09/27/2023
Balance, weight stepping... Circle of Eight Boxing was established in Flagstaff Arizona by our system Circle of Eight in 1923.. 100 years ago... In 1935 ,Circle of Eight changed the name to Sunnyside Boxing... Because, one of our coaches passed away in 1935... His name was Sunny Black .. He had lived in Sunnyside , New York... During the Civil war in I863 he lost his right arm and right leg... Everyone started calling him Sunnyside..On January 13th 1935 .. he passed away...Circle of eight took him back to Egypt, where his family was originally from.... When Sunny Blacks family migrated from Egypt .. they first settled in the Black forest of Germany... where his family adopted the name Black.. Sunny wasn't his real name.....His family escaped Egypt, because of who his family was related to...His mother started calling him Sunny , because he was always so happy...So, history has it in our system .. He was Sunny Black..... That is the only reason all of our gyms world wide were changed to Sunnyside Boxing... Over the years , when our members went to war and were killed in action.. Circle of Eight , would cover our gyms in Black.. Closing our Doors to the public.. and when our families had some time to heal , we would open again... This happened with World War two,, Korean War , Vietnam war .. After,the Vietnam war,we didn't open back up to the public .. One of our Brothers In Flagstaff was killed in Vietnam. His name was Jeff Wright.....We kept our gyms shielded in black ... Under Sunny Black...As time moved on and folks learned to live with their losses.. Sunnyside Boxing was used by other gyms .without their knowledge of where the name Sunnyside had come from... We , never indulge our identity.. In fact , We would offer our services and help them out in any way we could, giving them donations.And, Still ,to this day ,we still offer our services to other gyms ,that are our competition...
And, always keeping our identity silent... It wasn't until a few years back , there was a gym , that was using our name of our Sunnyside... .. for some reason they changed their name to impact Boxing ..Impact Boxi ng was a top notch boxing gym, With some of the best fighters and coaches like owner and head coach Mike Alonzo ..he was a top notch boxing coach....once we found out, Mike wasn't using our coach's name anymore. . Circle of Eight , reclaimed our teachers name ..in 2008 This gym became a pilot gym.. We only take on and train 12 students a month ,give or take...We have proudly displayed Sunnyside as our history to Sunnyside Boxing , ever since... Sunny Black was Egyptian. He descended from royalty... He volunteered into the civil war in Massachusetts,Military started recruiting African-American,for military units in the North, began recruitment in February 1863, one month after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation..Today,.We honor his name,Sunny Black , and take pride in displaying his name everyday on our banner ,and in our teaching ...He lives through our students each time they throw a punch and learn to control themselves...... Sunny Black.. Sunnyside Boxing....This is Chris Hardeen.. he's one of our coaches.. Chris is the great nephew of Houdini... Chris's fight record is 169 fights.....
Sunny-Side Boxing est.1923
Profesional and amature Boxing, Muay Thai, Jujitsu, MMA, and Chinese Martial Arts School.