During the chaos following the police-involved deaths of George Floyd and Duante Wright, Jamal James and his Circle Of Discipline have been a source of refuge and hope for many in his native Minneapolis, Minnesota.<\/p>\n
James\u2019 community engagement started years earlier but became more focused amid community protests and racial unrest in the wake of the killings of the two black men \u2014 Floyd in May 2020, and Wright in April of this year.<\/p>\n
James, the current WBA welterweight champion, lives and trains in the neighborhood where Floyd died at the hands of police, and near Brooklyn Center where a police officer shot Wright.<\/p>\n
Former officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced in June to 22 years, 6 months for Floyd\u2019s death. Former officer Kim Potter, who fatally shot Wright after mistaking her gun for a Taser, is scheduled to go to trial on Nov. 30.<\/p>\n
Wright, 20, was a friend of James\u2019 younger brother, Xavier.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy little brother\u2019s best friend got killed by the police officer who said she thought she was reaching for her Taser,\u201d said James. \u201cTalking to my little brother, I could hear the pain in his voice because he [Wright] had just helped my brother move into his apartment. Everybody was angry and frustrated, and I felt the same way. There\u2019s a lot of healing that needs to take place.\u201d<\/p>\n
James trained amid unrest in the Minneapolis streets, winning his last fight in August 2020 in Los Angeles n a 12-round unanimous decision over Thomas Dulorme to earn his crown.<\/p>\n
\u201cDulorme was three months after George Floyd\u2019s killing, which was right down the street from where I live and where I do my roadwork,\u201d said James. \u201cI literally go to the coffee shop across the street [from where the killing occurred]. My grandmother had passed away while I was training for the fight, which was my first fight back in 13 months in the middle of the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the city was burning, smoke was coming in through the windows, and you could hear the shots being fired and there was teargas.\u00a0 People were breaking into all sorts of businesses, looting, vandalizing. There were a lot of different things happening at once, but my goal was to win a title, so life has to go on. We had to stay focused in order to come back with that title.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drawing on his experiences in both the ring and life, James has been a longtime mentor of youngsters at the\u00a0Circle Of Discipline<\/a>, a nonprofit community-outreach center offering life lessons, activities, and stability for inner-city youths. During periods of social unrest, the Circle Of Discipline\u2019s venue serves as a food bank and refuge.<\/p>\n \u201cOur building was right off of Lake Street where all the buildings were being torn down [after they were set afire during protests over Floyd\u2019s death], but nobody touched our facility,\u201d said James. \u201cOur board and staff had a meeting about how and what we could do to help make things a little more positive, so we did a food drive and organized business cleanups. It was great to see random people in the community showing up to help.\u201d<\/p>\n James\u2019 mother took him to the Circle Of Discipline boxing gym as a 5-year-old to channel the youngster\u2019s aggression and temper and to keep him off the streets. James met Shankara Frazier, who would later become his stepfather, along with stepbrother and co-trainer Adonis Frazier, who remains in James\u2019 corner.<\/p>\n \u201cOne time a kid who was more experienced than Jamal got the better of him, and Jamal jumped the boy, took his headgear off, and tried to choke the kid,\u201d said Frazier.<\/p>\n Jamal would whine and complain about doing certain things,\u201d said Shankara Frazier. \u201cI would tell him to cut that whining out, not so much for the purpose of learning boxing but to get Jamal to understand at that age what work ethic and discipline were about. He could hardly hold his arms up when he had the big gloves on.\u201d<\/p>\n At 10-years-old, James began an amateur career comprising more than 150 fights, a No. 1 ranking at 141 pounds by USA Boxing, and a runner-up finish in the 2009 national Golden Gloves competition.<\/p>\n James made his professional debut in May 2010 with a third-round TKO of Justin Danforth, taking the nickname \u201cShango<\/a>\u201d from his grandfather, Aldric Peter Nelson, who founded the Minneapolis-based world-beat band Shangoya in the early 1970s. \u201cShango\u201d is also the name of the African god of fire, lightning, and thunder.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you grow up in a tough neighborhood, you encounter all kinds of crazy situations. I\u2019ve watched my father deal with a lot of guys who were deep into gangs or guys who\u2019ve come from real broken homes,\u201d said James. \u201cTheir fathers may have been abusive or their mothers just really didn\u2019t care about them. They were out acting wild in the streets, and they really just changed their lives around.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of those kids were ringside at the Minneapolis Armory to watch James fight there four times: winning a 10-round unanimous decision over title challenger Abel Ramos in April 2018; a second-round knockout of Mahonry Montes in August 2018; a sixth-round stoppage of Janer Gonzalez in February 2019; and a 10-round unanimous decision over former champion Antonio DeMarco in July 2019.<\/p>\n The 6-foot-2 James (27-1, 12 KOs) makes the initial defense of his crown on Oct. 30 against\u00a0Radzhab Butaev<\/a>\u00a0(13-0, 10 KOs), a 27-year-old Russian he\u2019ll face at Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I\u2019m in the ring, I want these kids to see that I put it all on the line so that they\u2019re willing to find that extra strength in life. Boxing is one of those perfect things that draws kids in,\u201d said James. \u201cBecause it\u2019s really going to test how strong you think you are, mentally and physically. They\u2019ve got all that extra energy, and they don\u2019t know what to do with it, but they still have a warrior-type heart.\u201d<\/p>\n James credits one of the armory\u2019s owners, Rich Richardson, for his assistance in organizing events there.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of young men and women we serve come from low-income communities,\u201d said James. \u201cOne of my favorite trips was to take them on a tour of the armory with some of their parents who came along as chaperones. They were given a rundown of what it\u2019s used for and what it takes to run a business like that.\u201d<\/p>\n