Cradle of Champions

TYPE: Documentary Feature
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: In Distribution

LOGLINE

Heroes, dreams, heartbreak, and redemption in the mosaic of 2015 urban America: the dramatic three-month urban odyssey of the New York Golden Gloves, the world’s largest, oldest, most important amateur boxing tournament.
 

SYNOPSIS

Winter, 2015: the most fraught time in urban America since the '70s. In New York City, five hundred top amateur boxers come together in the annual Golden Gloves tournament to advance their professional and Olympic dreams. Founded in 1927, the Gloves is the oldest, biggest, most important amateur boxing tournament in the world. For boxers, families, coaches, and the inner city sport itself, the next few months are about fighting for their lives.

Titus Williams and James Wilkins, two of New York’s top young amateur boxers, trying to escape tough backgrounds, fight their way through complex personal lives and a three-month, 500-fighter tournament to meet each other in an epic final bout at the Barclays Center.

Boxing is an iconic “path out of poverty” woven deeply into American culture. Golden Gloves amateur boxing has produced many of the sport’s greatest names -- Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and numerous current champions. Immigrants have often dominated the sport: Irish, Italians, Poles, and Jews; black Americans from the rural South moving into cities; Puerto Ricans in the '70s; and now, arrivals from Central America, Eastern Europe, and Africa.

But competitive amateur boxing is threatened. In this time of violence in urban America, the activity that does the most for our toughest kids has been thrown on the street—banned and shut down—by every major organization that used to support it.

“Cradle of Champions” follows Titus Williams and James Wilkins through the three-month winter odyssey of the 2015 New York Golden Gloves. Their lives intersect throughout the rich story, and the cast of secondary characters is equally compelling.

• Titus, widely considered the most pro-ready amateur fighter in N.Y.C., an habitué of Floyd Mayweather’s training camp in Las Vegas, is a 25-year old fighter from Queens. Winner of the award for best elite-class fighter in the 2013 tournament, Titus lost in 2014. He is fighting for redemption in 2015, and to make the splash that will enable him to sign a pro contract that could change the life of his family.

• James, Titus’s long-time nemesis and another former Gloves champion looking for a big win to kickstart his pro career, is described by former cop Pat Russo as the “Mike Tyson character” of the tournament, “the kid who, if it wasn’t for boxing, would be on the streets,” committing crimes. Titus and James meet in the finals, an epic bout that insiders call "one for the ages."

Secondary characters

• Nisa Rodriguez, a Bronx single mother holding down two jobs, a former drop-out who now fights for the respect of her son, and because the glory—she is a five-time champ—brightens her tough world. She is getting older now; does she still have what it takes? Can she look after her son and father and still compete as an elite athlete in the sport that elevates her whole existence?

• Coach Joe Higgins, a former NYFD fireman dying from illnesses he contracted after weeks digging for his brother in the 9/11 rubble, is Titus’s coach. Joe’s gym cleaned up a gang-infested park in Freeport, Long Island and is now one of the most successful amateur gyms in America.

• Coach Simon Bakinde leads a crew of Frenchmen from the slums outside Paris—-Arabs, Africans, and a Yezidi—-who have come to New York to pursue the American dream through their fists; their path to the pros, like that of so many others, starts with the Gloves. Simon’s path and Joe’s—-the immigrant and the all-American--cross through the tourney, giving their lives to their boxers in different ways.

Duquan Chambers of the Bronx, to some extent the poetic conscience of the film, is fighting to get his mom out of the projects and find a better doctor for her. Cesar Francis, a Panamanian, works hard but without access to welfare he barely has enough to eat—before his last big fight, he couldn’t even afford dinner. “Something has to pay off,” says Cesar. “And I know what it is. It’s boxing.” Cesar, too, like Duquan, is fighting for a better life for himself and his mother and sister.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

The tone of the film is fundamentally positive, with significant heartbreak and ups-and-downs along the way. We discover a world full of characters whom we come to admire, respect, and love.

Stylistically, we set out to do something ambitious and unusual: make a work of gritty real-life cinéma vérité that has the rich, polished look and feel of a commercial narrative film.

Emotionally, CRADLE OF CHAMPIONS is about being intimately with extraordinary people at a major moment in their lives.

Metaphysically, if one may say so, the film is about “fighting for your life.” American competitive amateur boxing, a national treasure of great beauty and historic importance socially and culturally, is fighting for its life. The gyms are struggling. The coaches—a priestly caste, possessors of ancient esoteric knowledge passed along for generations—are fading away. The Man has thrown the sport onto the street. And our boxers too are fighting for their lives. They are literally doing so in the ring; as they say: “You play basketball, you play baseball, but you never hear a person say, ‘Let’s play boxing.’” But they are also fighting to change their lives: to make that impact that will start their careers and change the lives—or so they hope—of their families.

KEY CREW

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