Chavez Boxing Gym is among the diverse small businesses around the McDowell Road corridor of Phoenix receiving expert business assistance through the community-based organization RAIL CDC. Supported by LISC Phoenix, the work is one way LISC seeks to unleash talent and level the entrepreneurial playing field, and we weighed in with owner Pete Chavez, to hear his remarkable story, in recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month.
Phoenix native Pete Chavez found a path for himself at the age of 13 when a neighborhood football game turned into a fight. A passing amateur boxer noticed how Chavez put down his larger opponent with “heavy hands.” Chavez went on to a 37-3 record and a Golden Globes title in the amateur ring, winning the nickname “The Punisher.”
But three decades later, the atmosphere Chavez creates in his top-rated Chavez Boxing Gym is anything but punishing—it’s the warm sanctuary where Chavez, with quiet discipline, coaches clients and local kids to develop strength of body, mind, and spirit.
In a strip mall just east of Phoenix’s Midtown, the gym houses Chavez’s bustling business providing one-on-one and group training to clients. It’s also home to his Chavez Youth and Community Foundation, the nonprofit through which this grandson of Mexican immigrants coaches young people who remind him of his own early years.
Chavez’s enterprise is one of nearly five million Latino-owned businesses that together pour $800 billion annually into the U.S. economy, while also enriching the life of their communities—very often despite unequal access to business capital and professional services.
Chavez Boxing Gym is also among the diverse small businesses around the McDowell Road corridor of Phoenix receiving that kind of expert business assistance through the community-based organization RAIL CDC. Supported by LISC Phoenix, the work is one way LISC seeks to unleash talent and level the entrepreneurial playing field.
We reached out to Chavez to hear more of his story.
Can you tell us a little bit about your early life and how it shaped your outlook?
I grew up like a lot of boxers. They come from broken homes. They come from bad areas. My dad wasn't around a lot. I'd always have trouble with my mom, too. I didn't have stable homes with either one. Just like a lot of my kids from my foundation, the kids that don't have role models and structure, that's how I was. My dad used to make us work in the fields, and I thought, “I'm going to do better for myself and I'm not going to be a field worker. I got to get out of this.”
You had this drive, and clearly the talent, to go professional as a boxer. What made you change course in your late twenties?
When I had my two kids, I wanted to give them the world. I had won all these championships, but it was too exhausting, because their mom left us. I was a single dad and I was working as a night stocker at Fry’s Food Stores. It was back-breaking work. I had very little sleep. We were getting these professional fights lined up, and when the third one got canceled, and then I fainted at work, I’m like, “I’m done.”
You were nearly 40 when you started your training business. What was the motivation?
I knew I had a calling. I knew I was good at training, I knew I was good with kids. When I worked for Fry's, they paid well, I had my benefits. It was scary trying to start my own thing. I started with nothing—a gym bag, a jump rope. But I just knew I had it in me. Ever since I was younger, I always wanted to have my own business.
So you bounced around in different spaces over the years. When did you get your current space on North 16th Street?
We've been here less than three years, because we were at 24th Street and Oak for five years. COVID is what hurt us. That almost ran me out of business. I got turned down for loans. I had to take a lot of money out of my own savings to keep the gym going. The landlord tried to raise our rent. So I just rushed to find another place and even though it's half the size of the other one, it works out perfect.
How do you set the tone in your gym?
Our atmosphere here is a lot different from other gyms, and that's what people love. We're a real gym, but I don't do the tough-guy stuff. I'm really friendly, nice to everybody.
And because I've been there, I say to the kids, there's nothing you can tell me that you've done that I haven't. “Well, coach, I grew up poor.” I'm like, man, we grew up dirt poor. They turned the electricity off and my mom would have to cook off a butane stove. I was abused. I was in gangs, too. I was incarcerated, too. “But I was a teenage mom.” Well, I was a dad with two babies. So they can relate. And they respect that a lot.
One of my kids I used to train back in the day, Cassandra, I'm training her 11-year-old daughter Aalayah now. I’m really proud of Cassandra, she’s in college and doing this and that. And Aalayah, she didn't want to come here in the beginning. She was even crying. Now she loves it. Her mom sent me a text this morning with a picture [of Aalayah’s school report]—all As and Bs and only one C. And she tells me all her teachers are saying, "She's always talking about this gym she goes to and her coach." I'm like, "Oh, that's so awesome!"
How did RAIL and Hector Treto, the consultant you’ve worked with, help with your business?
Hector’s input on it was really helpful, with different ways to expand, ideas about marketing. What I really liked was the way he put everything down and built this structure, this chart with goals.
I definitely want to get a bigger place again later on. That's one of my goals. And then, hopefully, we'll have somebody permanent to help us with grants and fundraising, because there's a lot more I want to do for the community.
To learn more about the nonprofit Chavez Youth and Community Foundation, visit The Chavez Boxing Gym or reach out to chavez_boxing@yahoo.com.