by marquis munson
Growing up a boxing fan, Jay Deas favorite bout was Larry Holmes against Renaldo Snipes on June 11, 1981, in the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Snipes was a tune-up fight for Holmes before he prepared for his Las Vegas bout against Gerry Cooney in September of that same year. Snipes, the underdog with no expectations, had to go out there and give the fight of his career against the undefeated WBC Heavyweight Champion of the world.
In the seventh round, Snipes hit Holmes with a right hook, knocking him down to the mat. Holmes attempted to get up, but fell face-first into the corner pad. Most referees would have ended the fight, but Holmes continued. Young, hungry and determined to knock the champion, the fight continued with the momentum on Snipes’ side. But that momentum shifted in the 11th round when Holmes knocked out Snipes to win the fight.
Despite Snipes losing, Deas gained respect for his dedication and determination to defeat one of the best heavyweights in boxing. The underdog, never-give-up attitude would stick with Deas as an adult when he got into the boxing business himself.
However, instead of losing to the top heavyweight, Deas trains the top heavyweight — WBC Heavyweight Champion Deontay Wilder — at SKYY Boxing Gym in Northport, Alabama. Jay and his brother, Tommy Deas, started SKYY Boxing Gym in 1997. From the time their vision was created to the reality of the vision now, Jay didn’t think the gym would grow to what it is today.
“[In my mind] I thought the gym we would succeed, I didn’t know we would have the heavyweight champion of the world fighting out of this gym,” Jay Deas said. “Coming from his first day in the gym to being the heavyweight champion, I never anticipated it would get that big but did think we would make strides. I thought that we were getting better and better. I felt that if we had the right guy come in at the right time, we could do great things. But Deontay Wilder surpassed everyone’s expectations.”
The Deas brothers started helping fighters at Charlie Hutchinson’s 40th Street Gym. On April 29, 1995, at the Jaycees Fairground in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the two brothers put on their first show. With Jay doing the promotions and Tommy training and managing the fighters, the brothers moved their shows throughout the Tuscaloosa and Northport areas, including venues like the Northport Civic Center and Belk Center.
With the 40th Street Gym falling apart, in 1997 the brothers found a new location in Northport and opened SKYY Boxing gym. The building that used to be owned by a church, this aluminum structure with red floors, became home for Jay, Tommy and their fighters.
“It just got to a point to where we wanted full control of our operation, and it was a nice gym, but we had far outgrown it,” Tommy Deas said. “It had about 82 heavy bags, a small ring, and it didn’t even have a bathroom. So we needed to grow.”
“After we were doing our own shows for two years, it just made sense,” Jay Deas said. “We got this thing going, we got the program going, but we didn’t have our own gym. It was like having all your recipes in someone else’s restaurant.”
The brothers had to put down their own money into their product to keep it going and had some time going by without anyone coming. But the fighters who stuck through the wire and saw the brothers’ vision started to spread the word throughout the state. The gym started to grow.
“We were just going to stay at it,” Jay Deas said. “We wasn’t going to give up on any circumstances. We were going to fly or crash in that gym. We have to be at the gym a lot of the day, and there wasn’t much money coming in and trying to convince your family that this may work, that was tough.”
As the gym began to pick up, the workload for the two brothers increased. Tommy, who was also working at the Tuscaloosa News, couldn’t manage both jobs, and decided to step down from the gym in 2005.
“I had to do my job and had to be where I had to be for the Tuscaloosa News covering sports,” Tommy Deas said. “There were occasions where I would train someone, and they would have a big fight or tournament. And I would have to send someone else out with them because I couldn’t always travel with them. It just wasn’t enough hours in the day and enough days in the week for me to do both, so I felt like I had to make a choice.”
After his brother’s departure, Jay sat to himself, wrote down plans of improvement in his notebook and traveled around the country to visit various trainers he respected to formulate how he was going to move the gym forward.
Jay needed someone that shared his passion for boxing and could provide the hard work his brother showcased, and he found that in Cuz Hill. Hill had been coming to the gym and helping out since 2005. With no money to show for it, he continued working for Jay around the gym.
“It was the passion and love,” Hill said. “Once you start doing something and it’s something you love to do, it’s hard to stop. Even though you are not getting paid at the moment, you know eventually it was going to pay off. In life, it’s a gamble and you take risk. This was just another risk I was willing to take.”
Hill would go on to become one of Wilder’s head trainers, as well as co-owner of the gym.
“It’s a wonderful feeling. From day one to now, it took almost six years of hard work and dedication, but that’s something I lived by my whole life,” Hill said. “I believe in hard work because as a child it was hard, and basically wasn’t nothing was giving to me. Everything that I have now I deserve it because I worked hard for it.”
“Cuz was the one that pulled me under his wing,” said Willie Lowe, one of the trainers at the gym. “When I lost my job, I just keep coming, and the more I started coming, the more they allowed me to do.”
Jay could’ve given up when his brother left. When the gym profit wasn’t coming in, he could’ve shut it down. The road to success wasn’t easy, but the rough journey makes the success even more sweet.
As the gym continuously grows and the influence of the sport continues to strive, Jay Deas and his team continue to fly high in the sky, with no signs of coming down.
“The influences of boxing has grown because Deontay took away their excuses, and now you have all these young guys following down that same path,” Jay Deas said. “Not only do people come into the gym and know that it can be done, but they know that Deontay wasn’t just this one shot thing where nobody else has done anything and he did everything. They knew that he has opened doors for them, and he wants them to come through that door that he’s opened and is encouraging them to come through that door.”
Snipes was a tune-up fight for Holmes before he prepared for his Las Vegas bout against Gerry Cooney in September of that same year. Snipes, the underdog with no expectations, had to go out there and give the fight of his career against the undefeated WBC Heavyweight Champion of the world.
In the seventh round, Snipes hit Holmes with a right hook, knocking him down to the mat. Holmes attempted to get up, but fell face-first into the corner pad. Most referees would have ended the fight, but Holmes continued. Young, hungry and determined to knock the champion, the fight continued with the momentum on Snipes’ side. But that momentum shifted in the 11th round when Holmes knocked out Snipes to win the fight.
Despite Snipes losing, Deas gained respect for his dedication and determination to defeat one of the best heavyweights in boxing. The underdog, never-give-up attitude would stick with Deas as an adult when he got into the boxing business himself.
However, instead of losing to the top heavyweight, Deas trains the top heavyweight — WBC Heavyweight Champion Deontay Wilder — at SKYY Boxing Gym in Northport, Alabama. Jay and his brother, Tommy Deas, started SKYY Boxing Gym in 1997. From the time their vision was created to the reality of the vision now, Jay didn’t think the gym would grow to what it is today.
“[In my mind] I thought the gym we would succeed, I didn’t know we would have the heavyweight champion of the world fighting out of this gym,” Jay Deas said. “Coming from his first day in the gym to being the heavyweight champion, I never anticipated it would get that big but did think we would make strides. I thought that we were getting better and better. I felt that if we had the right guy come in at the right time, we could do great things. But Deontay Wilder surpassed everyone’s expectations.”
The Deas brothers started helping fighters at Charlie Hutchinson’s 40th Street Gym. On April 29, 1995, at the Jaycees Fairground in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the two brothers put on their first show. With Jay doing the promotions and Tommy training and managing the fighters, the brothers moved their shows throughout the Tuscaloosa and Northport areas, including venues like the Northport Civic Center and Belk Center.
With the 40th Street Gym falling apart, in 1997 the brothers found a new location in Northport and opened SKYY Boxing gym. The building that used to be owned by a church, this aluminum structure with red floors, became home for Jay, Tommy and their fighters.
“It just got to a point to where we wanted full control of our operation, and it was a nice gym, but we had far outgrown it,” Tommy Deas said. “It had about 82 heavy bags, a small ring, and it didn’t even have a bathroom. So we needed to grow.”
“After we were doing our own shows for two years, it just made sense,” Jay Deas said. “We got this thing going, we got the program going, but we didn’t have our own gym. It was like having all your recipes in someone else’s restaurant.”
The brothers had to put down their own money into their product to keep it going and had some time going by without anyone coming. But the fighters who stuck through the wire and saw the brothers’ vision started to spread the word throughout the state. The gym started to grow.
“We were just going to stay at it,” Jay Deas said. “We wasn’t going to give up on any circumstances. We were going to fly or crash in that gym. We have to be at the gym a lot of the day, and there wasn’t much money coming in and trying to convince your family that this may work, that was tough.”
As the gym began to pick up, the workload for the two brothers increased. Tommy, who was also working at the Tuscaloosa News, couldn’t manage both jobs, and decided to step down from the gym in 2005.
“I had to do my job and had to be where I had to be for the Tuscaloosa News covering sports,” Tommy Deas said. “There were occasions where I would train someone, and they would have a big fight or tournament. And I would have to send someone else out with them because I couldn’t always travel with them. It just wasn’t enough hours in the day and enough days in the week for me to do both, so I felt like I had to make a choice.”
After his brother’s departure, Jay sat to himself, wrote down plans of improvement in his notebook and traveled around the country to visit various trainers he respected to formulate how he was going to move the gym forward.
Jay needed someone that shared his passion for boxing and could provide the hard work his brother showcased, and he found that in Cuz Hill. Hill had been coming to the gym and helping out since 2005. With no money to show for it, he continued working for Jay around the gym.
“It was the passion and love,” Hill said. “Once you start doing something and it’s something you love to do, it’s hard to stop. Even though you are not getting paid at the moment, you know eventually it was going to pay off. In life, it’s a gamble and you take risk. This was just another risk I was willing to take.”
Hill would go on to become one of Wilder’s head trainers, as well as co-owner of the gym.
“It’s a wonderful feeling. From day one to now, it took almost six years of hard work and dedication, but that’s something I lived by my whole life,” Hill said. “I believe in hard work because as a child it was hard, and basically wasn’t nothing was giving to me. Everything that I have now I deserve it because I worked hard for it.”
“Cuz was the one that pulled me under his wing,” said Willie Lowe, one of the trainers at the gym. “When I lost my job, I just keep coming, and the more I started coming, the more they allowed me to do.”
Jay could’ve given up when his brother left. When the gym profit wasn’t coming in, he could’ve shut it down. The road to success wasn’t easy, but the rough journey makes the success even more sweet.
As the gym continuously grows and the influence of the sport continues to strive, Jay Deas and his team continue to fly high in the sky, with no signs of coming down.
“The influences of boxing has grown because Deontay took away their excuses, and now you have all these young guys following down that same path,” Jay Deas said. “Not only do people come into the gym and know that it can be done, but they know that Deontay wasn’t just this one shot thing where nobody else has done anything and he did everything. They knew that he has opened doors for them, and he wants them to come through that door that he’s opened and is encouraging them to come through that door.”