Craig Haines and Eddie “Popeye” Richardson at Popeye’s Boxing Gym in Akron. The gym offers full-body workouts designed around boxing and boxing classes for just $20 per month, and parents can join with their kids for free. AKRON, Ohio – On any given Monday, Tuesday or Thursday evening, you can find 2017 Summit County Boxing Hall of Fame inductee Eddie “Popeye” Richardson training at his gym in Akron. But he doesn’t have a fight on the books, at least not a fight in the traditional sense.
“There is a difference between a boxing gym and boxing,” Richardson said. “We have both things here. But ours is more like a family because it’s hard to, if you have 5-6 kids, take each kid to a different sport. Here, the parents can work out for free with the kids.” “We turn nobody away. Nobody is a loser in my eyes. We don’t offer individual training, everybody works out together,” Richardson said.“We’re about 60 percent female,” he said. “The women are really growing the gym because they come in and they all say the exact same thing, ‘I want to lose weight,’ and by week two, it’s, ‘I love this’ and by week three, ‘I feel so much better at work/school, the things that bothered me bounce off of me. I have so much more confidence now.
Quarterly grants approved by the Akron Community Foundation’s board total $5 million, $722,609 of which were competitive health and human services grants. It’s the largest distribution for this grant process in the foundation’s history, according to the community foundation.