Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

A new boxing gym has opened in Tazewell where men, women and youth can learn boxing techniques to compete in the sport or for their fitness and mental health benefits.

Brave Boxing and Fitness was opened earlier this month by Robyn and Jesse Canter. The gym is located at 1520 North Broad Street in the Pizza Inn Shopping Center and is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, noon to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and by appointment on Sundays. They also offer tutoring and mentoring in a family atmosphere.

Anyone interested can get involved by stopping in to see Robyn at the gym.

“We sign all the forms and go over their goals— are they wanting to use it for health and fitness, are they wanting to compete, are they wanting to use it to help them with their past hurts? Because boxing helps with anger management, self esteem, it really helps you love yourself more,” she said. “A lot of people have this bad taste in their mouth toward boxing. They think it’s very violent. They don’t quite understand how life-changing it can be. You’re challenging yourself emotionally, mentally and physically all at the same time.”

The gym operates as a non-profit and accepts sponsorships to provide scholarships for young people who are unable to pay. They also have a variety of plans and a sliding scale of fees to fit in anyone’s budget. A monthly membership is $65 for adults and $50 for children and includes unlimited access to the gym and all classes as well as one-on-one instruction from a boxing coach. There are also women’s fitness on Mondays and Thursdays for $5 per class and includes low impact dancing and shadow boxing.

“Our mission is to empower men, women and youth through the art of boxing and nobody should be denied that due to income restrictions. We believe everybody should have access to that,” Robyn said. “Everybody that comes in speaks to me first and we go over whether they’re able to pay or not and we work with them the best we can.”

Coca-Cola of Middlesboro and The Realty Group are two of the gym’s sponsors.

Jesse Canter is the main coach at Brave Boxing and Fitness. He said he started boxing at age eight and trained in the same gym in Lorain, Ohio, with pros Wilkins Santiago and Angel Figueroa. Jesse went on to master martial arts over 20 years and even had his own school for martial arts.

Robin started training at Owen Beck’s boxing gym in Middlesboro and soon had a dream of having her husband, Jesse, coach her and take her to a fight.

“I actually went to my first fight in September and he was my corner guy,” she said. “Doing that sort of inspired him to become a boxing coach.”

“I never quit boxing,” Jesse says. “But I mastered the martial arts and had a school for martial arts. Now I want to give back to boxing.”

The Canters credit working with Beck and John Foust for inspiring them to open their own gym.

Jesse said the benefits of the sport start with the mind.

“Everybody thinks boxing is about punching people, but you’ve got to think. If people are playing chess, that’s a battle of the mind that’s going on between two people. Boxing is the same, you’ve got all of your pieces and you’ve got to think your way through it. You’ve got to strategize,” he said. “It’s not really about fighting somebody else, it’s about you. You are your biggest enemy, you’re the worst enemy that you could possibly have. You beat yourself up every day, everybody does. But in boxing we teach you that if you make a mistake, forget about it, move on and do it better. That’s all you can do.”

He said the only way to make someone a great fighter is to make them forget about all of the bad mistakes that they’ve made in the past and show them a good path to go down to get to where they want to go in the future.

“That’s all life comes down to. But people live in the past so the hardest thing to do as a coach is to teach people that they have a future,” Jesse said. “You can be broken and put back together. I have Parkinson’s, look at me, I’m still going. I was hit by a car when I was six, I learned how to walk in a boxing gym and they told me I would never walk again.”

It’s lessons like that from boxing that the Canters want to share with the community. They offer tutoring and mentoring services for adults as well as children.

Robyn said walking the path of boxing develops a very close relationship with the coach.

“Because when you want to give up, your coach is pushing you harder. So you’re pushing past what you had originally thought you were capable of doing. You have someone there encouraging you, going: ‘give me one more round, give me one more punch.’  When you walk away, you’re like: ‘Oh my gosh, I wanted to quit but I kept going.’” she said.  “It helps your self confidence and you’re able to apply that resilience to the world. We see that a lot with kids when they get that punch correct or they learn how to jump rope, suddenly the world doesn’t seem so scary or impossible. You’re motivated to chase after more.”

Brave Boxing is in talks with the juvenile court to be able to get referrals for a diversionary program. They also opened their doors as a warming center for the community earlier this month.

“Eventually we’re going to get GED classes or something like that going on. We want to help the community and work with the programs that are already in place to help them succeed,” Robyn said. “Whatever we’re able to do to help the community and however we’re able to utilize boxing to do that, that’s what we’re going to do.”

For more information about Brave Boxing and Fitness call 865-585-5782 or drop by and visit the Canters at the gym.