Summer in the city. It’s a great time for some. In the Bronx, the heat brings out the worst in people.

“It's literally a war zone every summer,” said Jose Guzman, a former pro boxer who is now drawing accolades as a trainer on the rise. “My first thought, as soon as the weather starts changing, is which one of my friends are going to get killed this year?”

In 2025, it was Carlos Teron, 34, a married father of an infant son who was shot and killed in the West Farms neighborhood by an unknown assailant still on the loose. In 2018, it was Ronney Vargas, 20, shot and killed a month after he improved to 8-0 as a pro. And those are just the boxers who were using the sport not just to succeed in the ring, but in life. Teron, the younger brother of former lightweight contender Jorge “The Truth” Teron, had hung up the gloves after his amateur career was done, but the gifts boxing gave him allowed him to avoid the lure of the streets, get married, have a kid and hold down a job as a sanitation worker. In other words, he made it, but that’s of little solace to Guzman, who lost a friend.

“I’ve known him since the first day he walked into the gym, when he was nine, 10 years old,” Guzman said. “He got killed when the weather just started getting warm. Ronney Vargas, a couple of years ago, same thing in the summer, gets killed. And this is an ongoing trend. There's not a lot of boxing gyms out there, and I felt like if there were gyms in the Bronx that were to give back to the community, we wouldn't be seeing a lot of these deaths that are going on right now.”

Guzman obviously has a place in his heart for boxing that won’t ever leave him, and while some might read this and wonder how the lack of boxing programs for young people can be connected to the rise in street violence, he knows the correlation is real because he’s been there.

Things were different when the 36-year-old was growing up in the borough, but not by much when it came to kids migrating to nonsense and the wrong path when they had nothing to do, especially once school was out for the summer. Guzman’s father wasn’t having that.

“Boxing brought me peace because it gave me something to do every day,” said Guzman. “It gave me a schedule. I knew every day at 5 o'clock, I was going to the gym, so that kept me off the streets. So while everybody was outside playing, my father was like, ‘Hey, come on, let's tell them to go to the gym.’ So that was our little escape that kept us out of trouble. That's what these boxing gyms did for us. They kept us out of trouble. Even if a lot of us didn't become world champions, it made us better human beings.”

Guzman, who is currently in Puerto Rico as the assistant coach in training camp for women’s boxing superstar Amanda Serrano, got out. His 6-14-1 pro record wasn’t a great one, but he learned his craft, gave it his best shot and got out with his faculties intact and a career as a trainer. His peers from those formative years aren’t in the sport anymore, but several of them have succeeded in life outside the ropes.

“I think from that whole crew from the gym, I'm the only one that's still in boxing and is doing great,” he said. “A few have good jobs. That was because of those gyms. But when those gyms closed, a lot of them went down the wrong path. A lot of them got killed, a lot of 'em got locked up, a lot of them got lost.”

There are still plenty of gyms in the Bronx, but the issue is not the gyms themselves but the lack of free programs for the kids in the neighborhood at those gyms. Guzman hears that the Cops & Kids program might be expanding from Brooklyn and Staten Island to the Bronx, and if that’s the case that’s a promising development. In the meantime, though, the summer’s coming and those kids that could be rescued by the sweet science are either doing the wrong thing or becoming victims of the rising violence all around the city.

“There's really nobody giving back to the community,” Guzman said. “Everything is money, money, money. So you’ve got a lot of these kids getting lost in the streets, and there’s just nothing for them to do. A lot of them go down the wrong path, end up getting killed, getting locked up because of drugs. My brother, he stopped boxing and he ran down the wrong path and he's been battling with the streets for a while. My cousin, same thing; he stopped boxing because of no more [Police Athletic League] programs and he ended up doing 25 years in jail. He just got out.”

And then there’s Teron, a loss that still hits Guzman hard. Even though he wasn’t boxing anymore, the friends and community he built within the sport remained. They rooted for each other, in and out of the gym and the ring, and that made a bond for life. It’s the positive part of a sport which often gets a bad rap. While those in the mainstream wonder why a parent would want to put their child into such an after-school activity, where Guzman grew up, those parents know what the sport can do for their kids. Unfortunately, in an area where finances are often an issue, choosing between putting food on the table and paying gym fees is an easy decision to make.

“My parents, they still live in the same neighborhood I grew up in, and a lot of parents always ask me, ‘Where is there a gym in the Bronx where I could put my kids in?’” said Guzman. “‘I want them to box so they could stay out the streets.’ And when they found out the prices of these gyms, they're like ‘Oh, this is too expensive.’ Back then, with a lot of these gyms, all you had to do was pay the membership and the membership was like $25. And now these memberships, I think the least I've heard is probably 80 or a 100 a month plus. And then you got to pay a trainer.”

Guzman pauses, knowing exactly what boxing can do for a youngster. So whenever he can, he’s doing his part, recalling a specific summer program he ran in a school in Harlem before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“I was teaching these kids how to box for free every day after school,” he said. “And they were the biggest troublemakers. Some of them didn't even get along with each other. I started training them three times a week. They went from being the baddest kids in school to getting good grades to all becoming friends. They all graduated from high school, but as soon as they left the boxing program because they had graduated, two of them got killed.

“And I remember at the funeral, the kids were like, ‘Boxing kept all of us out. When we left and we went to some boxing gym, they were charging too much.’ So boxing saves lives, but I feel like it's become a money grab for a lot of people. And they only care about money. They don't care about the kids. Me, I work with a lot of big fighters, but I don't mind training kids for free at all. This is why I’m where I am today. It’s because of boxing.”

As for the solution, Guzman believes it’s an easy fix. The Cops & Kids program arriving in the Bronx is a big start, but beyond that, maybe some of the money flowing into New York City’s coffers can be given back to the community.

“I wish New York City would open up these gyms,” he said. “Each borough will get a couple gyms that the city will run and they're free for the kids. New York City has a lot of money. They can pay for some of these kids’ boxing gyms. I really hope Cops & Kids open up that boxing gym in the Bronx because I feel like the next world champion is out there right now getting in trouble and selling drugs. And when that gym comes to the Bronx, I know there's going to be a couple world champions and amateur champions, but more importantly, it's going to save a lot of lives.”