In Forestville, Diamonds N The Ruff Boxing gym teaches the sweet science and beyond

It’s hot. The air is heavy. The lights are dim.

Tucked near a smattering of trucking lots in Forestville, Diamonds N the Ruff is a no-frills place, straight out of a boxing movie. There’s a ring, with punching bags draped from the ceiling and framed clippings of boxing champs on the walls. Jump ropes pat-pat-pat as they whip across the floor.

Diamonds N the Ruff has operated out of this space for almost 10 years, but its story spans more than two decades. Coach and founder Tai-Rhan McBride dreams of moving into a larger facility, one with enough room to offer trade classes for the community’s youth. But the blueprint for Diamonds N the Ruff was drawn long before it had a physical location.

McBride’s gym exists to train fighters. But there’s a deeper mission at play, too. He aims to address some of the community’s intractable problems: panic around youth crime (some of which is unfounded), lack of employment opportunities, education achievement gaps and, for some kids, the absence of a positive adult figure.

McBride knows these struggles firsthand. They’re part of what motivates him.

He and his close friend Dwayne Thomas grew up together in D.C.’s Arboretum neighborhood. There, McBride’s uncle, a retired Navy veteran, taught kids to box.

“He used boxing in our neighborhood as a vehicle to connect with us because a lot of us didn’t have dads in our household,” Thomas said. “So he taught us how to box, but it was bigger than that. It was about really making a connection and having a presence.”

McBride and Thomas admit to making “bad choices” as young men that led them down a troubled path. When they found their way back, they looked for ways to pay it forward.

“We started out real humble, just in our neighborhood outside,” Thomas said. “We didn’t have a facility. We would just gather the young guys around and show them how to box but also drop a few jewels on them at the same time.”

McBride credits his wife of 39 years, Celestine “Lefty” McBride, whom he met when they were children, for giving him the initial push to work with youth.

“My goal in the beginning was to turn out as many good young people as I can,” McBride said. “Give them the full effort.”

Boxing can be an expensive sport burdened with licensing, travel and equipment fees, but Diamonds N the Ruff won’t turn young people away over their inability to pay. The coaches often pool their own money to cover the gap.

People of all ages and ambitions come through the doors, but the gym focuses on mentoring children, some as young as 6. The coaches aren’t just teaching kids how to fight. They’re using the sport to instill discipline, emotional regulation and resilience.

“It’s an individual sport. You depend on yourself first in boxing,” McBride said. “It builds your self-confidence, which is one of the main ingredients that we need for surviving and succeeding.”

But to the coaches self-reliance doesn’t mean isolation. Head coach Tony Johnson, who has been with the gym for 18 years, makes sure his athletes know how to lean on their community and each other.

“Our philosophy was we can’t just be about boxing,” Johnson said. “I always tell them, if all I taught you was how to throw the left hook to the liver, I failed you badly. … It’s about life. Like, a lot of times, they be having serious matches in their life before they get here, and if you don’t help them with some tools to navigate that, they might not make it to the gym.”

Over the years, the program has taken different shapes. It’s had a number of partnerships, including one with the county’s parks and recreation department, and it has moved through different neighborhoods and facilities.

Some people come to the gym for a solo workout; others take group fitness classes. The coaches use the gym to train competitive fighters, and some kids just come for a safe place to hang out after school.

Recently, Johnson led a “Resilience Retreat Mini Camp” in West Virginia for 10 of the gym’s boxers, who range in age from 12 to 26. They trained, rested and hiked. They also got to participate in sessions designed to help them self-reflect and connect with one another.

Every year, the gym also participates in the Belfast-Beltway Boxing Project, an international exchange program. Through the initiative, Diamonds N the Ruff takes its youth boxers, along with youth from other gyms in the area, to Ireland to train and spar. In turn, it hosts the Irish fighters who visit the DMV.

The coaches’ goal is to produce good fighters and build good people.

While some athletes have turned pro, the gym has churned out commercial truck drivers, correctional officers, electricians, teachers and other civil servants.

“We compete on a high level,” Thomas said. “We’ve had guys turn pro after starting out as amateurs. But it was always about just those real, genuine connections.”

Thomas said he occasionally receives phone calls from the young men who have spent time in the gym. They talk about “real life stuff,” he said.

“As grown men now, they don’t box anymore. When I get those kinds of phone calls, it lets me know that we’re making some kind of difference,” he said. “We’ve never really gotten a paycheck for doing this. It’s always been volunteer work, and out of just our understanding of the need for that presence in the community.”

Khalil Grooms, a 22-year-old boxer who started training under Coach Tony at 13, is a testament to that presence. He said the sport gave him the discipline to cool his hotheaded tendencies. The trained fighter now “runs away from” altercations outside the ring.

“The thing that’s special is not even the boxing,” Grooms said. “It feels like family. We come here, it feels like you chilling with your uncles and your brothers and your sisters. It don’t feel like a boxing gym. … They actually care.”

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