More than fighting is taught at Gladiator Boxing in Lacey Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 09/16/06 BY HARTRIONO B. SASTROWARDOYO STAFF WRITER LACEY - For Matthew Saad Muhammad, it's about doing positive things and keeping children off the streets. For Dan Downes, 41, of Barnegat, he can see a "night-and-day improvement" in the demeanor of his two sons. Muhammad, 52, is a former light heavyweight world-championship boxer. These days, he's passing on the knowledge he acquired as a fighter by assisting 36-year-old Shawn Darling outside the ring at Darling's newly expanded Gladiator Boxing, 699 Challenger Way, Suite 5, in the Forked River section of the township. Darling, like Muhammad, is a Forked River resident. Darling is also an Atlantic County Jail corrections officer, a certified boxing instructor at that county's Police Training Center in Egg Harbor Township and a coach certified by the New Jersey chapter of USA Boxing. In February 2005, a Lacey police officer asked if Darling could train his two sons in the pugilistic arts. "I thought it was a fun part-time job," Darling said. By August 2005, Darling was training 10 students and needed to look for a space larger than his garage. Within a month, he incorporated and opened a location on part of a second floor in Lacey Business Park. By December he had outgrown the 400-square-foot space and expanded to include the entire second floor, which was 1,200 square feet. In July, Darling expanded Gladiator Boxing again to its present 2,300-square-foot location, still in the business park. Instead of a 10-foot-by -10-foot ring, he now has a standard 22-foot-by-22-foot one. The facility also includes punching bags, weight machines, free weights and other exercise equipment. About 100 children and adults, ranging in age from 8 years old to the upper 40s, partake in 1 1/2-hour sessions, three days a week. "Here, you're guaranteed training," although the children's and the adults' reasons for enrolling differ, Darling said. "Some want to compete (in boxing matches), some want to exercise because they're coming off from another sport, and some want to learn self-defense," he said. "And some parents just want an activity for the children, to get them off the computer," Darling said. Whatever the reason, Muhammad said there's one result. "I see the changes in their faces. We set an example, give them positive feelings, and they develop inner strength," he said. Downes agrees. "It's been great for them," Downes said of his two children, Danny, 14, and 11-year-old Dennis. "It's been a night-and-day improvement, 1,000 percent. They're better disciplined, more courteous and more polite," the elder Downes said. Shawn Darling (right), owner of Gladiator Boxing in Lacey, works with 17-year-old Robert Walder, also of Lacey, in the ring recently.