For the last several years, Tony Suggs has helped others in Alexandria unleash “Da Beast” within. In a good way.
The 59-year-old doesn’t make it easy. In a recent boxercise class at the Charles Houston Recreation Center, more than a dozen students, ranging from their mid-20s to late 70s, got an intense hour-long workout. It started with pushups, leg lifts, scissor kicks, jumping jacks, and then moved to jump rope, followed by a half hour of throwing gloved hands against pads and heavy bags.
“I bust their butts,” Suggs told ALXnow. “I put them through the type of workout that I used to go through, not quite as tough, but it’s a hard workout.”
Suggs showed off to the class with fancy jump rope moves, slapping the rope to his left and right, jumping high and letting it sweep under his legs twice, three times.
“He hasn’t taught us that yet,” said student Amanda Buckley.
Suggs was recently named as an inductee in the Alexandria City Public Schools Athletics Hall of Fame. He was nominated by his students at Charles Houston.
John Perlman, 77, suffers from Parkinson’s Disease and helped with the nomination.
“The best thing for Parkinson’s disease is to be active,” Perlman said. “And the coach knows all about Parkinson’s. He’s such an inspiration. His life is an inspiration to the whole community. Not only was he a boxer, but he’s a community hero.”
Buckley also assisted in compiling the nomination package. She’s been taking the two-day-per-week class for four years. She started with Suggs in 2021, after her regular Zumba class was canceled due to the pandemic.
“This was the one class that opened back up so they were able to do it safely,” Buckley said. “It started in the gym, and we were very far apart from each other. We all had masks on. It was really funny, because I think it was like a year before we finally were able to do no masks, and most of us had never seen each other’s faces.”
Suggs, a graduate of T.C. Williams High School, is a five-time Golden Gloves champ, is a three-time United States of America Amateur Boxing Federation (USA/ABF) champion, and ranked fourth worldwide. The super lightweight was also an Olympic Festival gold medalist in 1987, but his dreams of Olympic glory were extinguished by the sudden death of his infant daughter.
Suggs ended up in jail multiple times, became addicted to drugs, and found himself unleashing against opponents in the ring.
“When I got in the ring and I fought, it was therapy for me,” Suggs said. “I had so much anger, guilt, and shame suppressed down in me. Da Beast came out. That’s what allowed me to punch my way all the way to the number-one spot in the country, number four in the world, the man to beat for the 1988 Olympics.”
After retiring from boxing, Suggs trained professional fighters briefly, but said that he walked away from the competitive nature of the sport. In 2018, he was inducted into the D.C. Area Boxing Hall of Fame.
“I didn’t like seeing fighters really getting hurt,” Suggs said. “But I realized that there are so many different ways you can incorporate boxing into a healthy lifestyle. My students are building character, building their self-esteem. Even as adults, there are things that we all need to work on.”
Suggs is also the founder of the annual Men of Courage Lifetime Achievement Award Program, dedicated to Alexandrians who donate significant time to the community.
He teaches his Boxercise classes at the Charles Houston Recreation Center (901 Wythe Street) on Mondays and Wednesdays, and at the Leonard “Chick” Armstrong Recreation Center (25 W. Reed Avenue) on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. For more information on fall programming at the city’s recreation centers, please visit this link.
