Jersey City Born Joe Botti to Enter National Boxing Hall of Fame

It started with a punch. Noticing fighting outside his home, Joe Botti ran and separated the two kids. 

“You don’t know how to fight anyway” Botti told the two. 

One of them responded, “Why don’t you teach us?”

Botti, a former amateur boxer said okay. Botti went to his basement, picked up a couple old gloves and equipment and let the kids duke it out in his makeshift ring. Botti assumed the kids would let off some steam in the ring, get a headache or two from the hits and that would be the end of it. However, the next day they came back. 

Within two weeks, over 50 kids were in his basement in Union City asking to be trained. 

Realizing kids kept coming back because they had nowhere else in the community to go, Botti, who’s love of boxing stemmed from watching Muhammad Ali fight as a kid, would devote the rest of his life teaching and training kids and adults boxing free of charge. 

Born in Christ Hospital in Jersey City and raised in Union City, Botti spent 30 plus years working during the day and training kids and adults at night. While tiring, with very little payout, Botti never cared about the money as watching his fighters develop positive change in and out of the ring was priceless to him. 

“It’s a lot of time, a lot of sacrifice, I got to put a lot of money (into the club) because you know a lot of these kids don’t have money. It’s a thankless job, but you get a great feeling knowing hey look this kid walked into my gym, didn’t know how to stand properly and now look they’re raising his hand in a fight. There is no greater feeling knowing I was a little part of that.”

Botti’s Union City gym quickly attracted potential fighters from across Hudson County.  
 
“My original gym was situated right at the Ninth Street and Palisade Avenue. So, it was right at the border of Jersey City and the tip of North Bergen. I would get all the kids from Hoboken, Jersey City Heights, North Bergen, Secaucus, West New York. I had it was like a county gym.”
 
Botti, who joined the police force in 1997 and would eventually rise to the rank of Captain, found that a lot of kids were surprised about positive impact a cop could have on them.
 
“I think I opened a different mindset for these kids on what police officers are. And I’m not saying that for all kids, but there was definitely a few of them that really got a kick out of the fact that a police officer was their mentor and was training them. “
 
Former Jersey City welterweight pro Juan Rodriguez Jr., who spent a couple years of his youth in and out of the criminal justice system, told RingTV in 2009 about his experience learning from Botti.
 
“Joe is my second Pops; he does a lot for me in and out of the ring. When I look back, I was an ass, and I wouldn’t want my kids to go through all that. The streets have nothing good in it, you just end up dead or in jail.”

As his gym grew so did the need for new…