He is doing this for all the Gary Russells, the ones who fight and the ones who don’t. For Gary Russell Sr., the patriarch, from whom everything stems, including the idea to name all his sons Gary. And for all the brothers — for Gary Jr., the WBC featherweight world champion, whose own gold-medal dreams fell apart in a Beijing dorm room eight years ago. For Gary Antonio, a blossoming young pro, and for Gary Allan, a one-time top-ranked amateur turned corner man for Gary Jr. And even for the non-fighting Garys — Gary Darreke, with a nose too sensitive for boxing, and the youngest brother, Gary Isaiah, with his love for basketball that permits no other pastimes.
He is doing this, too, for his half-brother Devaun Drayton, who in 2004 was hours from his departure for Miami, and a new training regime, when he was shot and killed, and who was buried in the suit he was to have traveled in, with his plane ticket stuffed in his pocket.
Gary Antuanne Russell, the last of the fighting Russells of Capitol Heights, is doing this for all of them. He is heading to Rio de Janeiro next month with a singular mission — to return with an Olympic light welterweight gold medal around his neck — and he knows he has benefitted from being last, from being the one who got to soak in everyone else’s lessons before throwing his first punch.
“I started out watching, being a spectator, watching my brothers train and spar,” said Antuanne, 20, who, like most of his brothers, goes by his middle name. “Blood, sweat and tears. I saw it all. I soaked it all in. We’d go to tournaments. My father came and hugged them. It made him so happy. I said, ‘I want to make my father happy. I’m going to do it.’ ”
But somewhere in there, amid all those external motivations — the drive to make Gary Sr. proud, the yearning to redeem Gary Jr.’s lost opportunity in Beijing — Antuanne is also doing this for himself.
“He uses his family as a secondary motivator, but what’s driving him is his own desire,” Gary Sr. said. “You can’t get up and go jogging, and go to the gym five days a week, push your body through rigorous training, when no one else is feeling the pain in those muscles but you — unless you’re doing it for yourself.”
It’s hard sometimes to know where one Russell ends and another begins. The brothers are sparring partners and training partners. They work each other’s corners. They talk through their career paths. They make decisions as a unit. And of course, overseeing it all is Gary Sr., their father, trainer, manager, mentor and corner man.
When Antuanne was around five years old, he found himself stuck on the second-story roof of a vacant convenience store in the Russells’ neighborhood, his cries for help bringing a few onlookers over. Some of them implored him to jump, promising to catch him, but Antuanne shook his head. Finally, Gary Sr. arrived. He held out his arms and said, “Come on, son. Jump. I’ve got you.” Antuanne jumped. His father caught him. And in one way or another, the boy has been jumping into his father’s arms, with the same absolute trust, ever since.
Following brother’s footsteps
Antuanne shows a visitor around Enigma Boxing Gym, the family’s training headquarters, in an industrial park off Edgeworth Drive in Capitol Heights. A southpaw fighter — like all the Russells, whether nature made them right- or left-handed — he absent-mindedly taps his left fist into his right palm, the way fighters do, as he strolls. He stops at a poster of Gary Jr., in mid-punch, on his way to another victory, one of 27 to his name, against only one loss, in his pro career. In the ring, he is known as Gary “Mister” Russell Jr. (Antonio, currently 7-0 as a pro, goes by the ring name Antonio “Another” Russell.)
“Look at him,” Antuanne said of Gary Jr., now 28. “His face gives off a demeanor, like rage, like he wants to hurt this guy. That’s the mind-set you have to have in the ring, sadly. When you’re in there, it’s either kill or be killed. He’s throwing a punch, but his hand is cocked like he’s ready to throw another one. . . . It’s not just the win that I pay attention to — it’s how you do it. The sharpness, the mind-set you have. See — he looks pretty. He looks like he’s entertaining people. That’s what we’re doing. We’re in the entertainment business. If you look at him, he’s an attention-grabbing fighter. That what my father wants us to do.”
The Russell boxing empire started in the basement of the family's red-brick house on Omaha Street. Gary Sr. had been an aspiring fighter in his youth until he was shot in the knee during a hunting accident, ending his hopes. Instead, he started churning out sons and building a ring in the basement in which to train them, one by one, in the sweet science. Four of the Russell sons, including Antuanne, won Golden Gloves titles, an unprecedented feat.
As the youngest of the fighting Russells, Antuanne at first was relegated to the basement steps, where he sat and watched for hours as one brother after another learned under their father’s watchful eye.
“Antuanne was always more attentive than his brothers, more watchful of everything in general,” Gary Sr. said.
Once Gary Jr. struck it big as a professional, winning his first 24 fights after turning pro in 2009, he helped the family buy the space on Edgeworth Drive, its ceiling now hung with heavy bags, its floor crowded with free weights and exercise equipment, its back half dominated by a regulation-sized ring, its walls full of action shots and portraits of the fighting Russells.
On a mid-July afternoon, one day before he would fly to Colorado Springs to join his USA Boxing teammates for their pre-Olympics training camp, Antuanne is still talking about Gary Jr., the most successful — at least so far — of the fighting Russells.
Antuanne’s amateur path has followed Gary Jr.’s closely, to the point where it is now getting eerie. These days, Antuanne lives in Gary Jr.’s old room in the Omaha Street house, and sleeps in his brother’s old bed, and sometimes it’s almost as if they’re the same fighter.
Like Gary Jr. had done in 2008, Antuanne lost his opening fight at the U.S. Olympic trials this winter, relegating himself to the challenger’s bracket, but made a furious comeback, winning six straight matches to capture the 141-pound division title. Like Gary Jr., he wound up getting a rematch against the fighter who stopped him in the opening match — and beat him once, then beat him again in the clincher. In U.S. Olympic trials history, only Evander Holyfield, Roy Jones Jr., Floyd Mayweather Jr. and the two Russell brothers have won Olympic spots after losing their opening matches.
But here is where the Russells hope the parallels end. In 2008, Gary Jr. got to Beijing only to collapse while trying to sweat off an extra 1 1/4 pounds to make weight. Considered by many the gold-medal favorite at 119 pounds, he never even got a chance to step into the ring.
"I remember it like it was yesterday," Antuanne said of the wrenching aftermath. "He came back, and he was speechless for a little while. His demeanor, the essence of what made him who he was, just went out the window. He became antisocial, walking around with his head down. That was never him. He was an energetic person. It was gone after that. Once he came home, a piece of him stayed over there."
Asked whether he sees himself as going to Rio to complete the mission his brother started but never got to finish, Antuanne tapped his left fist into his right hand again and said, “Very much so.”
But that isn’t a stance his brother encourages, or even tolerates. It’s not about Gary Jr. anymore. It’s about Antuanne.
“This is his, on his own. He made the sacrifices. He’s the one training every day. This is his own thing,” Gary Jr. said. “I don’t want him to feel he’s trying to complete the mission I started — but to complete his own mission, the one he started, and to write his own chapter.”
A step toward a pro career
Having learned their craft from the same man, the Russell brothers all have a common, baseline fighting style. Put a mask over their faces, and a boxing aficionado could still pick out a Russell from a mile away.
“The Enigma style,” Gary Sr., 57, calls it. “The way we throw our hooks, the way we throw our body shots, our conditioning. We are defensive-minded, but we always put ourselves in an offensive position. They are all taught pretty much the same concepts, but as individuals, they all have different swags.”
Antuanne was always the most studious, observant, cerebral and book-smart — as evidenced by the fact he was valedictorian of Croom Vocational High School’s Class of 2015. His family thinks of him as an old soul, whose music of choice is old-school soul and R&B, and who prefers ancient-looking flip-phones to the smartphones of today. When USA Boxing gave him a tablet for training purposes, it sat mostly unused — other than when he needed his father’s long-distance coaching, and he had a teammate film his sparring sessions so Gary Sr. could pick them apart on video.
“Antuanne has a unique swag, a genuine character, a good heart,” Gary Sr. said. “He doesn’t carry a whole lot of extra baggage. He’s an older spirit.”
Always a thinking man, Antuanne had plotted out his future years ago. Particularly after seeing Gary Jr. turn pro and start making big money — buying cars for each of his parents and his wife — that was the only goal that mattered to Antuanne.
“Turning pro, man,” he said. “I saw Junior look so flawless. That was the stage I wanted to be at. I had to bite my tongue so many times, because I didn’t want to sound like I was being jealous. I was like, ‘I wish I had what you have. I wish I had your position.’ I never told him, but I thought it many times.”
The Olympics, until recently, seemed like little more than a diversion on the way to riches — a last stand as an amateur, a capstone. But then someone explained what an Olympic gold medal could do for his earning power as a pro. Suddenly, it became a mission, one that took Antuanne to Reno, Nev., last December for Olympic trials, then — because earning a trip to the Olympics requires an additional title in a designated qualifying tournament — to Argentina and Azerbaijan this spring and summer.
“This is like an open door to the professional world,” Antuanne said. “If I can get my medal, once I go professional my signing bonus will blow up.”
The plan remains to turn pro right after the Olympics, gold medal or no. He hopes to make his professional debut by the end of the year, and the entire family already has its collective eyes on a three-Russell fight card, with Antuanne and Antonio on the undercard and Gary Jr. headlining in a defense of his featherweight title.
“The Russell Show,” Gary Jr. said, already imagining the posters and television promos.
There could be only one acceptable professional ring name for Antuanne, despite his failed attempts to come up with his own, all of them shot down by the rest of the family. In the end he knew they were right.
And so Antuanne already hears it in his dreams, his ring introduction come this fall:
In this corner, making his professional debut, from Capitol Heights, Maryland, weighing 141 pounds, the reigning Olympic light welterweight gold medalist, Gary Antuanne “The Last” Russell.
