He needed one that night he did his stand-up comedy bit at the King Tut club in Columbus in the mid-1970s.
He was a young guy then who’d just dropped out of Maryville College, a small Division III school south of Knoxville, Tenn., where he’d been the starting quarterback for the Scots following a standout football career at Gahanna Lincoln High.
After getting a job at a Lum’s restaurant in Columbus, he first tried his hand at comedy on the experimental QUBE cable television system that launched in Columbus in 1977 and included a two-way, interactive capability with the viewers who could vote on shows they were watching.
He appeared twice on a QUBE talent show — emceed by Flippo the Clown — where acts could get “gonged” off the stage. After two KOs, he was back at Lum’s serving up the signature hotdogs steamed in beer and Ollie Burgers when he got a call.
“He said, ' John, this is Bill Starr from the King Tut Night Club up on Cleveland Ave,’” Drake said as he mimicked the voice from so long ago while sitting near the ring apron of his boxing gym in downtown Dayton the other evening.
“Everyone knew his club. It wasn’t a place people my age went to — it was more an older crowd — and it was kind of cheesy. It had an Egyptian motif. Inside it had little cubbies, almost like grottos, with fake stones. The servers wore togas and there was live music.
“Anyway, he goes, ‘Listen I saw your bit the other night on QUBE and I thought you were outstanding!’
“I was like, ‘Aaahh….really? Wow!’”
“And he was like, ‘Yeah and I think you should come up and do my show.’
“They had the King Gong Show. I don’t know if you remember Chuck Barris (the wacky cult hero host of The Gong Show on NBC back then), but this was similar, just wilder.
“They had this guy dressed up in a (expletive) gorilla suit and that big monkey ran all over the place making ape sounds. He’d be up in your face, and he’d incite the crowd. And if they didn’t like you, he’d hit this big gong they had.
“I did the show 7 or 8 times, and everybody knew me after a while. I kept getting gonged, so I was constantly trying to figure out how to start my act, that was the hardest thing for me.
“Finally, one night I got three oranges from the bartender and juggled them. Eventually, I just dropped them, and they rolled off into the audience.
“Next thing I know, an orange comes flying out of the crowd and hits me right in the (private parts)!”
An even lower blow came when he was gonged that night.
“I hung in there though and the last time I appeared there, the place was packed, and I slayed it,” he grinned. “I won it all that night.”
In the decades that followed, he took those lessons from his stand-up days in Columbus and applied them to his knockdown business here in Dayton:
He kept trying. He never quit.
And he kept his fruit away from the crowd.
Over the past 25 years, Drake has operated three boxing gyms in downtown Dayton.
The first, called Reality Fitness, was up three flights of stairs above Ned Peppers bar in the Oregon District.
After about 18 months there, he relocated to the old Gentile Produce Market on E. Fourth Street between St. Clair St. and Patterson Blvd. The place had an old school vibe — and no heat — and could have come straight out of a Rocky movie.
He was there 16 years and when the building’s owner sold it to the library, he moved a block away to one end of the empty Greyhound bus terminal at Fifth and Patterson. Drake’s Downtown Gym has a back-in-time feel, as well, and the outside wall is now covered in a vibrant mural of Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed that was done by artists from the K12 Gallery & TEJAS.
Inside the clientele is a cross-section of the city.
Dr. Luxme Hariharan, the Chief of Ophthalmology at Dayton Children’s Hospital, trains there, as does Xenia firefighter Warren Roberds, a hard-hitting light heavyweight and Sam Wildenhaus, a talented middleweight from Yellow Springs who, just recently, put on a stirring exhibition at the gym with an accomplished Albanian boxer who was visiting the Athletes in Action complex in Xenia.
The clientele includes mothers with young kids and downtown business people who are trying to stay fit; people coping with Parkinson’s Disease, who have weekly workout sessions; and there’s a class for kids, where they learn basic skills as well as concepts of hard work, and discipline while they build self-esteem.
In the early days Drake teamed with Womanline to help heal and empower women who had suffered some form of abuse.
The 2009-10 University of Dayton basketball team spent the first two months of the school year training at the gym to build camaraderie and toughness.
And the lessons paid off: The Flyers won 25 games and the NIT that season.
Just 13 days after the 2019 mass shooting just a few blocks away in the Oregon District, Drake went on with his already-scheduled boxing show outside of his gym that featured amateurs – some of whom worked in businesses near the deadly assault – and helped reclaim the area. A large crowd turned out – there were cheers and plenty tears – and funds collected that night went to a victims’ relief fund.
Over the years ‚the fight shows have benefitted several charities and community groups, including Brigid’s Path, the AIDS Resource Center, an animal shelter in Middletown, the Boonshoft Museum and, again this year, the Muse Machine.
‘One of the best nights of their lives’
After Drake’s jobs at various Lum’s restaurants — in Tennessee and Columbus — he became a manager at Max & Erma’s and eventually relocated to Dayton.
Later came a variety of other pursuits: He had a DJ business, was one of the original owners of Sloopy’s tavern in the Oregon District, tended bar at Newcom’s and then ran the Bayou Cafe in Centerville. He has a 38-year-old son Justin.
In 1998, he made his first foray into boxing. Once he moved his gym to Gentile’s, his visibility grew and so did his clientele. Soon he was putting on small smoker bouts in his club that featured amateurs who trained there.
His place was frequented by a few pros, too ‚and some of the area’s better trainers, including Ron Daniels and Kenny Milliner, both of whom he said he learned from.
Milt Pearson used to bring his grade school-aged son, Chris, there, too. Later the father and son opened their own gym and Chris became one of the nation’s best amateurs. Now, at age 32, he has a 17-3-1 pro record, his last fight coming as a light heavyweight.
Counting those early shows, Drake estimated he’s put on 30 or 40 fight cards, including a few at Memorial Hall.
From 2010 to 2012, he put on three gala shows connected to the Punchers & Painters festivities that celebrated boxing in downtown Dayton. There were art and photo exhibits and nights honoring former champs like Buster Douglas and Aaron Pryor, both of whom mixed with the crowds. There was a tribute night to Davey Moore, the world featherweight champ from Springfield, who died from a fight injury in 1963.
Drake’s 2010 show — where the ring was set up on Fourth Street and no admission was charged — drew some 2,500 people.
He said the thing that has given him special satisfaction in recent years is watching the emergence of everyday people who train for a few months to take part in his amateur Knockout exhibitions like Saturday’s show:
“Sure, it’s awesome to work with fighters who really know what they’re doing – guys who are pros or accomplished amateurs – but it’s also really fun taking a banker who is out of shape or a woman who may be a housewife and doesn’t think she can do this and see them train and get better and find out they can do more than they ever imagined. To see them go the distance (in the three, two-minute rounds of their exhibitions) is really cool.
“It’s so rewarding to them. I’d bet a lot of them would tell you, except for their wedding and the birth of their children, it was one of the best nights of their lives.”
Fight night
Saturday night’s show — which is sponsored by Warped Wing — starts at 7:30. Doors open at 5:30.
Among those on the card will be Roberds, light heavyweight Austin Pitcock and Morgan Schockman, who is a trainer at Drake’s. It will be her fifth show and a few nights ago she described the experience:
“It’s definitely nerve wracking, but I keep doing it is because it’s one of those things that makes you feel really alive.”
Although Drake said he still gets a charge on fight night, he admitted the daily grind of running the gym — where some workouts start near dawn and others end after dark — are a test:
“I love what I do, and 25 years has been an awesome run, but I’m at the end of the road as far as all the things I want to do with this. We’ll see what the future brings.”
One thing on the horizon is the new University of Dayton club boxing team that he’s going to train. He said the Flyers team will compete against other colleges in the National Collegiate Boxing Association (NCBA.)
“Right now, though, we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. “Guys are working to get in shape and learn the basics. We’ve got things to take care of first.”
That’s the case with Saturday night, too,
In the past, he’s worn a tuxedo in the ring and recently, it’s been a kilt.
“I think this time it might just be jeans,” he shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ll come up with something.”
As long as he doesn’t bring out some oranges, he should be OK.
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