Max Ortiz/The Detroit News Emanuel Steward in his home in northwest Detroit reflects on the early days of the Kronk teams. Behind him are the photos of his boxers.

Part 3 -- Formula for the future

    It was at the moment that Steward, established the formula for future Kronk greatness: Find them young, nurture them carefully and watch them bloom.

    “He’s a great trainer because he takes young kids that come into a gym with no knowledge of boxing whatsoever, and turns them into champions,” said Augie Scimeca, 67, a trainer-manager who owns Augie’s Gym in Philadelphia and a fight-game veteran for more than half a century.

    “All these other trainers, the fighters came to them when they were already established — the fighter makes the trainer,” he added. “Did they ever start a guy off and take him to the top? No.

    “Emanuel is like a bricklayer building a house. He knows if the foundation is crooked, it will never stand. He knows you have to teach these kids a lot more than just how to throw a right cross.”

    One of the first fighters Steward trained in 1970 was an 11-year-old boy with jaw-dropping power and speed, Bernard Mays, who came to be known as “Superbad.”

    The next year Kronk’s team won 21 consecutive bouts to win the Golden Gloves team championship, all seven fighters titleists.

    Soon it seemed every good boxer in Detroit wanted to fight for Steward and Kronk.

Max Ortiz/The Detroit News Ten-year-old Todd Douglas works on his shadow boxing at the Kronk gym. Todd took up boxing seven months ago and works out every day after school.

    For more than a decade, Kronk fighters in their distinctive red-and-gold outfits criss-crossed the country in Steward’s old gold Cadillac, winning one national tournament after another.

    They lived hand-to-mouth — once 16 people shared four Egg McMuffins before a 10-hour trip home; another time Steward had to sell his watch for gas money. Steward learned to sell insurance to pick up some of the slack.

    But people went in their pockets to help the legend grow — especially the late Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young, Grosse Pointe businessman Sam Lafata and Tigers star Willie Horton.

    Million-dollar bouts were becoming more common in boxing in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, and Steward’s amateur champions wanted their piece of the action. One after the other as they turned 18, they turned pro, and Steward promoted them into more and more lucrative bouts.

    Fighters moved to Detroit from other parts of the country — including Hilmer Kenty, in from Columbus, Ohio, who became Kronk’s first pro champion.

    Venerable Detroit sports columnist Doc Greene had a saying: Boxing is like a corkscrew. Sure it’s crooked — but if you straighten it out, what have you got? And true to that tradition, Steward had a brush with that side of the sport to land Kronk’s first pro title shot.

Part 4 -- The big break