throws the ball back.

“He’s going into the military,” Huntington says. “We work him a little bit harder to help get him ready for that.”

Dick Gleason, 68, businessman, of Auburn

He owns a half-dozen radio stations. He’s a former mayor, a respected civic leader and Citizen of the Year, a father and a grandfather.

He’s also serious about his health, and at the Gamache Boxing Club on a mid-week evening, he’s one of a dozen going through the paces in the ring.

Gleason, throwing punches alongside kids more than 50 years his junior, is the oldest member of the club. He knows this. His face beaded with sweat, he shakes his head every once in a while as if to say: “What am I doing here?”

There is, however, no sign of quit in him.

“I feel great,” Gleason says, after a few minutes on the speed bag. “It’s one of those things where, when you’re done, you want to come right back for more.”

And he does come back for more, a couple times a week.

An avid tennis and racquetball player, Gleason has been active all his life. Then a terrible thing happened.

“I wasn’t winning in tennis anymore,” Gleason says. “I thought, ‘Well, I guess I’ll have to try something else.”

Something else, sure. But boxing? At 68?

Gleason saw a news report about Parkinson’s disease and the many benefits of an intense workout to stave it off. He talked it over with health specialists. He discussed the idea with the trainers at the gym.

“They said, ‘Sure, come on in,'” says Gleason.

He’s not intimidated by the youngsters, many of them school girls, who surround him at the gym. He admires them. They motivate him to train harder.

“It’s a thrill to see girls that age with that kind of discipline,” Gleason says. “And it’s nice to work out in a group, with the coach shouting at you. There’s camaraderie this way.”

Gleason frankly doesn’t understand why more people, young and old, aren’t gravitating to the boxing workout. There’s nothing like it for conditioning, he says. And let’s face it, there is just something about the Gamache Club.

“There’s so much history here,” he says. “It doesn’t try to be something it’s not.”

Gleason has a wife of 46 years, three kids and seven grandkids. And when it comes to his Rocky-esque exercise regimen, nobody is scoffing, least of all his wife.

“She’s glad I’m doing this,” Gleason says. “She practically pushes me out the door.”

Bill Cox, 53, TV news technician, of Auburn

Cox grew up in South Sacramento, Calif., where things got a little rough. Neighborhood kids would target those who showed weakness. Daily life was a matter of survival.

“You had to learn how to fight,” Fox says.

So he did. His father, after all, had boxed at the university level. Boxing taught Cox the essential eye-hand coordination necessary for a fight, but it also taught him discipline and self-control.

Not to mention a little bit about psychology.

“You learn a lot,” Cox says, “about how to deal with people.”

So as a kid, he boxed. He boxed in high school, and when he went into the Navy he boxed there as well. It was a workout he carried into his young adult life.

“I always had a bag hanging in my garage,” Cox says.

Then life, with all of its demands, happened. There was a career to think about and a social life. Cox found that he wasn’t working out very much. His old boxing equipment was getting dusty.

Then his 8-year-old stepdaughter decided she wanted to start working out, and Cox was right back into it again. He guided his stepdaughter into the world of the boxing workout, but he also joined the Gamache club.

“It’s such a dynamite workout,” Cox says. “And it is definitely the real deal down here.”

Misty Doucette, mother of Emma, 12, and Jordan, 14, of Auburn

A funny thing happens when Emma Jones gets into the ring. While down on the canvas for sit-ups, she reacts to a wisecrack flung across the ring by giggling at the witticism, and for a moment sounds like any other giddy school girl in the midst of fun.

A moment later she’s up and throwing punches at the trainer’s mitts, and there’s nothing giddy about her. The 12-year-old is pure intensity, a ferocious fighter preparing for battle. Her punches are hard and fast. Her face bears the ageless look of pure determination.

“Emma,” says Al Huntington, a career fighter and part-time trainer, “goes as hard as anybody.”

An Auburn Middle School student, she’s been training at the gym for more than a year. Shortly after she joined the club, her sister Jordan came along. Now the sisters train side-by-side, which is joy for their mother.

Mostly joy, anyway.

“The worst for me,” says Misty Doucette, “is when they fight each other.”

Beyond that, Doucette couldn’t be happier with the way boxing has shaped the lives of her daughters.

“They’re eating healthy now. They’re extremely focused and they have control over things,” she says. “It’s really improved their lives all around. It’s been an amazing positive for both of them.”

Both Emma and Jordan fight competitively, so their training is intense. Doucette is ringside for their bouts, of course, and she’s often their for the training. She wishes she could say that boxing was her idea, but she can’t. It was Emma’s.

“Emma came down here with her cousin, and then for six months, she begged me to let her join,” Doucette says. “I didn’t want her to do it. I figured it would be all boys down here.”

Meanwhile, Emma saved her money so that she could pay for a membership. Ultimately her mother relented and the rest, as they say, is history.

“She has changed so much,” says Doucette. “She was chunky before. She weighed 129 pounds. Now she’s down to 115. And she was very, very shy. Standoffish. Now she’s confident and healthy. She opened right up.”

Jordan followed soon after and immediately grew to love the training and the sport. In a mid-March fight, she scored a second-round technical knockout against her opponent to become the New England Silver Mittens champion.

Both Emma and Jordan have fights scheduled during an April 16 Cugno Boxing event at the club.

Gamache Club going the distance

The Gamache Boxing Club has resided in the bowels of the Lewiston Armory for nearly 40 years, run by Joe Gamache Sr., who bought the business in the 1980s.

It was here that Gamache trained his son Joey Jr., who would go on to hold WBA super featherweight and lightweight titles and become one of Lewiston’s favorite sons.

Through the years, Gamache Sr. worked with former prizefighter Glenn Cugno, training young fighters and promoting the sport. In 2014, the two men revived boxing in Lewiston with a multiple-fight event at the Longley School.

The event was a success and boxing since then has been as popular as it’s ever been in Lewiston. Shortly after, Gamache Sr. turned day-to-day operations at his boxing club to Cugno. At the time, the elder Gamache sung the praises of his longtime right-hand man.

“First thing, Glenn is the nicest young man I have ever known, got a heart of gold, works all the time with the fighters,” Gamache said. “You know this guy only gets a couple of hours of sleep a night. He is a mechanic — a darn good mechanic.

“He’s just a great guy. He fought on many of Joey’s shows, had quite a few amateur fights and he is sweetheart with all the fighters.”

Gamache Sr. still pops into the gym every week, while Joey Jr. stops by whenever he visits from his home in New York.

Copy the Story Link