Jose Benavidez Sr. is purchasing Phoenix’s historic Central Boxing Gym, the place where his sons Jose Jr. and David Benavidez spent some of their earliest years around the sport.
Benavidez Sr. said he has an agreement to buy the old gym, located near the Arizona state capitol, and wants to preserve its identity. “There’s so much history here,” he said. “I want to keep it the same. I want to keep the outside - with all those great murals - the same. Everything the same.”
Central Boxing has deep roots in Phoenix boxing. The century-old building once operated as a corner store before becoming a gym, and its old-school heat became part of its reputation. Mike Tyson trained there in 2005, with temperatures reportedly around 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and his visit helped save the building from being condemned.
The gym later welcomed names like Floyd Mayweather, Kostya Tszyu, Julio Cesar Chavez and Henry Cejudo, while the Benavidez family built part of its own boxing story there. “Then, Central was like David’s playground,” Benavidez Sr. said of David’s childhood in the gym.
David Benavidez has carried “PHX” on his trunks throughout his rise to titles at 168, 175 and 200lbs. Now, with murals of David and Tyson above the entrance, Central Boxing is becoming part of the family story again.
“I look at it, I walk through it and it just looks and feels so much like home to me,” Benavidez Sr. said.
Image Credit: WBC