By: Sean Crose
When I was a young man growing up in Waterbury, Connecticut back in the ’70s and ’80s, sports was King. It seemed like every neighborhood kid was on a basketball team or a baseball team. Fathers, perhaps disappointed with how their own dreams didn’t pan out, could actually be hard on their sons and daughters. I too engaged in sports as a young man in Waterbury, but what I loved… what I really loved… was boxing. The problem of course was that my mother wouldn’t allow me to box at the local Boys Club. If I wanted boxing, I had to watch it on TV.
Which I did constantly every chance I got. I really longed to see boxing live but being a kid my father wasn’t too keen on me being part of a very adult boxing audience. Also there wasn’t live boxing in Waterbury. There just wasn’t. You would think there would be. Waterbury was a tough town, but sadly the professional fights weren’t available to see live and in person. Willie Pep had once packed about 20,000 people into Waterbury’s 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.
Fortunately that’s all about to change, for on June 6th professional boxing will finally return to Waterbury as Mike “The Savage” Kimbel headlines a card at the legendary Palace Theater. To make things even more interesting, Kimbel is a native of Waterbury himself, so he’ll be performing in front of a hometown crowd. There’s a lot on the line for the young man of course, but the local fighter is confident.
“The intensity is still there,” he tells me when I ask how he’s doing now that training is winding down. One opponent was originally supposed to face Kimbel, but things didn’t work out that way. “He went completely ghost,” says Kimbel. Fortunately a new opponent will be stepping in, which is good for the young athlete, whose hoping to impress his hometown crowd.
“I feel amazing” Kimbel says about fighting in Waterbury. He also admitted there’s “a tiny bit of I told you so” involved with the June 6th card. Like many young kids coming of age in tough cities and towns, Kimbel had some rough going. Suffice to say, his mother was not pleased with the direction her son’s life was heading in.
“My mom had enough of it,” Kimbel says. Determined that her son be on the 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 his mark in mixed martial arts, becoming a fighter for Bellator. Eventually, however, he made his way to the squared circle which was something he always dreamed of.
“It was supposed to be a runoff,” he says of his real ring experience. Needless to say he fell in love with the sport. “I’ve always been a huge boxing fan,” he says. Sure enough, Kimbel feels his time in mixed martial arts did him well. “It transferred over,” he tells me. That certainly seems to be the case. There’s a natural fluidity to Kimbel’s movements in the ring. He possesses an excellent jab which allows him to release a powerful right.
Yet Kimbel makes it clear that his boxing endeavor is about more than just glory. “I kind of started for my son,” he says. He also spends time with younger fighters through the Police Athletic League. “You see the change in their eyes,” he says of when the kids begin to get the hang of the sport, as he once did.
Although his upcoming Waterbury appearance is rewarding in and of itself, Kimbel still feels he has a ways to go as a professional boxer “The story is still being written,” he says.
