10 minute read
New boxing gym aims to help at-risk youth.
Training for life
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By Carol Diggs
As a professional boxer, George Rivera fought under the name “Wartime.” Growing up poor and mixed-race, he learned to fight to survive. But now he’s taken on a different battle: Inspired by his late sister, Rivera is turning his Charlottesville gym into a nonprofit called Wartime Fitness Warriors, using boxing to help at-risk young people ages 6-24 build strength, discipline, and self-respect.
“Boxing changed my whole mental outlook,” says Rivera, 44. “It gave me purpose. And that’s what I want to pass on to these kids.”
Rivera grew up in the Harlem projects. “We called where we lived the Vietnam Building, because it was war inside and war outside” (thus his boxing name), and when he was a senior in high school, the family got out. They moved to Lake Monticello, where his aunt lived.
“It was total culture shock,” says Rivera. “Farms, trees—I’d never seen a praying mantis.” This was 1996—and many kids in Fluvanna County had never seen a Black-Puerto Rican kid. “Coming where I came from, we were big on respect … so my brother and I would get into altercations. I got labeled.”
After high school, a friend suggested Rivera take up boxing, and connected him with Charlottesville youth coach Joe Mallory, who also ran a boxing gym. Rivera says boxing “helped me with my anger. Hitting that bag, you’re releasing so much tension—it made me calmer, more relaxed, helped me focus.”
Former boxer George Rivera started Wartime Fitness Warriors to serve as a safe haven where young people can build strength, confidence, and self-respect. After Mallory’s gym closed, he went on to train at the Staunton Boxing Club. Within a few years, he was fighting as an amateur (45 wins, five losses), and by 2005 as a pro (14 wins, eight losses, two draws).
But Rivera had a wife and family to support, so boxing was always a sideline. Eventually, he left the ring, but continued his involvement in athletics as a volunteer football and basketball coach.
Then, in 2018, a heart-to-heart talk with his younger sister, Daniela Johnson—“a beautiful spirit”—set Rivera on a new path. In the middle of a conversation one night, “she turned to me and said, ‘You have to get back into boxing, into coaching—you’re great at it. You have to cut that safety net [of having a full-time job and coaching on the side.]’ And I thought, ‘You know what, she’s right.’” A week later, Johnson fell asleep at the wheel on her way home from her night job, and was killed.
Her death spurred Rivera to take the leap and start his own gym, where he could train and coach full-time. Wartime Fitness opened in Fluvanna in 2019, and moved to a larger space in Charlottesville on Juneteenth 2021.
His gym drew a diverse group of clients from all around the area—and a lot of kids Rivera could see “were already getting judged, labeled, or getting bullied. I understood where they were coming from.” He began working intensively with the kids he calls “misunderstood” (he resists the label “disadvantaged”), getting to know their parents and their teachers, becoming another supportive presence in their lives.
“I tell these kids, ‘You don’t have to box competitively; you are here to train yourself, mentally and physically. When you’re in this building, you have to do your best.’ Confidence is powerful, and we’re here to build confidence.”
Rivera’s long-term plan for the Warriors includes renovating a space on Cherry Avenue to include classrooms and computers, so kids can get help on their schoolwork as well as their footwork. “I want this to be a safe haven, a community for them,” he says. In the meantime, Rivera is busy recruiting more club members whose dues will help support the mission, seeking grant money, starting a GoFundMe page, and building ties with schools in the area.
And through it all, he can feel his sister’s presence: “Her energy is here. She was always positive. We’re working to put that back out into the world.”
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