http://www.foxsportsmidwest.com/07/29/10/Devon-Alexander/landing.html?blockID=279788Devon Alexander is the person your kids should look up to. Devon Alexander is the person you should look up to. And despite the fact that he’s younger than I am, Devon Alexander is now the person that I look up to.
Devon grew up in the Hyde Park area of north St. Louis. This is as close as you can get in America to growing up in a war zone. When he was a kid, his mother had a “Drive-By” drill, where Devon and his 12 siblings would have to hit the deck, acting like they were avoiding gunfire. Sadly, too often, this drill was put in to use. Nearly all of Alexander’s childhood friends are dead or in prison. “You really become numb to it,” Alexander says. “You become numb to gunshots, fighting, stuff a normal kid shouldn’t become numb to. It was sad to see every week someone that I knew getting killed.”
When Devon was eight, his older brother Vaughn showed up at Kevin Cunningham’s Hyde Park gym to try his hand at fighting. Cunningham, the city Police Officer who’s goal it was to pull at-risk kids off the street through boxing, saw Vaughn and one of his fighters slap-boxing in the street. “Vaughn challenged one of my kids, Willie Ross,” Cunningham remembers. "This kid was a veteran, he knew what he was doing, but Vaughn held his ground, and after one round I said, ‘Hey, stop, you wanna box. You come back tomorrow and you can be a part of this team.’ And when he came back the next day, he brought his eight-year-old brother Devon with him."
Vaughn Alexander was the more talented of the Alexander brothers. He was on the fast track for boxing stardom, and while there were hopes for Devon as a youngster, he was thought of more as a gym rat than a future world champion. But Vaughn is in the Potosi Correctional Facility serving an 18-year sentence for armed robbery and assaulting a sheriff. And Devon, the less-talented gym rat, is headlining an HBO card in his home city. “It’s sad that now he’s suffering the consequences. It’s hard to wake up every day just knowing that he’s in a place with murderers, people in there doing life.”
When training in Las Vegas, Devon and his five-man team, featuring Cunningham and older brother Lamar, live in a modest, Don King owned house two miles from the Strip. It’s the same house that Mike Tyson used to stay in when he was a young champion training in Vegas. Devon is staying in Tyson’s room, sleeping in Tyson’s bed, but unlike the former “Baddest Man on the Planet,” Alexander isn’t sneaking out at night to party. He’s in bed every night by nine and up every morning by five.
As good of a boxer as he is, ”Alexander the Great” is an even better person. As training camp is winding down, three times a week, Devon and his crew takes the one-hour drive to Mount Charleston where he runs four miles at an elevation of eight thousand feet. “Four miles, but it feels like eight,” Devon says. As we’re following him in a car, two miles in, barely sweating, Devon asks me through the window if I’m tired yet. Then he flashes the kind of smile that only a superstar has. When we get to the end of the road, I tell Devon that we missed a few shots, and we need him to run the four miles straight up hill again. He knows I’m joking, but he’s ready, willing and able to if we need him to.
Later, at Barry’s Boxing Gym of the gritty Industrial Road west of the Strip, we need adjust Devon’s microphone in between rounds on the heavy bag. It takes a bit longer than we want, and Devon is upset. Not at us, but at the fact that he was about to throw 1200 punches in one three-minute round to finish his bag work. Floyd Mayweather usually does this drill throwing 1000. Devon takes his anger out on the bag.
Kevin Cunningham has been with Devon since he was eight years old. No one else has ever taped Devon’s hands. “Thousands of times,” Alexander tells us, “Way too many to count.”
Through all of his amateur fights, and his 20 professional fights, Cunningham has been there. He’s been in the gym with Alexander literally for thousands of hours. But today something sounds different. The brilliant rhythm of a magnificent fighter honing his finely tuned skills is still there. But today, there’s something extra. Instead of playing a soft snare drum, he’s playing a loud tympani.
Yahoo! Sports boxing writer Kevin Iole says Devon reminds him of former bantamweight champion Tim Austin. Trainer Kevin Cunningham says his charge reminds him of Henry Armstrong, one of the greatest fighters of all time. The truth is he is probably somewhere in between. “It’s going to end with me being a hall of famer,” Devon says not boastfully, but matter-of-factly. “I’m working towards me being on the pound for pound list and being hall of fame material. Any guy I get in the ring with is in trouble because I haven’t accomplished that yet.”
With a win against Andriy Kotelnik on August 7th, Alexander will be one fight away from propelling himself into the boxing stratosphere. With wins against other 140-pound champions Timothy Bradley or Amir Kahn, he’ll move into the top five of boxing’s pound for pound list. From there, the sky is the limit. No 23-year-old is a hall of famer, but Devon Alexander has the skill, heart, work ethic, and personality to get to Canastota one day.
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