UM legend Frank Gore talks NFL future, Mario Cristobal, boxing as he prepares for ring debut
The sweat hangs damp in the cramped boxing gym. To a rap beat, the gloves of dreamers hit the heavy bags, the sound popping like muffled gunfire. Inside the only ring in the place, a solitary man, fireplug-squat, his hands taped, is shadow boxing. With each jab he exhales an angry grunt.
“AHH! AHH! AHH-AHH!”
He stops. His body glistens, drips. His blue shorts and sleeveless shirt are drenched. He looks across the ropes with one more jab.
“I look like a football player, huh?” he teases, smirking.
Frank Gore is the third-leading rusher n NFL history. He will enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame on the first ballot, someday. For now, in a tucked-away gym in Davie, maybe five minutes from the Dolphins training camp where he worked his one season with Miami in 2018, he is a professional boxer in training, his first bout looming Dec. 18 in Tampa.
He is a rookie in a new sport. At age 38.
Gore didn’t retire from football. Still hasn’t. Football retired him. He played every season from 2005 through 2020. This year, nobody wanted the man with exactly 16,000 career rushing yards.
“Training camp started and I didn’t get a call,” he said Monday at Centeno’s Sweatbox Boxing Gym, wearing Buffalo Bills shorts and shirt. “I’m being real, man. That was garbage.”
Ten years with the Niners, three years a Colt, one each with the Dolphins, Bills and Jets — he led New York in rushing last year — then nothing. It hurt. He has not shut the door.
“I won’t say that [I’m retired],” he answers, quickly. “I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in. Most ripped I’ve ever been. Hopefully San Francisco makes a run, and my boys tell me to make a run with ‘em.”
Meantime in his boxing debut in just more than a week Gore will take on former NBA all-star Deron Williams in a four-round heavyweight bout, on the undercard of the Jake Paul vs. Tyron Woodley headliner.
This is on the far periphery of sports, where the lines of celebrity, entertainment and sports all blur. Paul is the social media star turned fighter. Woodley (filling in for injured U.K. reality TV star Tommy Fury) is a 39-year old MMA fighter. And on the undercard a former (for now) football star will give up six inches to an ex-basketball star.
It sounds like a freak show. A cartoon.
Then you watch what Frank Gore is putting into this. When football turned its back, he needed to chase the competition somewhere.
“I’ve been around it for so long, I love competing,” he said. “I want to give it a shot. I’ll see how this fight goes. If I wanna go [again], I go. If I wanna do it one time, if it’s over after that, it’s something wanted to do and I did it.”
Centeno’s Sweatbox is a part of the famed Bommarito Performance Systems gym, where a slew of South Florida-based athletes train. Gore, a gym rat, is at home there. Though his first bout is upcoming (a Showtime pay-per-view card), the ring has been a part of his training regimen since around 2006.
“Been around it for a while,” he says. “I work out here. They told me, ‘If you ain’t gonna play football let’s see if we can get you a fight’,”
Is he nervous?
“Yeah I’m nervous!” Gore admits. “It’s something new, man. I’m nervous. What’s nervous is I care about it. I’ve been working my behind off. I’ll see how I like it. This sport is really tough, man. I take my hat off. You in the barbershop talking football and a lot of people don’ understand what [boxing] takes. In football you got 10 other guys. In football yo can hide behind other guys. Basketball you can hide. This sport, you can’t. If I go out there and take it like a joke, I’ll get embarrassed.”
Gore, of course, is a former Miami Hurricane of note. I spoke to him Monday just after UM has officially fired football coach Manny Diaz and as Mario Cristobal’s hiring was imminent.
“I never wanna see a man lose his job, but I’ve been around Cristobal. I know what type of man he is,” Gore said. “He knows what it takes. I hope he takes it, man. Get the guys in there. Get it back to where we were.”
As Gore waits to see if football will ever call again and putties in boxing for the competition rush, he has rediscovered something welcome. Family.
“Got to see my son play at Southern Miss and see my stepson play at Wisconsin. Got my 15-year-old playing high school,” Gore said. “I saw how much I missed my kids. Kind of got relaxed and OK with no football.”
A photographer at the gym asks Gore to touch his thumbs in a ‘U.’
He does so. Happily.
This story was originally published December 6, 2021 at 2:43 PM.
