Boxer Denzel Bentley backs charity turning knives into public gyms

A champion boxer is working with an anti-knife crime charity which creates steel gyms made from melted-down knives.

Denzel Bentley was British middleweight champion from November 2020 to April 2021, and is in the ring on Saturday (May 11), taking on Danny Dignum in east London.

Bentley is backing knife crime charity Steel Warriors, which uses steel melted down from confiscated knives to create gyms to serve as community spaces.

He said the gyms would have been of great value when he was growing up in south London, telling LondonWorld there’s “nothing better than being confident in your own body”.

Bentley said boxing helped him as a youth by providing him with encouragement and interaction.

“If I didn’t find boxing, I don’t know where I’d be, if I’m being honest,” he said.

“A lot of my friends growing up were stabbed. Some survived, some didn’t. It made me feel like maybe I could be a victim. When I found boxing, that was my safe place.”

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At Steel Warriors’ gym in Langdon Park, Poplar, Bentley took part in one of the charity’s intervention community classes with Steel Warriors’ head of marketing and community, Christian d’Ippolito.

D’Ippolito demonstrated how Bentley could perform callisthenics exercises on the steel gym.

Bentley showed attendees how to shadowbox, and answered questions about his own training regimen.

About Bentley’s callisthenics skills, d’Ippolito joked: “He’s all right, isn’t he?”

He said: “What Steel Warriors is about is very much transforming a negative into a positive.

“Knife crime affects everyone, from young people to old people to people from all different walks of life. Our community is a very diverse and inclusive one, and most people within it have had some contact with knife crime.”

He said he too had been affected by knife crime.

D’Ippolito pointed to how the charity had helped young people demonstrably improve their bodies and minds. He gave the example of Kai Reid, a community member who had come across Steel Warriors when he was 19 and is now a sponsored athlete and the Langdon Park gym’s coach.

Steel Warriors coach Adam Morsel achieved a Guinness World Record in 2023 for the longest time spent doing a single-arm handstand on a balance dome.

Young people involved in the charity train without headphones on, and d’Ippolito said that helps develop dialogue and community.

“Having places that allow for this to happen, with no price tag, is really important,” he said.

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Steel Warriors runs free community sessions which do not require bookings.

Its public steel gyms are located at Langdon Park, Finsbury Park, and Ruskin Park, and the charity has built a gym in Brixton Prison.

On May 11, Bentley will compete in a headline bout with Danny Dignum at York Hall, Bethnal Green.