Emanuel Steward

He turns youth into world champions

manuel Steward, son of a coal miner from the hollows of West Virginia, is the only person who legitimately can claim to have spread the name of Detroit across the country and around the world as the Home of Champions.

    From the Kronk Boxing Club, a shabby, one-ring gym in the basement of a city recreation center on Detroit’s near-southwest side, Steward trained more than 60 amateur champions, who collectively won some 140 titles, including three Olympic gold medals.

    Twenty-seven Steward fighters went on to win 40 professional titles and purses worth more than $150 million.

    It is a record unmatched in the history of the sport.

    “Emanuel’s contributions to Detroit have been enormous,” says Grosse Pointe businessman Sam Lafata. “I’m involved in various charity work, and whatever you ask of Emanuel, he’s there. He’s one of the few who will never turn you down.”

    Thirty years ago, it was Steward who turned to Lafata for help.

    “I was at work,” Lafata recalls, “when I looked out the window and saw this green-over-gold Cadillac pull up. Out piled Emanuel with Tommy Hearns and Mickey Goodwin. They were trying to get money together to go to a tournament in Ohio, and somebody told them I might help.

    “I looked at this kid Hearns — he had legs like a penguin, skinny arms, bugged-out eyes — I said, ‘Do you think you can win?’ Emanuel said, ‘Absolutely.’ ”

    Lafata rented a bus and soon found himself jammed into an Ohio motel room with Steward and a dozen of his fighters.

    Hearns — who would go on to win half a dozen world titles — won his bout “before the other guy could blink,” Lafata says, and Goodwin won as well, as did almost all the other Kronk fighters. The legend was born.

    Three decades later, the legend is still growing. Steward, 56, still trains champs in every weight class — his current stable includes featherweight champ Prince Naseem Hamed and world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis.

    The old Kronk Gym in Detroit has never been busier. Steward has opened a branch in England; others are planned for downtown Detroit and Cleveland.

    Now a multimillionaire, Steward still lists as his greatest accomplishment winning the 1963 National Golden Gloves championship. But as a trainer, Steward’s formula remains the same: “I deal with very small details, more so than most people,” he says, “and I’m very aware of the psychology of my fighters, what it takes to motivate each one of them.”

    Steward travels the world now, training his champions and announcing fights for HBO, but his residence, and his heart, remain in Detroit.

    “Detroit is home — I get an infusion of spiritual energy when I come home,” he says.

    “I have to go home to get charged up again. When I get off that plane in Detroit, I feel like somebody just added an extra 100 years to my life.”

   

— Fred Girard