Dreams Ride on Punches of the ‘People’s Hope’

Certainly, said his trainer-manager, this fresh-faced young man who bills himself as “The People’s Hope” will soon be a top contender, and then maybe even champion of the world.

But when it comes to young phenoms in boxing, predictions are often indistinguishable from daydreams.

“He’s a hell of a puncher, he can knock the . . . out of you with his right or his left,” said daydream believer Charlie Williams of 22-year-old middleweight Anthony Holt.

“I want to get the people of Long Beach to realize they have a man who could be another Tyson, Hagler or Leonard. Right out of their hometown.”

In the dying afternoon, the photos of boxers on the walls of Williams’ American Fitness gym on Long Beach Boulevard at 10th Street take on a golden hue. It is a few hours before Holt (0-1 as a pro) will make his hometown debut in a fight at the Spruce Goose. He is supposed to be here by now. Williams is worried. He hopes Holt is sleeping, but he knows boxers. “You name a fighter who ain’t got a problem with something,” he says.

Five years ago, Holt walked into Williams’ gym and found, as it has turned out, his salvation.

“Some of the older trainers in Long Beach swore up and down he couldn’t fight,” said Williams, 42, a former amateur fighter. “Too short to be a middleweight, they said.”

So the 5-foot-9 Williams welcomed the 5-8 Holt (“I knew I could fight”) and put him in the ring against a 6-2 guy, who immediately ran into Holt’s left hook.

Then Holt and Williams sparred.

“He stuck me once,” Williams recalled. “I knew then I could develop this kid. I weigh 215 pounds and have pretty solid arms. I said if a little guy can hit that hard, he can be a middleweight champ.”

Holt didn’t know what he wanted to do then.

“I told him to take his time, I’d be here,” said Williams. “He had been in trouble a couple of times. I stuck with him. I told him he was a good kid.”

It is going on 6 when Holt arrives.

“I had steak and a salad at Sizzler at 1, then went to sleep,” Holt says as he gets into Williams’ van. “Well, more like I laid in bed thinking.”

During the drive to the Spruce Goose for the fight that evening last week, Williams says: “You were supposed to have been here at 4:30, son. This is a professional fight, you can’t come when you’re ready.”

Holt had expected to play football at Poly High School. “I was the baddest running back coming out of there,” he said.

But he never reached the varsity, dropping out of school in the 10th grade because of family problems.

Like many fighters who have sprung from the inner city, Holt’s background has a blot on it.

He was an accessory (“it was my car”) in an armed robbery.

“I’ve never been a follower or in gangs,” he said. “I’ve always been strong-minded. Never a criminal-type guy. I was just hanging out one night with the wrong crowd.”

Holt spent two years at the Youth Authority in Preston, Calif.

He said he never sought violence but often could not avoid encountering it in his neighborhood--a few blocks northeast of downtown--where a challenge often waits at every corner.

“I was in a lot of (street) fights,” Holt said. “When I was a kid, my older brothers would punch on me. You learn how to handle yourself.”

Holt sits in the dressing room with other boxers. His fresh blue trunks and white shoes are placed on a table by Williams.

Barry Miller, Williams’ assistant, rubs Holt’s arms.

A man with a Santa Claus beard enters and asks, “Is there a boxer in the house?” The red letters on his white coat read “Roger A. Thill, MD.”

Holt takes off his hooded sweat shirt so the doctor can take his blood pressure: 126 over 70. Pulse 68.

With an hour left until the fight, Holt waits, his eyes closed.

“You’re in this all alone, I don’t care who’s with you,” he says. “I just pray and think, pray and think. Every time you step in the ring, it could be your last day.”

An official comes in and gives him deep pink boxing gloves.

Holt has based his life on God and boxing. He brings a Bible with him to Williams’ gym.

“By reading the Bible and talking with the Lord, I can read and spell and write,” said Holt, whose reading level was at the sixth grade when he dropped out of Poly.

“Boxing gives me peace of mind,” he said. “I pray when I jog. I pray when I box. Lord knows, I don’t think to do nothing I did when I was young. It’s worse now, ‘cause that crack (cocaine) is out there.

“A lot of my friends are encouraging me to keep on boxing. They’re prayin’ for me, that’s why I’m the people’s hope. They want a different life. I tell them they can do it, to take that first step. I don’t club. I don’t go to parties. I just box. Go home, rest. Get up in the morning and run.

“This (boxing) takes the anger out of you. You ain’t gonna want to go out (to the street) and beat up on nobody. I use boxing to get away. I can let out frustrations. Nothing can get me angry. A guy ran into my car (the other day), I didn’t get mad.”

At 7:35, Holt has his hands wrapped by Williams.

“Dream of a lifetime, this is it,” Holt says softly.

Williams rubs Vaseline over Holt’s body until its muscles reflect the fluorescence of the ceiling lights.

Joe Dumas, a Long Beach businessman and Williams’ partner, who will man the water bucket in Holt’s corner, comes in to greet his fighter.

The gloves go on. Holt starts to sweat.

Warming up, he is bobbing and weaving all over the blue carpet, punching Williams’ bare palms.

Splat, splat.

Holt, a murkiness in the white of his eyes, talks to himself between punches . . . “Take my time. Pace myself. Bust him up. Make him respect it. Pound for pound. Make him miss. It’s my town.”

He pounds a right into Williams’ left hand.

“You think you’re bad,” taunts Williams, slapping Holt’s sides. “You’re scared.”

“I ain’t scared of nobody,” says Holt, throwing rights and lefts, backing Williams into the candy machine. The other boxers watch this flurry of energy, transfixed.

“His mom gave him a bottle instead of hugging him,” Williams says. “That’s why he’s mad.”

“I can box too,” Holt tells himself. “I ain’t gonna get tired. Can’t nobody hurt me.”

“If it hadn’t been for boxing,” Holt said, “I might have been like the rest of them. . . . dope sellers.”

And if it hadn’t been for Williams.

“The bottom line is he’ll listen to me,” Williams said. “As a fighter he ain’t got nothing to do but train and work, train and work. I’m like a father to him. He’s lookin’ for that love. He’s never been taken care of.”

Williams purposely tries to get Holt mad before a fight.

“He wants me to build up a killer instinct,” Holt said. “The sport is to hit and not be hit, but I don’t look at it to kill no one or break their nose.”

But Williams said, “He gets mean, he likes the roughness.”

Holt leaves the dressing room and goes out past men and women holding drinks and climbs into the red-aproned ring, far below the great wing of the huge white wooden plane, to face, for $300, Charles Wilson of Pasadena. It is as if this fight is being staged outdoors on a Tarmac. The domed ceiling is so black above the ring’s white lights that it seems like a moonless midnight sky.

A combination of rights and lefts excites the crowd of about 700 and sends Wilson backward toward a corner in the second round. Wilson slips and falls.

“Take him out, babe; come on, son,” Williams calls from the corner.

As Holt slugs away in the third round, Wilson covers his head. From a ringside seat, Gene Layton, a burly former pro football player and now a Wilson High School coach who helps Holt financially, yells, “Let’s go, Anthony.”

Before the fourth and last round, Williams sprays Holt with a mist of water .

Holt finishes the fight defensively, running out of gas.

After the final bell, Holt raises his hands in victory. So does Wilson.

“We have a majority decision,” announces the referee.

One judge calls it even, the other two favor Holt--barely.

“The winner . . . the people’s hope . . . Anthony Holt.”

In the dressing room, Williams tells Holt, “Good fight, son. . . . you could have done better.”

Holt says he wasn’t pleased with his overall performance, but that injuries were largely responsible.

“He never hurt me,” says Holt, lying across three chairs, praying and holding a blue ice bag on his face.

A few days after the fight, Holt was still excited about his victory.

“It’s a big lift for myself and the people in the community,” he said. “It gives my community something positive to look at.”

It gives the people--as Williams envisioned when he changed Holt’s nickname from The Hammer--hope.

“I had older ladies, friends of my mom, come out of nowhere hugging and kissing on me,” Holt said.

He visited a park in his neighborhood and looked at the statue of Martin Luther King Jr. on which is inscribed “I have a dream.”

“So does he,” said Williams. “To be the world champion.”

Holt’s face, yet to be marred by his profession, broke into a smile, which revealed perfect white teeth.

“I feel like a champion already,” he said. “Of life.”