The Associated Press

PIKEVILLE, Ky. - The lights are out in the cluttered yellow storage building off By-Pass Road. Through the gloom one can make out stacked signs and other items, stained floors and a low ceiling. But Mayfield Pennington sees more.

Mayfield's Boxing Gym will have a boxing ring, he said, and arm wrestling tables and weights. It will be a place to train, for kids to come and "toughen up" and occupy themselves with something that will keep them too busy for drugs and, he hopes, a place where champions in boxing, bodybuilding and arm wrestling might get their start.

"All I can do is try to get it off the ground," he said.

The 52-year-old Pikeville native started his professional boxing career when he was 26. His scrapbook is stuffed with yellowed newspaper clippings detailing his more than 30 professional fights in Pikeville, Louisville and South America.

Pennington became interested in boxing watching it on television with his grandfather. At 16 he was boxing people in the neighborhood and working out with a duffel bag filled with sand.

"At night, I'd go to this rock, right up on the By-Pass Road, and start praying 'God, I want to be a boxer. Please help me. Make a way for me,"' Pennington said.

Pennington's prayers were answered when he found a benefactor to support his career and correspondence that got him in touch with Muhammad Ali. Ali sent him a letter directing him to his old trainer in Louisville, and Pennington's career started from there.

"All them fighters (at the gym in Louisville) beat me up, they beat me bad," Pennington said. "(But) in a couple months I was beating all of them."

Pennington had a rocky start as a heavyweight, he said, but did better as a middleweight. He met boxing notables such as Ali and Joe Frazier, beat champions such as former world middleweight champ Emile Griffith in 1977.

Since returning to Pikeville six months ago, Pennington said he's seen a need for something like his planned gym.

"I come back home and notice all this stuff that's going on," he said. "I feel like I want to be a trainer now. And be a role model for the kids with the youth program."

He said he might even talk to some local judges about letting problem kids serve some probation at the gym.

Currently, Pennington has been talking to friends from his past in Pikeville, such as local attorneys and others who have pledged to buy equipment and help him furnish his gym. The people of Pikeville had always been supportive of him in the past, he said, and they seemed to be willing to help him now.