Ex-Wall Streeter Finds His Zen at Gleason’s

The men who work the world of boxing start with the same dream: to become a champion, retire at the top of game with a pile of money, and maybe train a young fighter all the way to the top.This happens to maybe one in 10,000. For every Roy Jones Jr. or Oscar De La Hoya, there are legions of guys who take a few beatings and quit, hang on for years making chump change as a sparring partner, or get their brains scrambled before they give up.And then there’s David Lawrence.With a ragged mop of thinning brown hair, geeky glasses, an earring in his left ear, a tight black T-shirt to show off his muscular arms, and oversize red boxing shorts to hide his skinny legs, Lawrence is not your typical boxing coach.Think Woody Allen on steroids.Lawrence, 57, who holds a doctorate in literature from CUNY, is a poet, author, former Wall Streeter, model, rapper, standup comic, former amateur boxer, and ex-convict.Once the CEO of a Wall Street insurance wholesaling firm with millions in assets and a chauffeured Rolls Royce, he spends his days writing, scheming, and teaching kids and business executives to box at Gleason’s, a storied boxing gym two blocks from the waterfront in Brooklyn’s DUMBO section.“I’m having fun,” he says in a cramped office he shares with a world kickboxing champion named Devon “The Energizer” Cormack. “The worst that could happen is I’ll die a ne’er-do-well.”Lawrence was at the top of the world in the early 1980s. His company was pulling in millions. He had a good marriage, and a young son. He was a ranked player in the United States Tennis Association’s over-35 amateur division, had a ritzy home in the Hamptons and had a garage full of motorcycles, when the boxing bug bit.“My wife said, ‘Please give up motorcycles, you’re going to die.’ I said, ‘Okay, but I’m going to take up boxing.'”He started going to Gleason’s, which was then in Manhattan, in his chauffeured limo, and he fell in love with the sweat-soaked world of boxing gyms.“I started working out two-and-a-half hours a day. I was about 147 pounds,” Lawrence, who stands about 5-foot-8, says, “and I thought I was pretty good. I lost my first fight to a mailroom guy. I got knocked out. So I tried it again. I got better. I still lost, but by a decision. It was the first fight I had where I didn’t get knocked down.”He says he won 14 of his next 15 fights – billing himself as “Awesome D: The Renegade Jew.” Along the way, he started the “White Collar Fights,” which matched up executives, lawyers, and other people who had no business in the ring.Then Lawrence decided he wanted to turn pro. He was in his early 40s – which is 15 years past the prime of most fighters. Randy Gordon, who then headed the New York State Athletic Commission, was horrified and refused to issue him a license.Lawrence, who was already bending the rules on Wall Street, bent them in boxing as well.“I paid a guy to get me a phony birth certificate and got a fight in Denver,” he says. “I got knocked cold.”He got licensed in Las Vegas and won a fight on the undercard of a Don King-promoted event that featured champion Julio Cesar Chavez. He had a couple of more fights in Atlantic City and Boston, and he started a small rap label. “Rap was easy, but my rhythm was lousy,” he says.His judgment got lousy, too. He and some vice presidents at his firm starting siphoning money out of the company – hundreds of thousands of dollars. “I was naive and stupid,” he says. He was soon indicted for tax evasion and did two years in a federal prison camp in Pennsylvania in the early 1990s.“I loved jail,” he says, only half-joking. “My favorite things are working out, writing, and rapping. In jail, I got to do all that.”Jail produced books and volumes of poetry – “Steel-Toed Boots” and “Dementia Pugilistica” – and was part of the mix that include rapping, working as a model, trying to break into acting, and doing comedy routines.He still writes, performs when he can, and scrapes by, teaching nonfighters how to box for $25 an hour. They range from execs to the 16-year-old daughter of a Brooklyn judge.“I love it here,” he says. “I’m not a frustrated guy who hopes they become champions. I’m not a millionaire anymore, but I don’t miss that. I don’t need much. I don’t go to 21…. I’m happy. I feel like I’ve done everything I wanted to do.”

Ex-Wall Streeter Finds His Zen at Gleason’s

Ex-Wall Streeter Finds His Zen at Gleason’s

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