Shreya Reddy | Reporter
Gabby Drees | Videographer
Emma Calabro | Photographer
Wearing the gloves for the first time felt odd and awkward, Lance said. Starting out, he didn’t feel like he was good at the sport and didn’t truly enjoy boxing until age 13.
Over the years, the Williams' family has collected memorabilia, including family polaroids, youth sports playing cards, boxing images, and clippings from various accomplishments. Dusting off old Heinz boxes tucked neatly away, decades of history was stored, preserving sport's legacy in Muscatine over time.
“You have to be able to manage the time for something you actually like,” Lance said. “I’ve seen a lot of people over the years when it comes to that time in life, that’s when they dwindle away from the sport because they just can’t find the time to be able to manage it. You have to find an occupation that is willing to work around a hobby which is very hard to do."
He found this in a career that requires him to rise before the sun is up, preparing for a long day at the Gerdau Wilton Steel Mill in Muscatine. After a grueling eight hour shift, Lance does not have the luxury of returning home.
Monday through Friday, Lance Williams leaves for work at 5 am, does his own personal workout 12 hours later, and begins coaching at 6 pm. "One thing I was always taught is that hard work doesn't come easy, and things that you love definitely ain't gonna come easy," Lance said.
Every punch, shout, right hook and upper cut is real. He moves expertly and deftly through the ring, shadow-boxing with an opponent who is not truly there, but one whose presence can be felt. He anticipates every move before it is made, dodging punches and moving lightly on his feet.
A blur of arms and gloves, Lance is in his element when in the ring.
Boxing is a sport he has learned to call home through the Muscatine Boxing Club, a pillar in the Muscatine community and the oldest active amateur boxing club in the city.
55 years later, Lance is president of the Muscatine Boxing Club and head trainer for the boys and girls he trains day in and day out, after the countless number of fans roared at every bout over his historic tenure.
BOASTING BOXING PROWESS
Amateur boxing in Iowa came to prevalence in the early 1920s, gaining traction with the establishment of the Hawkeye Boxing Team in the river town of Muscatine.
Reflecting a broader nationwide trend with the emergence of the Golden Gloves amateur boxing tournament in Chicago, Hagermann and Slack's motivation for opening the gym came amid the peak years of the sport.
According to the Dubuque Encyclopedia, a longtime sponsor and backer of the sport across the country and largest active veterans organization in the U.S., the American Legion, gutted its boxing program in 1963, shifting a medium once reliant on large donors to a more independent, local environment.
The Muscatine Boxing Club’s founders did just that, curating a gym focused on spirit, integrity, and community from a handful of boxers who had a love for the sport.
As rules in amateur and professional boxing shifted and the sport gained national prowess, boxers, trainers, and administrators alike saw their passion fueled by the greats in the late 1960s and 70s, including Mohammed Ali.
Mick Hagermann's old pair of boxing gloves
Ronald Williams Sr. kept the mentor's gloves from his boxing career. The gloves seen here have since developed as the sport has changed.Roughly 50 years later, the Muscatine Boxing Club would go on to host its own Silver Gloves Tournament for the very first time, a testament to its start in the amateur boxing industry in 1948, according to the Muscatine Journal.
Ron Williams Sr., Lance’s father, said boxing has becoming well regulated over the years, with rules changing on both the amateur and professional side.
They got it now, where boxing, even if you don't get hurt and somebody throws five punches on you, the referee will stop the event and give that guy a standing knee count, even though it didn't really hurt,” Ron said. “They want you to respond back in amateur boxing.”
Churning out greats like Lance and his brother Ron Williams Jr., the latter of which had the opportunity to fight in the National Junior Olympics and train at the Olympic training center three times, the gym’s historic tenure as a staple in the Muscatine community launched Lance’s career, turning a pivotal sport into an outlet for the now professional boxer.
The evolution of the boxing gym, the Williams' legacy
Over the course of roughly 80 years, the Muscatine Boxing Club and Williams family have evolved together, with success and struggles along the way.
A BOXER IN THE MAKING
A longtime boxer starting at the age of six and entering his first competition at the ripe age of seven, Lance said he has always taken after his older brother, affectionately known by his family and friends as “Ron Ron.”
“I never would have started boxing if it weren’t for my older brother,” Lance said.
Ron Ron got his start in the boxing industry long before his younger brother, spanning across two decades.
After years of playing baseball and disliking an outfield position, Ron Ron switched to boxing, spending countless hours in the gym, training under Slack, Hagermann, and his father.
At 16, during his first fight, Ron Ron remembered one thing: the feeling of needing to pee — a lot. This, however, was always overridden by a sense of confidence.
“I still had that nervousness inside but what I always tell my boxers now is that when you put any doubt in yourself, you have already lost the fight,” he said.
Outside of the gym, Lance barbeques on weekends, inviting over his biological family and gym family to enjoy the peace and quiet of his porch. Here, (Left) Ron Ron reflects on Lance's boxing career. "To follow in my footsteps, I think, he started that, then he kind of created his own path, where he definitely had his own style." Ron Ron said.
After a long run along the highway, Ron Ron would tell his younger brother that he wasn’t going to carry him home and that this sport is what he has always wanted to do.
He would often tell Lance on the side of the highway after a long run that this sport was what Lance wanted to do and that he wouldn’t carry the young boy home.
“He followed in my footsteps but then I think he started to create his own path where he definitely had his own style. I was the one who wanted to go in there and end things and he was the one who wanted to go in there and razzle things up, make things try,” he said.
Opposite his brother, Ron Ron always found himself wanting to end a fight every time he stepped foot in the ring. Watching Lance take the sport as a passion as long and as far as he has was something Ron Ron admired.
The boxers at the gym have always loved Lance’s insight, Ron Ron said, even if they hate his work ethic and what he puts them through.
Lance does pad work with Jack Zaehringer (center) while young boxers Mark Bereza and Jax Bereza wait for their turn to work with Lance. Lance's professional fight sponsor and longtime friend, Dave Scott, spoke to the gym's goals of keeping kids off the streets, saying, “He (Lance) is there for their fights, whether they win or lose, and if they lose, he's the first one to go say, ‘Hey, champ, you're going to get them next time.’ Build the young mind back up, keep their confidence up, and send them out again, and just like I said, there's 10 other stories, just like Jack, where he's done it.”
Over the years, Lance found his groove in amateur and professional boxing, traveling the country with his brother, coaches, and father Ron, a focal point in the Williams brothers’ lives as well as at the club.
Ron did not have a past in boxing but rather, was a street fighter. Growing up in an apartment near an alleyway, he said fights would break out, with kids betting on how long a single knockout would take.
“I was always telling my kids that you didn’t get a trophy or nothing. All you get is cracked teeth and beer all over you because you don’t know who your opponent is going to be,” he. said.
His interest in coaching, however, came from Hagermann and Slack at the boxing club, who saw his physique at the time and knew he was physically capable of coaching boxing.
“Fear didn’t take anything away for me and I was a plain blackboard for them where they could put something on me and it could be developed,” Ron said.
His motivation to coach boxing and encourage his sons to do so as well, Ron said, came from his desire to keep something that had long been history going.
Ronald Williams Sr.
Ron uses the gym as an opportunity to give back to the community in more ways than one, emphasizing proper safety before jumping in the ring, discipline, and passing on life lessons to the people who train with him. Ron preaches self-love as a backbone to navigating life's challenges. “We got these kids only two hours at the most. Some like to stay in the gym longer than that, turn the lights on and off, but we only got them two hours, and the world's got them for 22 hours. Those two hours, you could put a lot of good in somebody, and what happens with the other 20-some hours, they got to deal with the world.” Ron said.
Time and time again, as father and coach, he has seen one common quality people are looking for the minute they step foot in the gym: support.
“What they needs is somebody that is going to help them believe in their self. It is not a matter of believing in me because I don’t have to be there for the rest of their life, but it’s a matter of believing in yourself,” he said.
Ron has found that over the years, coaching has not changed him as a person despite the numerous individuals that come in looking to find community in the sport.
“That’s one of the things people like about being in the club. Whatever medicine I give one person, I’m giving it to the same person, and the next one,” he said.
(Above) Ron and Lance supervise as Iris Ambriz, in the purple shirt, leads the group in calisthenics near the end of their training session. Ron chooses a new boxer to lead the group every day, encouraging them to speak up and be confident during their turn. (Bottom left) Ron coaches Kinsgley on his form while working with the bags. Kingsley balances boxing with school and a job, noting that it was very tiring initially but has improved with time and by paying attention to what he eats and how much he sleeps. (Bottom right) Lance uses the noodle to help coach Mark Bereza, left, while Aurelio Perales and Kingsley work on footwork and jabs. “My father used to be the one that would always be up there at the top of the ring, he'd be the first one getting in, and I would be the one like sliding him the bucket and be on the outside of the ring, and now it's reversed,” Lance said.
“My coach, rest in peace Mick, he told me that my talents that I have, they’ll take me places. They’ll allow me to do things, see things, make money that people that I know will never be able to do, but that means nothing if I don’t give back,” Lance said.
Mick’s advice drove Lance into a second career: coaching. To Lance, coaching changed the way he viewed boxing, becoming the guy on the outside of the ring looking and seeing what your fighters are and aren’t seeing.
In 2009, he turned professional and received his coaching certificate: hitting two milestones in his boxing journey.
“When you get back in the ring and you are the one competing, you also see things that are just a lot different than what the fighter you always were used to being sees,” Lance said.
(Left) Lance reflects on his awards from the years, including six Iowa Golden Gloves belts, some of which he has placed in the coffins of his friends and family who have passed. (Right) Lance and Jack banter at a barbecue hosted at Lance's home. Jack considers the Williams family his biological family. “Ron will tell people, ' Hey, have you met my son, Jack?’ They'll be looking at me, you know, because there's clearly a difference, and they'll start laughing,” Jack said.
“Helping these kids out is everything because a lot of these kids don’t have much help outside of the gym. Some of them don’t really have anything,” Lance said. “They don’t have security, safety, knowing that you aren’t going to be judged just for talking about how you feel in life or anything like that."
This documentary encapsulates the sense of family created in the gym amid hardships and strife, and the continuance of a long lineage of boxing greats.
CREATING A NEW LEGACY
With the club’s historic impact on the Muscatine community, boxers from across the city, of all ages and demographics found their “second-family” under Ron and Lance’s leadership.
Kingsley Fernandez, 15, with three years under his belt at the club, first joined the club after a series of anger issues, Juan Fernandez, Kingsley’s father, said.
At age three, Kingsley’s mother stepped out of his life and Fernandez put his son in counseling after he began getting upset at school and showing signs of depression.
“My wife, then fiance at the time, said we had to put him in something because of these anger issues and that wasn’t going to go well with him in the future,” Juan said.
Kingsley has been training for three years, learning his fundamental knowledge through his late coach Micheal "Mikey" Enriquez. Kingsley has since been training with Lance while waiting for his first official fight. Boxing in an official amateur bout can be rare due to the need for a sanctioned event and the tedious matchmaking of weight, age, and level.
“It was welcoming. You open the door and it was the vibe. It’s just like a friendship and the spirit around it. Just knowing that my son was going to be okay with them every single day,” Juan said.
As a part of the boxers' daily routine, Ron and Lance have the trainees engage in a series of calisthenics exercises, with one individual leading the group.
“I could go home and lay down and know that he has another family here. Nothing is going to happen to him down here [at the gym] because I know Ron Ron and Lance will always protect them. It is his second family,” Juan said.
Kingsley echoed a similar sentiment with his mentors playing a pivotal role in his boxing journey, one that has led him to his first bout in Cedar Rapids.
Donning an all-red outfit, Kingsley's face lit up with a grin during his first developmental bout, a precusor to an official fight for first time boxer competing in the ring, at the Los Primos Boxing Club in Cedar Rapids.
Shouts of "Bring it up", "Get off the ropes.," and "Kingsley circle" coming from Ron, Lance, and Jack echoed through the gym, one double the size of the Muscatine Boxing Club, as Kingsley's friends and family watched anxiously from the sidelines.
"My heart is racing so fast," Erika Fernandez, Kingsley's stepmother, said.
“I could go home and lay down and know that he has another family here. Nothing is going to happen to him down here [at the gym] because I know Ron Ron and Lance will always protect them. It is his second family,” Juan said.
Kingsley echoed a similar sentiment with his mentors playing a pivotal role in his boxing journey, one that has led him to his first developmental bout,a precusor to an official fight for first time boxer competing in the ring, in Cedar Rapids.
Donning an all-red outfit, Kingsley's face lit up with a grin before and after his fight at the Los Primos Boxing Club in Cedar Rapids.
Shouts of "Bring it up", "Get off the ropes.," and "Kingsley circle" coming from Ron, Lance, and Jack echoed through the gym, one double the size of the Muscatine Boxing Club, as Kingsley's friends and family watched anxiously from the sidelines.
"My heart was racing so fast," Erika Fernandez, Kingsley's stepmother, said.
During the match, Kingsley said Lance walked him through controlling his breath and focusing on his opponent's, Maximus Chynoweth, a young fighter with two bouts under his belt, fight style.
"When the first round started and everything went quiet, it was crazy to me," Kingsley said. "It was like something I never felt before."
After three years spent sparring under the guidance of mentors like Lance, Ron, and Micheal "Mikey" Enriquez, Kingsley found the bout to be special due to all the work he had put in.
“That is why I chose boxing. It isn’t just a place that I go. After the problems with my family on my mom’s side and the seven siblings over there, I learned how to cope with it through boxing,” Kingsley said.
This mentality has been instilled by coaches long before the Williams family, starting with Hagermann, Slack, and Ron, motivating boxers to take what they want out of the sport.
After his uncles, former boxers at the Muscatine Boxing Club, encouraged Jack to join the gym, he took up the sport, boxing alongside adults as the only kid in the room.
Lance and Jack banter with Angel Perales during training. Going behind the scenes at Lance's pro fights, Jack sees Lance as a role model. “Being in the back with him, seeing how he gets nervous before he fights too, and how he works through them, and how he goes and wins, it just gives you another world of confidence.
“Boxing really gave me an outlet for it. I started not caring about what they said because I was in the gym four days a week training with adults, hanging out with people like Lance, and I really grew my confidence where I didn’t care what they said,” Jack said.
The first time Jack got into the boxing ring to spar was with Lance. Jack felt nervous and at times, was brought to tears. Lance, however, made him laugh.
Jack Zaehringer
"Back then, it was like just me and maybe like one or two other people, so you know, eyes would be on you the whole time," Jack said in reference to his early years at the gym.
Not wanting to embarrass himself, Jack wanted his coaches to see him do great, despite the feeling of needing to puke at every turn and feeling nauseous from the weeks of cutting weight so as to meet the fight requirements.
“It was like I had a tornado in my stomach because of the nerves,” Jack said.
As Jack progressed in the gym, attending his own bouts, the Williams family stood behind him, with Ron often asking people if they had met his son Jack and Lance and Ron Ron being “like a brother to him,” giving him life advice.
Jack Zaehringer
(Above) Lance has always been a brother to Jack, he said, with Ron acting as a second father figure since he joined the gym. (Left) Lance watches as Jack loads weights.“It’s all family love. They’ve seen me grow,” Jack said. (Right) Jack strikes up a conversation with (right) Charlotta Williams, mother to the Williams brothers and the bookkeeper at the boxing club. "I call them all my adopted sons," Charlotta said in reference to Jack and the other boxers. "Charlotta will always call me another son and tell everybody, 'Oh, he's just as much of a pain as Ron Ron" Jack said.
“Boxing gave me confidence, courage, lots of grit, and a feeling of not being able to quit, because if you quit, you are going to get made fun of and no one wants to have that happen,” Jack said. “You just have to put your head down and get your fists up,” Jack said.
Every milestone. Every change in location. Every dollar put into the gym, from donors, to families, to sponsors, to Ron himself, who foots the bill for a boxer who might not be able to pay the full sum. It is all ingrained in family tradition, passed down from Williams to Williams.
“In our gym, we don’t see nobody as being better than anybody even if they have more talent than the next person. It doesn’t make you better than the next person," Lance said.
Lance Williams
(Left) Ron locks the door to the gym around 8 p.m. after all the boxers have left for the day. "People that come in that door, what they need is they need someone that's gonna support," Ron said. "They need somebody that's gonna help them believe in their self." (Right) Lance opens his car door to head home, marking the end of his 15-hour-long day. He will go on to wake up the next morning to do it all over again.