An Iron Family

An Iron Family — by Juan Pablo Gargiulo

In the city of Austin, the name 'Lord' is synonymous with boxing. Richard "Ironman" Lord has owned the little boxing gym on North Lamar for thirty years.

The gym, nestled between a Threadgill's and a used car dealership, is home to a wide range of characters. Convicts and cops are seen side by side hitting the heavy bags; CEOs hold the feet of dishwashers as they finish a set of sit-ups; sorority girls jump rope alongside professional boxers; a father in his thirties, working the speed bag, plays with his baby daughter in her carrier between rounds. Five beeps of the buzzer signal a new round. Leather rattles chains as heavy breathing fills the room. A young black man shadowboxes against an invisible opponent inside the ropes, dancing under a hand wrap stretched diagonally across the ring; the floor creaks and groans under his body weight as he bounces from foot to foot. The cocktail smell of mildew, sweat, and Vaseline permeate the air.

"Only ten percent of people who come in here are looking to get their nose broke," Lord says to worried newcomers as he wraps their hands with Everlast hand wraps. "Most people never box. They come in and get a workout and hit the bags — get in boxing shape."

He notices the fear on the faces of the newbies when they see the amateurs and pros sparring in the ring, when they hear the heavy thuds of sixteen-ounce gloves landing against forearms and foreheads.

"But," he continues, "for those looking to get their nose broke, we can help them too. We spar on Tuesday and Thursday at three. And also Saturday at nine." He has repeated the same message many, many times — to the point where he can time his hand wrapping to coincide with the end of his explanation. His sense of humor is dry, deadpan and very hit-or-miss; those who laugh at Richard's jokes tend to stick around longer — they tend to be more cut out for the sport.

Most newcomers quit within two weeks. That's why Richard doesn't believe in contracts. He runs a purely cash-for-boxing business. His accounting methods are paper, pencil, and a prodigious memory for faces and names. Sixty a month for students, seventy-five for anyone else.

There are no locker rooms or moist towelettes. There is no air conditioning. No heater. Once, during an ab warm-up, a newcomer asked Richard if he could turn on the heat.

"Okay," Richard said. He walked outside, turned on the neon sign for R. LORD'S BOXING GYM and came back in. "There you go."

Richard is a commanding presence, even at five foot six. He talks to everyone who walks through the door, assuaging any fears they may have. "Oh, epilepsy?" he asks a worried Mexican couple with their young son. The mother nods. "That's no problem. It'll be good for 'im. There won't be no problem with him getting hit. He won't be getting hit — I won't be making any contact." The woman barely speaks a word of English, but she nods. "We'll just hit the bags; work the speed bag, hit the double-end bag — no sparring." He looks over at the seven-year-old boy. "You'll do all the boxing workout, learn how to box, but I won't have you spar. Okay? At least not till you grow out of this epilepsy thing." The boy's face lights up. "So no getting in there and punching people in the face, not till you're older. Might be years from now." The mother and father speak to each other in Spanish. The mother says she will bring the boy back on Lunes and then turns to Richard to tell him, but he already knows. Clients are often surprised to learn that Richard is fluent in Spanish.

Richard grew up in a boxing gym surrounded by Mexicans, Dominicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans. Spanish is practically his first language. He is a trilingual man, speaking English, Spanish, and Boxing fluently.

"See you Monday," he says to the mother, father, and son.

Boxing runs in Richard's blood. His father, Doug Lord, was raised in a Masonic orphanage in Fort Worth. Lord was a name assigned to him, taken at random from a list of surnames beginning with 'L.' When Doug was a teenager in the 1950s, he and some buddies tried to sneak into an amateur Golden Gloves venue in East Fort Worth. They didn't have any money and the promoter offered the young men a "pay or play" deal. They chose the latter, sharing a single pair of tennis shoes and a dirty mouthpiece they found on the floor. The boys were no strangers to street fights. Doug survived to the final bell but lost his bout; one of his buddies would be crowned champ. That marked the beginning of Doug Lord's love of boxing. He became the manager of Welterweight World Champion Curtis Cokes. And for decades he was involved in the Texas Golden Gloves, working as a judge and promoter, eventually imparting his love of the sport to his son.

Some of Richard's earliest memories are conversations about boxing with his father while watching the amateur fights in Fair Park. He was six years old, one year shy of beginning his amateur boxing career — one year shy of winning his first trophy and becoming obsessed.

Richard excelled as an amateur boxer in Dallas, amassing an amateur record of 105-7 before moving to Austin in 1974. His idol was Cokes, who reigned the Welterweight division from 1966-1969 and ran a boxing club in the inner city of Dallas. Richard was the only white fighter.

Cokes took a liking to Richard; he admired the kid's tenacity and fearlessness. Richard's Featherweight body was designed for speed, but he preferred to bruise. And he loved the sport — the craft as much as the action. Cokes took Richard along with him on his professional fights, showing the poor East Dallas kid places like South Africa, Saudi Arabia, France, and Italy. Cokes introduced Richard to the world of professional boxing, but it was his trainer, Tiger Reed, who would encourage him to pursue the sport professionally. Doug Lord was opposed, demanding that his booksmart son put school first. Richard promised his father that he would finish school, following through on his promise in 1974 when he graduated from high school and moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas.

He was twenty when he moved to the city of bats and live music. He was lean with sinewy muscles, and he carried himself deliberately, bouncing around on the balls of his feet, controlling his hips with an almost dancer-like elegance. His trademark rattail hung to his waist, having not been cut since his last loss.

By the time Richard made it to Austin he was a dazzling performer, having perfected his form under Cokes' tutelage and years of repetition. He ducked and weaved close to his opponents, counterpunching with expert accuracy. He marched forward fearlessly, never allowing his opponent to set the pace. He was a master of controlling the distance. A natural Southpaw, he possessed a God-given natural advantage against his opponents. It was a matter of statistics: Orthodox fighters outnumbered Southpaws ten to one. A left-handed fighter like Richard was more experienced against a right-handed fighter than vice-versa.

He would bait his opponents to make mistakes, dropping his front glove to his side, challenging his opponent to knock him out. When the enraged opponent would throw a wild right cross or hook in retaliation, Richard would duck his head to the left, pivot to his opponent's exposed side, and deliver a bone-shattering hook to his opponent's chin. His punches were devastating for their speed and their accuracy. All legs and hips — the payload of force, speed, and momentum concentrated on a single point of contact.

He worked by day as a dishwasher and a parking attendant, shadowboxing and riding a unicycle to keep up his fitness, before running to night classes to study Psychology and Spanish. He lived a dual life inside and outside the ring. In between the ropes he was the North Texas Regional Featherweight Champion. He was known as numbers: 124 pounds; five foot six inches; sixty-eight inches of reach.

In class he was simply "Richard," an honors student with a polite but confident demeanor. To his classmates he was unassuming and nonthreatening. He received his B.A. cum laude in 1978.

The following year he won the Golden Gloves. His father, Doug, stood proudly in the audience as he watched his son receive the belt and jacket. The following year, ignoring his mother's pleas to get a real job, he applied for his professional license. His debut in Odessa lasted two rounds. Like dozens before him, and over a dozen to follow, Richard's opponent hit the canvas and failed to find his feet: winner by knockout.

In nineteen fights from 1980 to 1983 he managed fifteen knockouts. Unlike his opponents, whose punches landed with thuds like hammer shocks, Richard's punches cut the skin. After a few rounds with Richard Lord, opponents would look bloodied like they had been cut with broken glass. He was ranked sixth in the world when he decided to retire from professional boxing. He promised his mother he would give it up by thirty, and he kept his word, hanging up his gloves for the final time on his thirtieth birthday. He was ranked sixth in the world at Super Featherweight, a record of 17-1-1.

Years later Richard would marry a professional boxer named Lori. They would have a son named Tiger who, like his father, was also raised in a boxing gym.

Underneath the boxing ring at Lord's there are a couple of old unicycles.

"What the hell are those for?" I asked Richard one day.

"Grab one and I'll show you."

I reached under the ring and grabbed a unicycle. He did the same. He put one hand on the seat before heaving himself on top. His feet caught the pedals and he rocked backward and forward before he found his balance and took off.

"Outta my way!" he shouted at a group of people, scaring two girls jumping rope on the pavement.

Richard rode out the doors into the gravel parking lot, and back — uphill — into the gym. It was a feat of abdominal strength and balance that you'd never expect from a sixty-year-old.

"Your turn," he said.

I laughed and put the unicycle down. Months later he would tell me that he began training with the unicycle as a kid.

"I used to do a paper route with it," he said to me during one of our jogs.

"Bullshit. That's impossible."

"Seriously," he insisted, "I had a paper route all through my neighborhood. Did it for two years, every morning. Better than a run."

"Why the unicycle, though? Why not a bike or something?"

"Because it's hard as shit!" he said. "Just about the best core workout there is."

Richard has been running up and down the ramps of the Darrell K. Royal football stadium for thirty-nine years. It makes him feel old just to think about it. Every Sunday at 0800 hours sharp. This is his Mass: the rock upon which he built the House of Lord. Those same runs, week in and week out along those same ramps: a single constant in a city in flux.

Hundreds have gone up and down those ramps; thousands, even. Most are still alive, but many have died or moved away. Many have moved thousands of miles away; far from the University of Texas and the bats under the Congress Bridge.

Not everyone gets an invite to the ramps on Sunday. Only the regulars. Like those who get in the ring to spar, only a fraction of those invited show up the first time. And even fewer make it back a second time — once they see how unforgiving those forty-five minutes can be. The people at the ramps on Sunday are an eclectic bunch. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Male, Female — people who, on the surface, have nothing in common. Only boxing. And Lord's Gym.

Richard's Sunday runs are sacrosanct. He reaffirms this every weekend as he finishes his run by looking out over the top of the stadium over his city with his favorite people.

Richard might occasionally crack open a bottle of wine with Lori, but even then he only drinks a single glass before calling it quits. His entire life has been clean: no drugs, no cigarettes, no alcohol, and no "nonsense." He prefers adrenaline. The tiny dot-M tattoo on his ankle, almost impossible to notice unless you were to look closely, is proof of that. The tattoo is the symbol of the Ironman Triathlon World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. Only the best triathletes in the world qualify for the Ironman in Kona. Richard not only qualified, but he excelled, finishing the grueling 70.3 miles of swimming, biking, and running with no trouble. In preparation for the race, he didn't change his lifestyle; he ran his eight miles a day, did his crunches, swam his laps, and rode his unicycle. The level of training was nothing special. His time earned him an invite back to Hawaii every year, as well as the nickname "Ironman." During one of our workouts, when I asked about the tattoo he told me this story, and how he plans on doing it again when he turns sixty-five — just to see if he can. The Ironman is the only ink on Lord's body.

Richard Lord's achievements have turned him into a near-mythological figure. Jesús Chavez, the IBF Lightweight World Champion who would emerge from the gym, remembered running around Town Lake alongside Richard with a mouthful of water. "Breathe through your nose," he remembered Richard saying.

When I asked about this, he scoffed. "That's a load of bullshit. It was Listerine! Mouthwash — not water."

In the center of the boxing ring there is a sticker for Franklin's Barbecue — voted the best barbecue in the United States. Every morning at five AM hundreds of Austinites and visitors line up for a chance at Franklin's world famous brisket. There is no guarantee to get food — when the meat runs out, the meat runs out. Last year, President Obama visited Austin and was allowed to cut the line at Franklin's. People were up in arms. When Kanye West visited earlier in the year, he was denied special privilege. Three people can claim to have skipped the line at Franklin's Barbecue: President Obama, Willie Nelson, and Richard Lord.

March 31st is officially known in Austin as "Richard Lord Day." In 1993, while working as a promoter, setting up professional fights around the city, he organized the first all-women's amateur boxing match. It paved the way for women's combatives in Texas, leading some of the toughest women in the state to seek out Lord's Gym. Anissa "The Assassin" Zamarron, the second world champion to emerge from Lord's Gym, was just one of the success stories. One of the women on that first all women's fight card was a young pugilist named Lori Lazarine. She is now known as Lori Lord.

Richard's days have become routine. An ab workout at 0700 followed by a three-mile run with his German Shepherd, Chica. Another ab workout at noon. A three-mile run at sunset. He has found tranquility in his routine — in the chaos of combat.

In Richard Lord's Boxing Gym you play by Richard Lord's rules. You don't spit in the fountain. You don't park in Richard's spot. You pull the twenty-pound tire before you leave. Three times if you're training for a fight. And you follow the golden rule of the sweet science if you dare step between the ropes: hit as hard as you're willing to get hit.

Richard loves music, from Willie Nelson to David Bowie. But the orchestra of sound in the boxing gym is his favorite melody. The thuds of punches, the Velcro of gloves, the creaking of worn leather bags rattling rusting chains, the whirring of jump ropes, the sighs and groans of professional boxers and regular folks alike, muscles burning. He cannot help himself from jumping in and getting in yet another workout. With his iron family.