Where the noble art spells redemption
The Cuban Academy in west London not only turns lives around, it also trains potential champions
In an unprepossessing basement in a part of the capital that has yet to play host to the forces of gentrification, Timon Asiaama-Southgate is thwacking at a heavy boxing bag. Lean, muscular, sharply coordinated, he hammers away at the leather with a steel-eyed concentration.
As he bounces and punches, it seems almost impossible to imagine that as recently as 2012 he was living on the streets, adrift, entirely without prospects. Now, five years on, the young welterweight has a home, a job and is gripped by a burning ambition: to follow Anthony Joshua and become a world champion. The upturn in his expectation is all, he reckons, thanks to the day he happened upon the Cuban Boxing Academy.
“This place changed my life,” he says, as he takes a breather from the seven hours of training that he undertakes every day. “They really, really look after you here. When I was on the streets I can tell you it was tough, scary. But when I came here, I started to believe in myself. Really, my life started here.”
As transformative venues go, the academy is not exactly flamboyant. Housed in the two-room basement of the Harrow Club – the west London community centre financed by charitable donations from old boys of the public school – this is not somewhere that shouts about itself.
But pick your way alongside the motorway flyover, down a set of steps so vertiginous they might challenge mountaineer Chris Bonington and the moment you open the door it becomes immediately clear this is a place with a purpose.
Inside, dozens of intense-looking folk bounce and bop and shadow box. Sweat seeps down the walls.
In one corner, Asiaama-Southgate readies himself for a sparring session. In the club’s ring, a schoolgirl British champion is working the pads held up by her coach. In the cupboard that doubles as a changing room, a polyglot of languages is being spoken as the next group prepare themselves for action. To fit any more people in here would require a crowbar.
“We don’t turn anyone away,” says Micah Watkis, one of the coaches. “Which means at times it’s been so full in here, we’ve spilled out into the stairwell. It’s like this seven days a week, we’d love to bring in even more if we could. Because one thing is for sure: the need is out there.”
What is going on here is the Joshua story being retold on a daily basis. The champion heavyweight is happy to admit that before he was invited along to a boxing gym he was a lost soul, in danger of sinking into criminality.
His life was turned around by what he encountered there. And according to Watkis, at the academy a similar possibility is open to anyone, whatever their capability.
“What we’re doing is the job that youth clubs used to do when we were kids,” he suggests. “We offer a sense of belonging, of identity. Come here and you learn discipline, you’re taught values, your self-worth grows. Anyone and everyone is welcome here. You just want to come here and just enjoy yourself, that’s fine by us. That said, if you want to become world champion, this is not a bad place to start.”
Among those who have arrived since the club was opened seven years ago by Marcos Camejo, the former coach of the Cuban national team, is Mo Al-Hueidi. Now in his thirties, he came to London from Syria on a student visa and sought to stay on as his home country disintegrated.
“I happened to meet Marcos one day and he just said come along to the gym,” he says, in between swapping shadow punches with other members of the adult beginners’ group. “It was so relaxed, and he was very open to all different levels of boxing. You need a release of energy in life, physically you need to get it out, get your frustrations out there. It really boosts your confidence when you learn to stand your ground.”
Now working in family mediation, he says he would happily bring anyone who is in need of counselling along. Boxing, he says, has a profound cure-all capacity. “Actually, I have recommended some kids who I met through my work to come here. It is hugely helpful if you have maybe lost your way a little in life.”
What marks the club out, Watkis says, is that it offers a variety of different ways of engaging with the sport, all taken equally seriously. There is everything from classes for the more advanced in age (a 63-yearold local woman is a regular), to debate-boxing sessions for youngsters.
In these, participants box for a minute, then stop for five minutes to discuss topics of the moment, before boxing again. The most recent motion was: should Facebook be banned for the under-16s?
“Our motto is nobody gets hurt,” says Watkis of the youth sessions. “Parents don’t have to worry. Over the years, the most damage we’ve had is the odd nosebleed.”
But then, if anybody wants to progress and take the sport to a higher level, with coaches such as Camejo to guide them, there is every chance they can.
“One hundred per cent I want to turn pro,” says Asiaama-Southgate. “That wasn’t the ambition when I first came here. It took me a while to realise I was good at it.
“My family is from Ghana, they didn’t want boxing, they wanted me to get an education. I tried that, but then I fell on hard times. Boxing saved me.”
Anthony Joshua knows exactly what he means.
‘It’s been so full in here we’ve spilled out into the stairwell’