Al Mitchell: A Life in Boxing

Al Mitchell: A Life in Boxing 

By Matt Elliott

On the 31st October this year, as doorbells around the world prepare themselves for the annual onslaught of trick-and-treaters desperately seeking out their next hit of candy, the revered boxing coach Alfred Mitchell, affectionally known as ‘Coach Al’, will be sitting down to celebrate his eightieth birthday. The fact that Mitchell remains involved at the top level of the sport he loves, is a testament to the regard in which he is held and is something he could never have dreamed of in his formative years back in North Philadelphia.

I caught up with Mitchell over Zoom to talk about his journey within boxing and he told me about the events which led him to first step inside a gym.

“When I was about fifteen or sixteen, three young guys, who were a year or two older than me, chased me home and my mother made me fight each one in the hood, and each one of them beat my tail. The next day my aunt, who lived next door, took me to the gym and I didn’t know but two of my cousins were already there. So that’s where my boxing journey began.”

The gym Mitchell is referring to is the Police Athletic gym, which at the time was helping to shape future stars such as Al Massey, Jimmy Young, Bernie Briscoe and Smokin’ Joe Frazier. It was from there that he embarked on a successful amateur career, with his boxing activity even continuing despite a short prison sentence, but Mitchell explains that turning professional was never really an option for him.    

“I boxed as an amateur, had forty-four fights and lost just once but I was a smaller weight. I never got over 115 lbs as a kid, but I boxed guys who weighed up to 135 lbs and beat them; I was good, but I never got any bigger. Most of the guys in Philly were big and at that time fighters from welterweight to heavyweight were the ones making the money, so because of that I never really thought about a professional career. I was offered a contract once, two hundred and fifty dollars to go to California because there were more lightweights there, but I turned it down.”

Mitchell’s first experience of coaching was a chance occurrence which arose when his coach got sick. Mitchell was due to be fighting that week and his coach asked if he would also work the corners of other fighters in his absence. That was a pivotal moment in his life and set the path for what has followed since. In the early eighties, he was training several boxers at the local recreation centre, including a certain Charlie “Choo Choo” Brown, the man who would become Mitchell’s first professional world champion, winning the inaugural IBF lightweight title in 1984. This was just the beginning.

In the late eighties, Mitchell was training a group of talented amateurs and having success, which culminated with some of his team getting on the Junior Olympic team. That meant a trip to Marquette, Michigan where the Olympic education centre was located; it would be a trip that would ultimately change the course of Mitchell’s life forever.   

“We went up to Marquette for the Junior Olympics and two of my kids got bronze medals. I ended up in a discussion with the coordinator of the Northern Michigan University (NMU) boxing programme, who told me they needed a coach and asked if I would be interested in helping them out. I figured I would go there for a month or two until they found someone else, but they never did. I came up here in 1989 and I’m still here now.”

Mitchell was in his mid-to-late forties at this point and Philadelphia was all he knew. Now he was uprooting his life and relocating over a thousand miles, to an area relatively unknown to him and in stark contrast to what he was leaving behind. I questioned Mitchell on his first impressions of his new home.

“It was very different. Firstly, it looked like I was in the woods at the University, it’s surrounded by trees and located on the lake. Secondly, I am a coach who dropped out of school in the ninth grade, and I am a coach that came into a community where all of the other coaches were white, so I was the only African American coach when I started. The boxing programme existed here but no one was considering it as a sport. Winter sports are big up here – cross-country skiing, speed skating and probably the most popular was hockey, although speed skating had the best team. Don’t get me wrong, they had basketball and American football as well, but they weren’t as popular.” 

The boxing programme may have been considerably down the pecking order when Mitchell arrived, but he quickly went about rebuilding the foundations, ensuring that it would become the go-to place for aspiring athletes throughout the country. Mitchell explains the changes he put into motion.

“When I arrived and looked at the programme, I had about fourteen athletes enrolled. The issue was, half of them wanted to go to school and not box and the other half wanted the opposite. So, I got rid of just about all of them and instead, I brought thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds into the programme. That was unheard of, I was bringing these kids onto a college campus, where the majority of people were aged eighteen to twenty. I put them into middle school and got tutors to work with them, as a third were out of school at the time, they were just hanging around on street corners, so I got tutors to work with them directly. The school system was great up here, especially Marquette High, they really helped me with the kids and if they didn’t get a 2.2 on their grades they couldn’t train, and I didn’t take them to tournaments. In the second year, everybody was getting good grades; they loved their boxing, so they were going to school and working hard.”   

This approach may have been unorthodox, but it proved successful. Once the kids graduated from middle school, Mitchell would put them in touch with the Olympic committee, which helped them to complete the forms to go to college. As proud as Mitchell is of those who continued with their boxing journey, he takes just as much pride from those who chose a different path. He cites a mechanic and a student who ended up going into hairdressing and now owns two barber shops and a hair place in Seattle. Three of his students also went on to get a masters and a lot more hold degrees – overall Mitchell notes that ninety-nine percent of those that passed through his programme over the years have gone on to do well.     

On the boxing front, Mitchell can currently lay claim to having worked with over eight hundred national champions. That number includes some boxers who won multiple honours, but it is still a staggering statistic. As well as running the programme at Marquette, Mitchell’s reputation saw him receive the ultimate accolade when he was appointed as the head coach of Team USA’s boxing squad for the 1996 Olympic games held in Atlanta, a squad that included a certain Floyd Mayweather Jr. NMU had produced its first Olympian four years prior when Vernon Forrest competed in Barcelona, and now Mitchell had the honour of guiding the team. It was an ultimately rewarding experience for Mitchell, but one which didn’t come without sacrifice.  

“For the three months before those games, I never got over four hours of sleep. I was training, working and then when we got down to Atlanta, I spent so much time going through things and making changes. It was my first Olympics, so I wanted everything to be right. We were only projected to get two medals before the games started but we ended up with six. Of the two that were projected, one guy missed out and the other one, Antonio Tarver, was projected to get gold but ended up with a bronze medal. The team we had was very young, except for two athletes and there were some unbelievable bouts. Mayweather got a bad decision, he got robbed and everyone booed it; he should have been in a gold medal fight but had to settle for bronze. Then, in the final fight, my kid David Reid ended up winning our only gold by knocking out his Cuban opponent in the last minute and a half of the final round. I’d trained Dave since he was eight years old, so it was a proud moment.”

Mitchell would go on to be involved in two more Olympics, assuming the role of technical advisor for both the 2004 and 2012 games, working alongside head coach Basheer Abdullah who was an army veteran. Mitchell had previously worked with Abdullah when the army sent him to Michigan to learn the ropes, ahead of him assuming the role of head coach of the Army’s athlete programme. When Abdullah was later appointed as head coach of Team USA boxing, Mitchell was a natural choice to add to his team. Mitchell can proudly claim that the USA boxing squad won a gold medal in each Olympics he was involved in, with Andre Ward and Claressa Shields emulating the success of David Reid.  

Back in Michigan, like all good things they eventually come to an end, and so proved the case with NMU; funding ceased, and the programme was cut in 2008. When Mitchell arrived, the University had fourteen different sports, when he left there was just one – women’s weightlifting. Mitchell moved on, opening up a gym in Marquette but it wasn’t long before he took an unexpected call from China, who were looking to benefit from his wealth of boxing knowledge.  

“After the NMU programme ended, I was approached to run a Chinese programme for a couple of years and Zhilei Zhang was one of the participants. I was involved in the programme for four or five years, travelling back and forth to the US. I travelled across China, to places like Beijing and Wuhan and it reminded me of the old places I read about back in Philly, where the gyms were inside schools. They had me go over and train the coaches and they had some good solid programmes and there was good investment for the kids and everything. I worked with the Chinese team for the Olympics and the World Championships. They had me working with the coaches, not using the pads but teaching them and using my mind. They listened well and worked hard; I enjoyed it.”

Back in Marquette, Mitchell still has his gym and in a professional capacity, he is the head trainer for former unified super featherweight champion Mikaela Mayer, another amateur who worked with him in Michigan and who he has guided now for thirteen years. Throughout his career, he has worked with other professionals – Charlie Brown, David Reid, and Vernon Forrest amongst them, but I wondered whether he had ever felt the temptation to throw himself fully into the professional game.

“Not really. I enjoy training the kids. Coach Kay (Koroma) who ran the US Olympic programme, often sends his kids to me and has me working with them, so I keep my hand in on that side and with my gym as well. You see that smile on their face when they do something right and it gives you a sense of satisfaction.”

Mitchell is inducted into four separate Hall’s of Fame, he has worked with thousands of kids, coached in the Olympics, and travelled the world. With all those achievements to choose from, it is hard to pinpoint one as your proudest, but I was intrigued to see which moment stood out for him.

“Probably my time with Vernon Forrest. In his second year when he went through the nationals, I thought wow, he’s going to be the one. When he decided to turn pro, he asked me to train him. I remember we fought Shane Mosley for the WBC title, and he was the number one pound-for-pound boxer at that time, and we beat him and then we came back and beat him again. I will never forget the way he jumped on me and hugged me and started crying. It was a great moment, especially that first one in Madison Square Garden. It was sold out and no one gave us a chance of winning and that made it even better.”

As he prepares for his eightieth year and with him still actively involved, both in his gym and through his relationship with Mikaela, I finished by asking Mitchell how much longer he planned to carry on.

“I know it’s probably coming close, and I never thought I would be doing this for so long. If you asked me when I was a kid back in Philly, I didn’t ever think I’d be involved in coaching, certainly not at this level and who the hell would’ve thought I would be in four different halls of fame, I’m shocked at that, and now I am training a girl (laughs) I would never have thought about that back in my North Philly days. Ultimately as long as I am healthy, I will keep on going.”