A Fighting Chance

Every Sunday, shortly before noon, a handicapped 43-year-old man parks his battered yellow car on Broadway near 108th Street in South-Central Los Angeles, grabs his cane and boxing gloves, and waddles toward the entrance of one of the toughest gyms in the city.

Dennis Rosenberg, his feet pointing in almost opposite directions from a birth defect, his back warped from cobalt treatments for spinal cancer as a toddler, his left forearm deformed from an implant for dialysis treatments, struggles up a dark, dingy flight of stairs that delivers him to his paradise: the Broadway Gym. After signing in, he begins his grueling two-hour workout that he says keeps him going and inspires the professional and amateur pugilists who train here.

“I tell my fighters to look at all the heart this guy has,” said Bill Slayton, the colorful owner of the gym where he has trained boxers for 40 years. “He’s had some bad breaks but his attitude is the greatest. I’ve never seen him complain about anything.”

Instead of complaining, Rosenberg is into inspiration. He credits the 1970 boxing comeback of Muhammad Ali with inspiring him to bust out of the braces he had worn most of his life and start working out.

Sitting on the apron of a boxing ring that Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard have trained in, Rosenberg, drenched with sweat after pounding the heavy bag, reflects on his life.

“You know, sometimes I think back to this special school for handicapped kids in Long Beach I went to. Tucker School. All these kids, about 100 of us, walking around with crutches, in wheelchairs. I never thought I’d be working out at the [Broadway] Gym. What a lucky guy. I look in the mirror sometimes and, hey, I know I’m kinda messed up, but I feel pretty good. And when I’m working out here, it’s like a dream. A really nice dream.”

Now he is something of an inspiration to many at the gym. Last Sunday, as two amateur heavyweights sparred, another prospect watched Rosenberg limp up to a heavy bag and begin an assault.

“I guess I don’t have much to moan about,” said the muscular young fighter.

Rosenberg has even earned the respect of a former heavyweight champion of the world.

“He doesn’t let anything hold him back,” said Mike Weaver, who held the World Boxing Assn. crown from 1980-82. “He’s such a nice guy, too.”

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Rosenberg grew up in Long Beach. When he was 18 months old, doctors discovered that he had cancer of the spinal cord. Cobalt treatments knocked out the cancer but apparently damaged his kidney tissue, he says. For the past seven years, he has been receiving treatments at Paramount Dialysis three times a week. When he slugs a heavy bag, when he rat-a-tat-tats a speed bag, when he bench-presses a barbell, it’s all part of the struggle to keep the dialysis machine from sapping his will.

“If I didn’t work out so hard, I’d deteriorate,” said Rosenberg, who graduated from Long Beach Poly High School. “Since I’ve been in dialysis, I’ve seen so many people die. You’re talking to them one week and next time you go there, they’re not there anymore.” So Rosenberg rages on against the kidney machine every Sunday.

“When he first came up here, he was almost crawling up these stairs, but he didn’t want any help,” said George Bebelle, the gym’s assistant manager. Bebelle, a burly, 71-year-old former professional boxer from New Orleans, starts to get teary-eyed as he looks at Rosenberg sweating profusely on a treadmill. “He’s my friend.”

A few years ago, Rosenberg worked part time at the Belmont Station, a club in Long Beach where he was a doorman on nights when there was a cover charge. One night, his training paid off when an unruly would-be customer refused to pay the cover.

“This really big, drunk guy started picking on me,” Rosenberg said. “I didn’t want any trouble, but he kept saying, ‘You got a problem? Let’s take it to the street.’ ”

It was big mistake by the big drunk.

“He caught the guy with an uppercut and he went down in a big heap,” said Larry White, the club’s bartender. “He never bothered Dennis again.”

Still, Rosenberg insists that he is not out to prove anything.

“I’m not a handicapped guy that wants to beat up anybody,” Rosenberg said. “I’m not trying to prove I’m a tough guy. I’m just out there trying to experience life. Trying to enjoy life.

“Basically I think you have to look into yourself and figure out what you want to do,” he said. “I set by example. I can’t tell people anything. But if they look at me, then look at themselves, they kinda figure it out.”

Rosenberg, who lives alone in a Long Beach apartment, supplements his state disability income by working part time as a deejay at the Belmont Station.

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Although there are many gyms in Long Beach, Rosenberg picked the Broadway facility because of its reputation as a no-frills, old-fashioned boxing gym. “I didn’t want to go to a fancy gym,” he said.

After his workout, he carefully removes his hand wraps, packs his gear into a gym bag, says goodbye to Bebelle and gingerly descends the darkened stairwell.

On Broadway, as part of the weekly ritual, he sits on the hood of his car and eats a paper bag lunch.

“This cop I know that works around the corner asked me if I was crazy for being out on the street here,” said Rosenberg, who is white, in this mostly black neighborhood.

“I’ve never been bothered by anybody here,” said Rosenberg, looking around the neighborhood, quiet on a bright Sunday afternoon except for a few people walking toward a storefront church. “There’s a lot of disadvantaged people around here. But, they’re trying to make it. Trying to enjoy life, too.”