Bobby Gunn Jr., though, is a little bit different. Look into his eyes, and you’ll see that sanguine cheeriness we all have at 18 years old when we’re young and bold and the world is our oyster. The pale-skinned, brown-haired kid from Hackensack is warm and affable, quick to laugh, and humble to a fault.
Don’t mistake it for weakness though. He’s a fighter, through and through. It’s been bred into him, he said, and it’s all he’s ever known. It makes sense, of course, because as the son of former cruiserweight champ Bobby Gunn Sr., he’s been in boxing gyms his entire life. He can’t remember the first time he put on a pair of gloves, but even as a kindergartner he would spend hours shadowboxing in front of a mirror, emulating his dad.
Even though his father tried to dissuade him, he decided at 13 that he would someday turn pro, and over the last five years, he’s honed the necessary skills under his dad’s watchful eye. The work’s paid off, and there’s nary an ounce of fat on his 5-foot, 10-inch, 154-pound frame. But don’t let that lean facade fool you. Watch him hit a heavy bag, and you’re stunned at the amount of force he can create.
The sport is his sanctuary and his escape, he said, his way out not from the streets of a New Jersey ghetto, but from a lifetime of being "just another guy."
"Boxing, for me, is where I could be something," he said. "Where I could be extraordinary. And that’s what’s going to set me [apart] from everyone else."
Bobby Sr.’s face lights up any time he speaks of his son, who he often refers to as "my boy." The two are eerily similar and share not only the same looks, but identical demeanors and even Bobby Sr.’s voice and accent, that odd mix of Canadian and Irish gypsy that gives away their Traveler roots.
At 40 years old, he’s a broad house of a man with a face sculpted from scar tissue and accented by healed cuts. But over his own 24-year career, he was always more Jim Braddock than Joe Louis: a working-class hero who’d haul shingles onto roofs all day before making his way to the gym at night to train for bouts.
His "never-say-die" style earned him a cult following, but he lost many of his biggest fights and always seemed just one step away from the top. He called it quits last year after a particularly tough loss and now focuses solely on his son’s career. There’s something different about the kid, though, Bobby Sr. said. Something impressive. Something special.
He showed flashes of it on March 15, when he won his pro debut by spectacular knockout just 40 seconds into the first round — no small feat in a sport known for humbling newcomers who are taking their first cautious steps out of the headgear-clad world of the amateur ranks.
But even though it’s his left hook that opponents quickly come to fear, his dad thinks it’s his composure in the ring, his unshakeable coolness, that is his greatest strength.
"My boy," he said, "is already a better fighter than I ever was. He’s very experienced for a young man. … When you see him fight, it’s how relaxed and calm he is … as if he was a veteran already."
And even though the father-son team hits the occasional rough patch, both love each other dearly, and Bobby Sr. is determined to be there to keep his son away from the underworld leeches that lurk on boxing’s periphery — the same ones that tortured and extorted him during his own career.
"I thank God for what I went through, and I would go through it again and again and again to have my son not go through it," he said. "My son, he has a clean slate. He will never be around that."
It’s no secret that Bobby Jr. has been groomed to be North Jersey’s next big boxing sensation, and living up to his father’s sometimes larger-than-life presence can feed personal fears of "not living up to the hype." But when the bell rings, all that goes out the window, and it’s just him, once more, doing what he does. What he’s always done.
Because, as he said, there’s poodles in this world, and there’s pitbulls. Neither is better than the other, but one can be just a little bit meaner.
You can see it in their eyes.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
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http://www.northjersey.com/sports/boxing/a-fighting-family-comes-full-circle-1.751716
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