Author: Sean Crose
When I was a teenage man growing up in Waterbury, Connecticut, in the 1970s and 1980s, sports were king. It seemed like every kid in the neighborhood played on the basketball or baseball team. Fathers, perhaps disappointed that their dreams had not come true, could actually be harsh with their sons and daughters. As a teenage man in Waterbury, I played sports too, but what I loved…what I really loved…was boxing. The problem, of course, was that my mother wouldn’t let me box at the local boys club. If I wanted to box, I had to watch it on TV.
Which I did constantly every chance I got. I really wanted to see boxing live, but as a child my father wasn’t too keen on me being part of the very adult boxing audience. There was no live boxing in Waterbury either. It just wasn’t there. You would think so. Waterbury was a tough town, but unfortunately there was no way to watch professional fights live and in person. Willie Pep once had about 20,000 people in Waterbury Municipal Stadium, but that was long before I was born. There were a lot of boxing fans in Waterbury, but not a lot of boxing fans.
Fortunately, everything will change soon, because on June 6, professional boxing will finally return to Waterbury, and Mike “The Savage” Kimbel will be the main character of the gala at the legendary Palace Theater. To make things even more compelling, Kimbel is from Waterbury himself, so he’ll be performing for a hometown crowd. Of course, the youngster has a lot to lose, but the local player is confident.
“The intensity is still high,” he tells me when I ask how he’s doing as training comes to an end. Originally, one of the opponents was supposed to face Kimbel, but it didn’t work out that way. “He became just like a ghost,” Kimbel says. Fortunately, a up-to-date opponent will step in, which will be good for the teenage athlete hoping to impress his hometown fans.
“I feel amazing,” Kimbel says of the Waterbury fight. He also admitted that the June 6 card was associated with “a bit of the word ‘I told you so’.” Like many teenage children growing up in hard cities and towns, Kimbel had hard times. Suffice it to say, his mother was not joyful with the direction her son’s life was heading.
“My mom was fed up with it,” Kimbel says. Determined to keep her son straight and narrow, Kimbel’s mother took him to the gym. “It kept me out of trouble,” he says. And then some. Kimbel first made a name for himself in mixed martial arts, becoming a Bellator fighter. Eventually, however, he found himself in the squared circle he had always dreamed of.
“It was supposed to be overtime,” he says of his real-life experience in the ring. Needless to say, he fell in love with the sport. “I have always been a huge boxing fan,” he says. Indeed, Kimbel believes that his time in mixed martial arts has done him good. “It carried over,” he tells me. It certainly seems to be the case. Kimbel’s movements in the ring are characterized by natural fluidity. He has an excellent jab that allows him to unleash a powerful law.
However, Kimbel makes it clear that his boxing endeavors are about more than just glory. “I started it for my son,” he says. He also spends time with younger players through the Police Athletic League. “You can see the change in their eyes,” he says of how children, like he once did, began to become familiar with the sport.
While his upcoming performance in Waterbury is satisfying in its own right, Kimbel still feels he still has a lot of growing to do as a professional boxer. “History is still being written,” he says.
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