A new breed of boxing club is spreading across London. On a leafy street in Knightsbridge, BoxCentric offers sleek interiors and curated playlists instead of the damp canvas and ingrained leather scent that define old-school gyms. It is no longer an exception. BXR, founded by Olia Sardarova and backed by Anthony Joshua, charges membership fees that run into thousands of pounds. JAB Boxing in Victoria promotes sessions with champions such as Harlem Eubank and Caroline Dubois. KOBOX in Chelsea follows a similar model. Boxing, once dismissed by George Orwell as a pastime for the working class, has been repackaged for the affluent.
Who the new gyms serve
The shift is easy to mock but harder to dismiss. These boutiques are opening the sport to women, professionals and people who would never step inside a traditional gym. Louie Basso, a manager at JAB, says around 65 per cent of their clients are women. Dan Morley, a pundit and former professional, argues that everyone should have an opportunity to try a sport. A cleaner, better-lit space can demystify boxing's technical demands and build confidence, especially at a time when audience numbers for the professional game continue to fall.
"Everyone should have an opportunity to try a sport."
For fighters themselves, the luxury market provides a livelihood outside the promoter-controlled circuit. Mark Turley's book Journeymen: The Other Side of the Boxing Business documents how the average journeyman's income depends less on ability than on ticket sales. George Veness, a former England boxer from Newham, began training Victoria's Secret models before founding JAB. At 12×3 in the City, former British, Commonwealth and world champion Darren Barker teaches paying clients. These roles give athletes a way to earn that the traditional structure rarely offers.
Historical precedent
Boxing's relationship with wealth is not new. When the Marquess of Queensberry put his patronage behind the sport in 1867, he helped civilise brutal brawling by introducing gloves, rounds and the ten-second count. Without that intervention, boxing might not have survived in its modern form. Today's high-net-worth participants could become future advocates, school governors, magistrates, lawyers, who understand the sport's social value.
The grassroots crisis
While boutiques thrive, the community clubs that built British boxing are buckling. Soaring rents are the primary threat. Broad Street Amateur Boxing Club in East London, with a 138-year history nestled between Shadwell's council estates, faced an annual rent increase of more than £60,000 in 2024 and survived only after a public campaign. Stockbridge ABC in Liverpool has struggled. Hyde & District Amateur Boxing Club near Manchester, where Ricky Hatton once trained, is at risk. Sudbury Boxing Club, with a 70-year pedigree, recently needed promoter Eddie Hearn to launch a funding appeal.
These clubs are not interchangeable venues. When Sting ABC in Croydon was forced to move, many of its young boxers were lost to the streets despite the dedication of coach Bruce Smith, a former British army veteran. Only years later has the club re-established itself in Lewisham. A gym is a local institution; its character, whether the spartan white paint of Miguel's in Brixton, the converted church at Ingle Boxing Gym in Sheffield, or the disciplined environment at London Military Boxing Club under Andy Haines and Del Ali, cannot be transplanted.
Why the grassroots matter
Social workers and youth-offending teams in overstretched boroughs routinely refer young people to boxing clubs. The sport teaches emotional regulation, balance, defence and timing, the ability to stay calm in an un-calm environment, as trainer Teddy Atlas once put it. For children growing up without fathers or stable structures, boxing provides discipline, restraint and a form of gentleness that no poster campaign can deliver. It creates intergenerational authority and absorbs tensions from home and the schoolyard.
What happens next
There is room for both worlds. Women deserve gyms that feel safe. Former fighters deserve fair pay. Wealthy participants can become the sport's most influential champions. But if boxing becomes only a premium lifestyle product, something fundamental breaks. The glamour of the professional ring has always depended on the unglamorous rooms beneath it: the volunteer coaches, the kids paying a few pounds a week, the veterans wrapping hands, the smell of sweat and leather, the lessons in restraint disguised as violence. The rich will always be able to buy the feeling of boxing. The poor will always need its function.