And then there was 1: WBC champ resists temptations that cost many friends freedom _ or worse

Champion boxer survived where friends went astray

ST. LOUIS — Devon Alexander was 7 when his mom gave in and let him join the new boxing program in his downtrodden neighborhood. He came home the first day crying, his nose bloodied from a sparring session with his friend Terrance Barker.

Fifteen years later, Alexander is the WBC 140-pound world champion.

And Barker, like so many of Alexander’s childhood friends, is dead.

Of the 30 young boys who joined Alexander day after day at that gym in the basement of the old police station, at least eight are gone forever. Another 10 are in prison or have spent time behind bars — including Alexander’s own brother.

The beauty of sports is in its power to inspire, with life-changing tales of triumph over adversity. Boxing didn’t simply alter Alexander’s life, though. It might very well have saved it.

“I think about that every day, why did God choose me? Why am I it?” Alexander said, standing a stone’s throw from a makeshift memorial to one of his old pals. “Most of the people that grow up in the ‘hood don’t believe they can make it. They just think that’s all there is to life.

“And I’m a living witness that that’s not true.”

Hyde Park in North St. Louis is the type of place that fosters despair, not dreams. Hundreds of once-proud rowhouses have been abandoned, the boards that cover their doors and windows an admission that no one will be calling them home anytime soon. Vacant lots abound and businesses are few and far between. Money is scarce, opportunities even more so.

Alexander recognized early on that he was starting with a disadvantage. He remembers seeing people taking and selling drugs before he was old enough to comprehend what that meant. He remembers noticing the sudden absence of older people in the neighborhood and realizing they’d been locked up — or worse. He remembers hearing gunfire, and his mom’s command to “hit the deck.”

“I remember me standing by our complex one time, I walked out and there was a guy laying dead right there, by the side of my house,” Alexander said. “I remember seeing that and I was like, ‘Man.’”

Even home provided little sanctuary, what with 13 kids in the family, his dad working at a grocery store and his mom as a day-care provider.

“It wasn’t like we wasn’t a happy family, it was just the situation we was in,” he said. “Minimum wage, 13 kids, how far can you make it with that?”

And while he liked school, and was a good student, Alexander can’t tell you what he dreamed of being when he grew up. Doctor? Lawyer? Police officer? Kids in his situation couldn’t afford to think that far ahead.

“We just thought this was all there was, and that’s all we can accomplish,” he said. “I didn’t really think to be anything until I got older and I was around Kevin, who was teaching me that there was much more to life than that.”

Kevin is Kevin Cunningham, now his trainer. But back in the early ’90s, when the war between the Bloods and Crips was at its height, Cunningham was a St. Louis police officer.

Patrolling the worst of St. Louis’ neighborhoods, Cunningham saw up close the heavy toll gangs and drugs were taking.

“Pulling up to all these homicide scenes, seeing these kids being murdered because of the color of the shirt they’re wearing, because of the color of hat they had on, it got sickening, you know?” he said. “It’s always some young teenager laying there, murdered, and it got old.”

As he rode through the dirty streets, Cunningham thought of what kept him out of trouble when he was younger. He boxed and played football before going into the Army, one season leading right into the other. There was no time for temptation.

So he decided to start a boxing program in Hyde Park, convincing community leaders to let him set up a gym in the basement of the old police station. He made up a flier and took it around to the local schools. Within three weeks, 30 kids were waiting for him at the gym each afternoon.

Few had ever seen a boxing glove before, but it hardly mattered.

“Most of them came from a horrible background,” Cunningham said. “My thing was trying to instill some discipline in these kids where they could go finish high school, maybe some kids would go to college, trade school or something, to where, at the end of the day, you’re going to be a productive citizen.

“That was the goal. That was the mission of this whole thing.”

Alexander showed a knack for boxing early, but he wasn’t the most naturally gifted of the group. Barker, for one, was better when they started. So, too, was Willie Ross, who won a Silver Gloves title alongside Alexander in what was Alexander’s first national tournament.

Like Barker, Ross is now dead, killed in a September 2008 shooting around the corner from the old gym. He was three months shy of his 23rd birthday.

“They were like brothers to me,” Alexander said. “I hate to see such brutal things happen to them, such harsh things happen to them.”

In one case, it was his own brother in trouble.

Vaughn, 14 months older than Devon, was a promising boxer himself, 5-0 as a professional, fighting in Las Vegas and Madison Square Garden on undercards of big names like Spinks, Klitschko and Trinidad.

Now he’s serving an 18-year sentence for, among other things, robbery, attempted robbery and assault of a law enforcement officer. How, he wonders, did he go so far astray?

“My mother always told us to be our own leader, not follow what everybody else was doing. He did exactly what my mother told him to do,” Vaughn said, speaking from the Potosi Correctional Center, about 75 miles south of St. Louis. “Me, I did that, too, but I just guess I took a wrong turn somewhere and now I’m paying for it.

“He just stayed on that path to potential greatness.”

The two boys once won Junior Olympic titles almost simultaneously, fighting in rings set up next to each other. They talked often about how far boxing could carry them, how it could change not only their lives, but those of everyone in their family.

But like so many other kids in the neighborhood, Vaughn fell in with a bad crowd: people who spent their nights in clubs, people who got mixed up with drugs and alcohol, people who stole cars, people who were in gangs.

“Devon got it the first time,” Vaughn Alexander said. “He never took his eyes off that prize. He never took no wrong turns. He didn’t want to make no fast money. He didn’t want to do those things to jeopardize that No. 1 goal.”

Added Cunningham, “If trouble is over there, Devon is going the other way. That’s just who he is.”

In fact, the few times Alexander did take his brother up on the invitation to go out to a club, he found himself wondering why he was wasting his time there when he could have been training.

“Without dedication, you can’t make it in boxing. Trust me,” Alexander said. “That’s what the guys that I started with didn’t have, the dedication.”

Boxing is primal and brutal, not a sport one simply “does” like basketball or tennis. A boxer willingly absorbs dozens of blows each fight, to say nothing of the hundreds of hours of sparring and intense cardiovascular training it takes to get ready for a bout.

It takes a discipline and commitment few people have, and those who are serious are quickly separated from those who aren’t.

For Alexander, it was never a choice. He loved boxing from the first day Cunningham put the gloves on him, grinning and laughing when he heard that drumlike “pop-puh-puh-puh-pop” of leather on leather.

So when the other boys cut their training runs short, ducking behind buildings and stopping as soon as Cunningham was out of sight, Alexander kept going. When everyone was urging him to “just hang out,” he kept walking.

And when his friends realized the drugs that were already all around them could be an easy means to those new clothes, sneakers and cars that every teenager wants, Alexander spent even more time at the gym.

“I just stuck with it,” he said. “I don’t want to sound too perfect, but I just never wanted to do anything like that. I played basketball sometimes, but either I was worrying about school or I was worrying about boxing.”

He made his professional debut while he was still in high school. Nine months later, he was on the undercard when Zab Judah claimed the undisputed welterweight title from Cory Spinks, Alexander’s friend and training partner, before a sellout crowd at the Savvis Center. It was the first major bout in St. Louis in more than 40 years.

Alexander wasn’t even 18 yet.

“Everybody knows who my brother is,” Vaughn said, his voice filled with pride. “They always ask me questions about him. I just let them know he deserves the position he’s in because he’s worked hard for it.”

Just 5-foot-7, Alexander looks small in the ring. But the natural southpaw is extremely athletic, with excellent speed and enough power to win. He doesn’t get flustered, either.

England’s Junior Witter, Alexander’s opponent in the Aug. 1 fight for the WBC junior welterweight title, is an unorthodox fighter, yet Alexander handled him easily. He dominated for most of the fight until Witter retired after the eighth round, handing Alexander the title. It was only Witter’s second loss since June 2000.

The American let loose with a guttural scream after the fight and then broke down, overcome by everything he’s accomplished — and endured.

“I propped my belt up on the pillow in my hotel room. I actually slept with it,” Alexander said. “When I woke up, that’s when it really hit me I was the world champion.”

It was equally emotional for Cunningham, who never envisioned anything more than keeping a few troubled kids off the streets when he began this journey.

“All those years of driving the highways, going to tournaments, staying in hotels, doing this, doing that, you’re not thinking about a world title and all that stuff,” Cunningham said. “You’re just thinking about helping the kids.”

Though Alexander has a title, he still can’t afford a champ’s lifestyle. There is no mansion, no stable of luxury vehicles — no luxury vehicles, period — no diamond-encrusted jewelry.

At just 22, though, he is a young world champion. With so much of his career still ahead of him, he has the potential to be a memorable fighter. Add in his brilliant smile and endearingly cheerful personality, he could even be the star the sport so desperately needs.

But Alexander, who is promoted by Don King, hasn’t fought since Witter. There is talk of featuring him, Marcos Maidana, Amir Khan and Oscar De La Hoya protege Victor Ortiz in a junior welterweight tournament on HBO, similar to Showtime’s widely successful “Super Six World Boxing Classic.” So far, though, nothing is definite.

So Alexander trains, just as he always has.

Cunningham left the old police station back in 2000, setting up a gym in a rec center on the south side of the city. And Alexander now lives in a quiet suburb, a 20-mile move that may as well have been 2,000.

But memories of the neighborhood and the boys who didn’t make it out are never far away, trailing after him like ghosts.

Tucked in his massive scrapbook, between photos and stories about the many triumphs of “Alexander the Great,” are programs from Ross and Barker’s funerals. There is a black-and-white photo of him and Vaughn after their Junior Olympic wins, trying so hard in that teenage way to look grown up.

Posters from some of Alexander’s amateur fights still hang in the gym, and he matter-of-factly recites the whereabouts of the other fighters pictured. Ross, Barker, Ladale Evans, Johnny Hubbard — all dead. Vaughn and a few others in prison.

On and on and on it goes.

For all but one.

“I’m the only one standing now. It saddens me to see that, but it motivates me at the same time,” Alexander said. “God said to whom much is given, much is asked. I know I’ve got to do a lot, because I’m the only one here.”