Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Champs Gym's trainer James Cabbler, 65, stands behind David Novia to coach the fighter on the speed bag at the Roanoke gym.

Champs Gym trainer James Cabbler pounds a speed bag at the Roanoke gym.

James Cabbler (back) watches 154-pound fighter David Novia throw punches in the ring at Champs Gym.

He arrives in everyday clothes and heads for the locker room at Champs Gym on a Tuesday morning.

He emerges in a T-shirt, Everlast boxing shorts over a pair of long johns and boxing shoes.

Next he wraps his hands like he's done it a million times.

In the ring, he's moving his feet, blocking punches. Beyond the ropes, his soft voice makes the conversation he's having with the puncher unintentionally private.

Next he's back in the corner on the other side of the ring wearing out the speed bag, then the big bag. You see him talking to a boxer and demonstrating technique, but again, the discussion is inaudible.

When he speaks -- which is sparingly -- those who know James Cabbler always listen.

"He's like a tough guy in a Western movie," says Nick Viar, an amateur boxer who trains in this unassuming gym, which is much like the man.

Viar thought some more, then likened Cabbler to a hero in an Ayn Rand novel. The kind of hero who inspires, is worth admiring, who isn't superhuman but does exceptional things.

"The heroes in her books almost mirror him exactly," Viar says.

Viar's hero has the forearms of a home-run hitter, the upper arms of a weightlifter and the waist of a dancer. Even more surprising is that Cabbler is 65 years old but continues helping to train almost 30 boxers at this gym tucked away on a side street in Northwest Roanoke.

These young boxers keep him young and in great shape.

On this morning, he's working with David Novia who is preparing for his second professional fight this Saturday at Salem Civic Center. After four fast-paced rounds of working the mitts with Novia, 34, Cabbler asks the fighter nearly half his age if he wants to go again.

"He's 60-some years old and he can go with you and more -- that's what gets me," Novia says. "He's got a lot of drive, a lot of motivation. It motivates me."

There are a trio of reasons that get Cabbler to continue training boxers:

He wants Champs Gym to be known as a place where boxers are taught the right way.

He wants the gym to produce a champion.

And he wants boxing to return to the status it used to have -- the sport that drew Cabbler to it in the first place.

Learning the fight game

Cabbler's longings to see his vision through trace to his younger days when his brother Earnest, who was 15 years older, was a professional heavyweight of some renown fighting under the name of Ernie Cab.

Cab, who was known as "Champ" to all those close to him, lost to Sonny Liston -- a future heavyweight champion -- in 1958. Everyone who frequents the gym can tell you about it when the subject is broached.

The story goes that Champ had Liston beat until a cut above Champ's eye caused the fight to be stopped after eight rounds.

When Champ moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., to train at Gleason's Gym, Cabbler went with him and learned to box.

"The stuff he was teaching me, that's the stuff I want these guys to learn," Cabbler said. "He would teach me all the fine points, old-school stuff. Stuff trainers nowadays don't teach no more."

In 1972 or 1973, Cabbler isn't quite sure, he and Champ opened the first Champs Gym, on Melrose Avenue near Lowell's Restaurant, and began to train boxers.

Later, the gym moved downtown on Fifth Street, then to Williamson Road and finally to Salem Avenue near 10th Street. When Champ died in 1995, the gym was no more.

Champs Gym came back in 2003 at its present site when Cabbler's nephew, Victor Banks, founded the nonprofit Melrose Athletic Club and opened the gym on 17th Street between Orange and Melrose avenues.

Cabbler, the eighth of 10 children, partnered with Banks and with his brother Alfred "Stymie" Cabbler to reintroduce Champ's original vision. Stymie has since died, but Cabbler is as motivated as always.

"I feel like they're looking down waiting on it to go big; waiting on us to produce a champion," he said. "It was all our dream together. I'm just trying to keep it going."

Old-school style

There are a half-dozen other trainers volunteering their time at Champs, but as Banks says: James is "the heart and soul of the gym."

He's there every evening, watching them, instructing them and working out with them.

Cabbler teaches what he and others at the gym call old-school boxing. He uses the word techniques repeatedly when he talks about what he teaches, and he believes this education gives all of the boxers who train with him a chance.

"It's like playing football or basketball or anything," Cabbler said. "The team with the best techniques is going to win. And a good gym with the best techniques -- the gym will win eventually. Eventually we're going to produce better fighters."

B.J. Rucker is a 22-year-old amateur who moved to Roanoke this year from Queens, N.Y., to live with his dad. He has quickly developed a chemistry with Cabbler.

Rucker says he admires his trainer's humble ways so much, that he has come to understand his own need to be that way to make it in boxing.

"I just roll with James -- if he's talking, you listen," Rucker said. "He tells me to do something I don't go against him never, ever.

"He knows too much about the sport. I've just been doing this for three years -- James been doing this his whole life."

Cabbler has seen a lot of boxers and a lot of styles. When he sees fighters on TV doing things the wrong way, he figures they're just getting by on guts.

Cabbler isn't interested in working with "gut" fighters. He wants them to box the right way, the way Champ taught him. He figures that's their best chance to succeed.

"When Muhammad Ali came into being and forgot about techniques, a lot of trainers did [as well,]" Cabbler said. "Everybody wanted to dance and float and sting like a bee, float like a butterfly and all that. That's not old-school boxing.

"Old-school boxing is the proper techniques. Techniques like Joe Louis used to use. Proper way to hold your hands, proper way to throw a punch, proper way to hold your feet. There's a proper way for every technique in boxing."

Back in the ring

Novia works a night job, so Cabbler spends an occasional morning with him fixing all of the flaws, as Novia puts it.

After the bag work, Novia is back in the ring working on technique, throwing punches at the air. And Cabbler watches carefully and calmly instructs.

"They don't want to be hollered at," Cabbler says. "You get more out of them if you just talk to them. You don't get nowhere arguing with people. If he's got it in his heart to make it, he's going to do it and he's going to do it right. He'll listen to you.

"That coaching style they've got on some of the football fields it's all right for football players, but it ain't right for boxers. You've got to keep their minds relaxed. You can't make them tense."

When the training session is over, Cabbler takes a long, cool drink of water. A towel is draped over his shoulders replacing the sweaty T-shirt, and he stands alone looking at the ring.

It's not hard to guess what he's thinking about.