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The Corner Man

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Alexander says he intends to study business administration at a community college at some point, but not right now. When he talks about his future, he sounds a lot like his trainer: "Boxing taught me that hard work comes back to you. I don't really trip off of not being able to go to all the parties, because I already know that in the long run it'll pay off."

"That kid grew up in the ghetto and has never had a fight in his life outside the boxing ring," Cunningham marvels. "Kids like Devon come along once in a lifetime."

Divorced when his son was five, Kenneth Cunningham bounced around places like California and Texas while Kevin's mother stayed in St. Louis, holding down the fort and making light bulbs at the General Electric plant on Etzel Avenue.

A longtime American Airlines employee, Kenneth eventually made it back, directing aircraft to the gates of Lambert Field. He retired on disability in the late 1990s and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 2000. "My mom was our mother and our father," says Cunningham's sister, Nawon Thomas. "We just had each other."

"He used to get drunk and fight in the bars all the time," Cunningham says of his dad. "He was an alcoholic, and that's what killed him.

"I think it bothered me a lot when I was young -- that my dad left, being raised by my mother only," he continues. "But then again I think it made me stronger too. I grew up fast."

"I noticed that he was more mature with his thinking than most of my other kids were," recalls Maurine Smith, Cunningham's mother. "Sometimes when I would take him to buy clothes, if it cost too much he would tell me, 'Don't buy it.' This was when he was about ten or eleven."

As a youth Cunningham kept busy with football and baseball, even if academics didn't interest him much. He dabbled in boxing, deciding early on to limit fighting to the ring or self-defense. "I never got in big trouble as a kid," he says. "Maybe little trouble -- I was known to get in a fight or two 'cause I never let people step on my toes or run me over. I was known to throw a couple blows in the street, but that was it."

He graduated from Sumner High and put in a year at Forest Park Community College before joining the army. After a stint at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he earned a certificate in criminal justice from an overseas branch of Central Texas College while serving in South Korea.

All the while he was boxing -- if only because it beat the alternative.

"I was a field artilleryman, and we would be in the woods for 30 days at a time," he explains. "After doing that a couple times, I said, 'I've got to figure out something else to do.' One day I went by the boxing gym and they were having open trials. They put me in there with a guy who weighed about the same, and I beat his butt. A week later I was transferred to the boxing team. I went from wearing fatigues to wearing a warm-up suit and traveling around the country boxing."

Cunningham was post champion twice and fought in the all-army championships. He also met his mentor, Kenny Adams, who twice coached in the Olympics.

"I admired him. He was serious, no-nonsense, disciplined, and that's who I modeled my coaching style after," Cunningham says. "He's a hell of a technician: He finds out what a guy's strengths are and tries to make him better at those. I do the same thing."

His hitch completed, Cunningham came back to St. Louis and enrolled in the city's police academy. After graduating he married Sheila, who now works as a school nurse. A daughter, Kellia, was born in 1996. Cunningham joined the force, where he rose to the rank of narcotics detective and eventually earned a coveted detail in the office of then-Mayor Freeman Bosley Jr.

Roger Engelhardt, a SLPD sergeant who graduated from the academy with Cunningham, boxed alongside his classmate in numerous stagings of the St. Louis Metro Boxing Showdown (now known as Guns 'N Hoses). "We never lost," brags Engelhardt. The sergeant, who now coaches the police team, was especially impressed with Cunningham's emerging skill as a trainer. "He would always be real respectful of the coaches, but he would offer advice to the other fighters, and his opinion was really respected. He was a nice guy, but kind of flashy at first: outspoken. He was one of those loud guys -- you know, just one of those guys who like to talk a lot. At first it kind of turned me off to him. But it works well for him now."

In 1998 Cunningham quit the force to start a fight-promotions company and coach boxing full time.

"I was surprised and kinda concerned for him," says Engelhardt. "Like: Hey, what if this doesn't work out? I mean, a police job ain't the best job in the world, you're not gonna be a millionaire, but you know that check's gonna be there every other Friday, and you know you're gonna get a pension if you do it long enough."

But it has worked out, to the tune of an estimated $4 million to $5 million in career earnings netted by Cory Spinks -- 25 percent of which goes to Cunningham as his manager and trainer. (Cunningham says Spinks took away $1.4 million from the Zab Judah rematch, contrary to media accounts that peg the figure at $1.2 million. Neither Spinks nor Don King would comment on the purse.)

It's a far cry from the boy who used to tell his mother not to buy him clothes because they cost too much.

"He's confident about money now," says Cunningham's wife, Sheila. "He really surprises me now with his nice cars, nice jewelry. I'm the one that's more conservative about spending money now."

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