Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Eric Williams, 14, shadowboxes Wednesday at Champs Gym in Roanoke. The gym is named for a Roanoke boxer.

James Cabbler gives water to Eric during a break from a sparring session. Cabbler's nephew opened the gym three years ago.

Christopher Penn takes a break from sparring Wednesday.

Mont'e Dunnaville (left) and his brother Dont'e, both 14, work out Wednesday at Champs Gym in Roanoke. Their mother agreed to let them try boxing so they wouldn't be on the streets.

To 14-year-old Mont'e Dunnaville, 6-foot-8 James Price is the world's tallest boxer. Yet, there was Mont'e in the ring with Goliath one night this summer.

"He said he had a match coming up, so he let me hit on him as hard as I can," Mont'e said.

"I kept hitting him with my hooks into his rib cage. He said it started to hurt, and then the bell rang and he let his ribs cool down," Mont'e said. "Then he wanted me to do it again."

This sparring session of sorts was at Champs Gym in Northwest Roanoke. Mont'e and his identical twin brother Dont'e weren't there that night just to help Price get ready for his third professional fight Saturday at Salem Civic Center.

The brothers were there because their mother wants them there and because a group of men who love boxing are reaching out to help the young men of the city.

Mont'e and Dont'e live about a block from the gym, which sits on 17th Street between Orange and Melrose avenues. They walk down an alley for boxing lessons every evening.

Their mother, Linda Lawton, was walking past the gym nearly three months ago with Dont'e when she stopped to speak with Victor Banks, the owner of the building and the founder of Melrose Athletic Club, a nonprofit organization that operates the gym. She wanted something for her boys to do this summer.

Boxing sounded like a good idea to her, and it was an easy sell for the twins.

"I always liked boxing and boxing video games," Dont'e said. "I wanted to see if boxing was going to be a real test, and then it turned out it is."

A bigger test has been keeping a gym open. This is the second incarnation of Champs Gym, named in honor of Roanoker Earnest "Champ" Cabbler, who fought as a pro heavyweight in the 1950s and '60s under the name Ernie Cab.

Champ and his younger brother, James Cabbler, opened a gym on Melrose in the early '70s. Over the next two decades it moved three times, then closed after Champ died in 1995.

Banks, a nephew of the Cabbler brothers, founded the Melrose Athletic Club in 2003 because he wanted to provide a drug-free atmosphere for the neighborhood's youth. About three years ago, the gym opened. There were only a handful of boxers at first, but now there are 25 to 30 who train there. A few of them are professionals.

"The guys would always go around saying, 'Man, I could box, but I ain't got nowhere to box,' " Cabbler said. "So we figured we'd open up one for them."

Avoiding trouble

Banks and the others who volunteer at Champs want the gym to be a positive alternative to the trouble that awaits young people on the streets.

Mont'e and Dont'e have seen the trouble that others in the neighborhood and at school have gotten into. So has their mom.

"She says, 'Be in boxing so you won't be on the streets doing crime and stuff, because crime ain't going to get you nowhere, but boxing can help you succeed in life,' " Mont'e said.

There are at least two boxers in the gym who can back her up.

David Novia, who will fight his second pro bout Saturday in Salem, and B.J. Rucker, an amateur who grew up Queens, N.Y., have different stories but the same message.

Novia, 34, grew up in Southeast Roanoke and wishes boxing had been an option for his aggression then. He said he got in fights every weekend, and smoked and drank too much.

Novia was 22 when Rick Hawkins opened Victory Boxing Club at Victory Stadium. Hawkins, the promoter for Saturday's boxing show and one of the volunteer trainers at Champs, closed Victory in 1997, but today he is Novia's manager.

"[Boxing] gave me better jobs throughout my life," said Novia, who today is married and has two children and a steady job at ITT Night Vision. "I've learned to control my temper. It's hard to say where I'd be without boxing. Boxing is a good guiding tool. Thank God for boxing."

Rucker, 22, hasn't experienced the troubles Novia has, but he has seen what those troubles can bring. He grew up in the projects in Queens.

"Guys that I looked up to, at first all they did was play sports, but when they got older then they turned to other things," Rucker said. "They got in trouble. Drugs was heavy in my neighborhood. A lot of shootings was heavy in my neighborhood."

Rucker said his mother was always pushing him toward "better things." Basketball was his sport then, and he played point guard for his high school team. His routine was to come home from school, do his homework, then go to the recreation center and play basketball until 9:30. Hanging out on the street was against the family rules.

One day following high school, Rucker walked into the renowned Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn. From that moment, he said, he wanted to be a boxer. He's 8-4 as an amateur and has been a regular at Champs since moving to Roanoke about four months ago to be near his father.

"Any sport I was ever in was my distraction from destruction," Rucker said.

Champs' future

The tiny gym has room for only a single boxing ring. Banks recently acquired a used competition ring, but he has no place to put it. He wants to expand, renovating a bigger building next door or building a new gym on the vacant lot on the gym's other side.

Banks said Champs has produced three state amateur champions and three runners-up the past three years, and he wants that success to grow into holding at least three amateur shows a year in Roanoke.

The gym has a large enough staff of trainers to keep things going. In addition to Banks, Cabbler and Hawkins, there is two-time light welterweight world champion Frankie Randall, who moved to Roanoke in May. The others are David Viar, Abdul Muhammad and Danny Witcher.

"I'm lucky to have the volunteers that I have, because they not only volunteer their time, they go into their pocket, too -- we all do," Banks said. "They all love the sport of boxing. That's why they're here."

The twins' future

Mont'e and Dont'e are acquiring that same love for the sport. They watch Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Joe Frazier and Joe Louis on ESPN Classic, and they've seen all the "Rocky" movies. They want to be heavyweights, and they dream like all boxers do of becoming a legend.

Dont'e wants to teach other young people to box. He plans on setting a good example, and proving that people can accomplish anything they want.

Mont'e plans to give most of his money away to his family and to charity. And he promises not to show off his fame.

Fame and fortune are no guarantee, though, and that's why their mother wants them in the gym.

"She said, 'If you like a sport, go for it,' " Mont'e said. "She said she don't want us to grow up to be a punk. She wants us to grow up to be tough so we can raise a family and be the man of the house."

The twins have other interests. Both play clarinet in school bands. Mont'e will be a freshman this fall at Patrick Henry High School and Dont'e will be an eighth-grader at Woodrow Wilson Middle School.

Mont'e is considering going out for football next year. Dont'e wants to be a college basketball player.

Mont'e's career ambition has been to be a doctor, but he says boxing is now on the list. Dont'e isn't sure yet, but he can't imagine a life without boxing.

"I really like the speed and the movement and the power when you hit somebody," Dont'e said. "It feels like nothing can stop you."

A while back, it was decided in the gym that the twins could spar for five rounds. Dont'e credited Mont'e, who is a little bigger, with winning three. Mont'e called it even.

Hawkins said it was quite a show to see them go at each other, and that it was more pleasing to know that these two young men were in the gym and far from the street.

"When we walk in, everybody shakes our hands," Dont'e said, "and says, 'Glad that you're here.' "