Winner of 15 national amateur titles, man trained under Emanuel Steward
By Ross Maghielse
The Flint Journal
DAVISON, Mich. (AP) — Arnie Wells Jr. tells his story of soaring to the heights of the boxing world and the end of his amateur and pro career nonchalantly.
“It is what it is,” says the Davison native, a former pro boxer and one-time rising star who now, at age 50, works as a security guard in downtown Flint.
Easily recognized by his handlebar mustache, sunglasses, black “FLINT” baseball cap and friendly personality, Wells is a regular sight working his weekday nine-to-five shift patrolling Saginaw Street and the downtown area.
His story is one of near-misses, prideful accomplishments, misfortune and survival, The Flint Journal reports.
Wells Jr. grew up a fighter. His father, Arnold Wells Sr., and four brothers were a boxing family. He trained with the likes of Joe Byrd, Emanuel Steward and a long list of fighters from the famed Kronk Gym in Detroit.
As an amateur, Wells had a record of 126-12. In 26 professional fights, he had just five losses and one draw. He is a winner of 15 national amateur titles — including four
championships at the Ohio State Fair — and 30 state amateur titles. He might have been an alternate for the 1980 Olympics.
“Arnie could really fight, he was one of the top amateurs in the country when he was 16, 17 years old and of all the boxers I’ve ever trained, he’s the only one that really put 110 percent into it,” said Arnie Wells Sr., a former amateur boxing champ and army veteran who runs the Davison Boxing Club. It’s a makeshift gym in the backyard of his home. “Arnie, as Joe Byrd said one time, he’s got that dog in him. He didn’t let you go.”
Wells graduated from Davison High School in 1980 and at age 17 was invited to the U.S. Olympic Trials in Atlanta, Ga. He lost his 139 weight class fight to Joe Manley by a split decision and left the trials with a bronze medal. He could have been an Olympic alternate had the U.S. not decided to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
“Man, that whole deal was just messed up,” Wells said. “They told us like two weeks prior to the trials that they were going to boycott. It kind of took all the glory out of everything, but me being a small town guy from Davison, I’m there fighting Joe Manley and I really felt like I was as good as anyone.”
Wells opted to turn pro in 1981 instead of pursuing a spot on the 1984 Olympic team. He also chose not to join the USA boxing team on a trip to Poland in March 1980.
“I was supposed to go to Poland, because we were going to have this international tournament over there that was going to be on TV and everything. Because of the politics of it or something, they had to move it back two weeks and if I went I was going to miss my (high school) graduation and senior prom,” Wells recalled. “I told my dad, ‘No, I’m not going.’ I’m only going to graduate once and I’m only going to have my senior prom once.”
The plane carrying the USA boxing team crashed in Warsaw, Poland March 14, 1980. All 87 people on board were killed, including 14 amateur fighters from the USA boxing program.
“It’s just one of those things where I don’t know what to think about it,” Wells said. “I don’t think about, really. There was a lot of negativity going on with everything at that time, then there was the disappointment from the Olympics and all that. But I knew I was going to turn pro anyway, so I got over everything pretty quick.”
For his first three professional fights, Wells was managed and trained by Emanuel Steward, the late boxing icon credited with helping groom some of the world’s best fighters. He left Steward once he was told that his dad could not be a part of his training.
“Manny wanted me as a pro and he was in my corner for a few fights and they offered me this and that, but they had no place for my dad,” Wells said. “I said well my dad brought me to everything I’m at, so I’m staying with him. I trained with all those Kronk guys and they’re good guys, I saw them all at Manny’s funeral (in November), but there was no way I was going to not have my dad training me.”
That decision, although made out of loyalty, may have costs Wells a chance at a more prosperous professional career.
“Arnie should have been a really good pro,” said Byrd, one of Flint’s most accomplished boxers and trainers. “He was one of the best upcoming juniors all through the amateur ranks. He was right up there with anybody and should have been a guy that went on to be big-time.”
What Wells lacked at the professional level was somebody who knew the business side of boxing, Byrd said.
“Boxing is a tricky business. So many knots have to be untied up there in the pro ranks. It’s a different world altogether,” Byrd said. “If you’ve got talent, you can do all you want as an amateur because the fights speak for themselves. But as a pro, it’s different. If you don’t have the right manager, you don’t make it. Simple as that. His dad is a great trainer, but Arnie didn’t have that manager. He didn’t have that person to move him on.
“Arnie had to deal with all that, the politics, and that just wasn’t him or his dad. They weren’t that type.”
Wells’ last fight was in 1996. In 1997, at 35 years old and the tail end of his career but still looking to fight, he was injured and nearly killed after he was run over by a car on I-69 near the Hammerberg Road exit while changing a flat tire.
The accident resulted in five surgeries and kept him in a wheelchair for three years.
“My boxing career was coming to an end anyway, but that did it. That ended it on the spot,” Wells said. “I almost lost my leg and, really, I’m lucky to be alive.”
Wells never earned major money in the ring. He’s not enshrined in any boxing Halls of Fame or the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame. He’s not even in the Davison High School Hall of Fame because boxing is not a varsity school sport, although he said he had college scholarship offers to play baseball.
He’s a security guard during the day and voluntarily helps his dad train aspiring boxers at their gym at night. In between he quickly drives back to his Burton home to feed his dog and say hi to his wife of seven years, Kathy, who he repeatedly refers to as “the best thing that ever happened to me.”
And he’s not bitter, about anything.
“You only get a chip on your shoulder if you let it,” Wells said. “I’m like this: It is what it is. I know what I’ve done in my life, in my boxing career and I’m proud of it. I wouldn’t change any of it. I know what I’ve accomplished. Boxing has been my life and always will be.”
“When people talk about the best fighters from the state and all that, they don’t talk about Arnie,” Arnie Wells Sr. said. “But Arnie was as good as anybody.
“We had something going there for some time, we really had something going.”
