Photo: Bil Zelman
For nearly three decades, Light Heavyweight Boxing Champion Archie Moore traded bombs with the world’s best fighters. Ring Magazine rates Moore number four among the greatest punchers of all time. Resting in the Everlasting Arms since 1998, Archie’s record of 145 knockouts still stands. In spite of all that, the man is remembered for his deep kindness, as he, like all true champions, had a deeper purpose in life.

    More than 50 years ago, The Mongoose, as he was known, visited President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the White House. There, Moore shared his prediction of a gang epidemic about to sweep our country. While few at the time believed him, Archie launched a preemptive strike with his program, AB&C (Any Body Can). Centered around the discipline of boxing, the program has helped deliver countless kids from drugs, gangs and hopelessness into a world of success and goodness.
    Archie had several children, and I have befriended one of them, Billy, who has taken up the AB&C charge and continues moving kids forward. Among Billy’s most successful students a young man named Jose. Surrounded by poverty and gang life, the discipline learned from AB&C helped launch Jose beyond his environment, to Yale University, where he recently graduated with a business degree. If such successes translated to money, Billy would be one of the richest men on earth. But money is not his goal--breaking the chains that bind kids to failure is.
    I am probably Billy’s oldest student, and every Monday morning I show up at The Mongoose Boxing Gym to learn to hit the heavy bag. After an hour of punching my hardest, I am a rag doll of exhaustion. It is then, Billy sits me down to pray and tell his endless stories of God and truth and the greatest boxers of all time, including Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali and the only man to fight them both, his father, Archie. The great words always lift me beyond my preconceived limits.
    After last week’s lesson, I rode with Billy in search of an ATM. “There’s one,” he says, and I swung into a corner store to take a few dollars from my account. While there, Billy runs into a woman who is having trouble with her 13-year-old son. Ten minutes later we are at the woman’s door and the boy stands beneath the imposing shadow of Coach Moore who draws the line with his disciplined tough talk. Before leaving the house, Billy tells the woman to call if there are any more problems. Mission accomplished, the boy walks back into the house as Billy gets back in the car and we ride down the street until he spots another friend in need. This time it’s a spiritual problem that he attempts to solve with a hand on the shoulder and the soothing words of Jesus. I then realize that Billy Moore is about his Father’s business all day long, watching over his neighborhood as faith, hope and love are spread in his wake. Back at the gym, I again hear about life and goodness and all things worth doing, concluding by him saying, “A lot of people can out think me, but nobody can out love me.” If anyone wants to take a shot at out loving him the champ, Billy Moore and the God he serves, welcome all challengers.

Lucas Parable
-Echoes from a cultural wasteland