Blood, guts and sweaty balls

>> Legendary Montreal boxing coach Abe Pervin remembers a long and bruising career

by CHRIS BARRY

Nobody ever wants to believe me about this, and not to blow my own horn or anything, but back in the day I was one motherfucker of a bitchin' amateur boxer. Weighing in at an intimidating 105 lbs, I tore up the ring at the Montreal West Police Boxing Club for a good two years before finally giving it up to pursue more traditional teenage recreational activities like taking drugs and participating in deviant sexual practices with Grade 7 girls.

The Montreal West Police Boxing Club was a real old-style gym--a boxing gym the way you would imagine one to be after watching too many of those black and white fight flicks that they used to make in the '40s and '50s. It was dirty, always smelled of genitalia, and the coaches were all these hardened Irish guys from the Pointe who would take you into the ring and whack you about with one hand while smoking a cigarette with the other.

Abe Pervin, the endearing 81-year-old alleged tyrant who donates 40-50 hours a week of his time to running the boxing facilities at the Claude Robillard Centre in beautiful downtown Ahuntsic, is the last of a dying breed--one of those old-school guys who could have learned me my first one-two suckerpunch back in my athletic heyday. Coming off as a kind of Jewish version of Burgess Meredith's character in Rocky, Abe's crusty ole persona is in marked contrast to the otherwise sterile confines of the shiny, ultra-modern athletic complex.

Good old days

Pervin's been involved in Montreal's amateur boxing scene since 1936, back before hot-shot teenage fighters had their own masseuses and when there was so little money allocated to the sport that many of the local clubs were forced to build their own equipment. "We had a few sets of gloves lying around," he remembers while giving me the grand tour of the offensively clean facility, "but that was pretty well it for store-bought gear."

A promising fighter in his own right, in the early 1940s Abe was forced to abandon his career in the ring after contracting some weird skin disease that was both caused, and aggravated, by shaving and then getting whacked in the face with a boxing glove too many times. Not prepared to spend his youth sporting a giant beard or with big ugly welts on his face, he hung up his gloves and took up coaching while serving overseas in the armed forces.

And he's been doing it ever since--nurturing countless local fighters to greatness and eventually landing the gig as head coach of the Canadian National Team in the 1976 Olympics.

"We had some strong boys in those Olympics, but politics got in the way and a lot of countries ended up pulling out of the games," he recalls now with a certain degree of bitterness. "I think a lot of the judges resented how our government handled the situation and chose to take it out on our boys. Stuff like that held us back. That was the last time I coached the Olympics. Once was enough."

New breed of bruiser

And the kids he trains these days, are they as tough as the bruisers of yesteryear? Could any of them have lasted a couple of rounds going up against an old-time thrasher like Jem "the Gypsy" Mace? Or are they all just a bunch of spoiled pussies who work out on Stairmasters and don't even realize that to be authentic, a true boxing gym--even one as highly regarded as the Claude Robillard Centre--has to be smoke-filled and smell of sweaty testicles?

"It's definitely a different breed of boxer that I work with today," Abe tells me as we watch a couple of flat-faced young women go at it in the ring. "These kids don't have the guts and the stamina that we had years ago. Back then every fight we got in to was a battle. Now it's a lot more technical and there are fewer injuries, which is good, obviously, but the sport is definitely not like it used to be."

I mention to Abe that I've noticed there seems to be a hell of a lot of chicks training in the place and he informs me that these days close to one-third of the membership at the boxing centre is female, something that doesn't faze him in the slightest but that I find oddly arousing--loving a good catfight and everything.

"It's different training women--a little more difficult," says Abe. "There are certain feminine problems they have, but a lot of these girls have talent and are really dedicated to the sport. Occasionally they end up having to spar with the boys but it's never really a problem. Most of them can hold their own and the boys generally understand how to proceed when sparring with a girl.

"You know, we try and accommodate everyone who comes in here and wants to box," Abe continues. "But there have been a few exceptions over the years. One time we felt really bad because we had to refuse a youngster who had a bit of trouble with his hands. He didn't have any, you see. He had lost them to some sickness. Only later did we realize we probably could have arranged for something that would have kept him happy--but he was long gone by then. Once in a while people in wheelchairs come in to punch the bags, and that's fine, we welcome that."

Old but spunky

I wonder if, as a Jewish boxer, in a province widely accused of having a rich history of anti-Semitism, he was ever forced to encounter any unpleasantness as a result of his ethnicity? "Not really," he says. "We were a pretty tough group training at the YMHA back then. Every once in awhile somebody would call one of us a dirty Jew but these things didn't happen all that often. But I do remember in the early 1950s training at a gym on Durocher in the McGill Ghetto and these two muscular German guys who I suspect had been in the Hitler Youth came in to work out. I could understand some of the things they were saying about us in German, and let me tell you, I didn't like it very much."

Battling bitches, invalids, Nazis and a legendary 81-year-old coach who still has enough spunk in him to have just returned from a week at the Canadian National Championships in Halifax and is all set to jump straight back in to his 50-hour work week at the gym. No wonder observers acknowledge that the Robillard Complex is one of the top five in the country--a local gym that is open to everyone but which also serves as the training centre for big-shot pros like Eric Lucas and Stéphane Ouellete. And, at the cost of $75 for a four-month membership, you've got to admit that it seems like a bona fide bargain, even if the place don't exactly smell right.