Produced by:
Greg Emerson Bocquet
Alexandra Cheney
Alan Haburchak
Alex Lowther

Seven years later he said he was running larger and more precarious transactions, when one went wrong. It involved a lot of money, and he was in deep. In such situations, he said, "somebody gets hurt. Somebody wants their money back."

Eddie Irizarry had a realization.

"Something real bad's going to happen to me or I'm going to do it to somebody and I'm going to be away for a long time," Irizarry said. "Or I'm going to be six feet under."

He said his revelation came as he was walking along, saw a boxing gym and just went in.

That was the day he "met boxing," he said

Irizzary said that boxing itself became the father figure he never had. "The sport raised me," he said

Now Irizarry has three children. Divine, Star and Storm. His fiancée is a PTA consultant at P.S. 61. His son Divine is in Pre-kindergarten and his daughters, Storm and Star, are in elementary school.

His alarm clock blares at 4:30 each morning. He rises and runs six miles through the South Bronx. By 8 a.m. Irizarry has punched the clock at his building maintenance job, a union position he has held for five years. With health benefits and a decent wage, Irizarry pushes a broom, paints walls and cleans up trash.

"The job basically sucks," he said. "But I don't care if I'm scraping gum off the floor as long as I can pay my bills and put food on my table."

At 5 p.m. he punches out, walks to the Bronxchester gym, and laces up his shoes and gloves. He trains until 8 p.m., when he goes home to spend a couple of hours with his fiancée and kids.

He said he still sees his former crack dealing colleagues on his pre-dawn runs, still dealing in the park, the same ones who used to shoot at him and who now come to watch him fight.