Inside the PD Fight Club

The gym is tucked back off the highway in a small, beige building and no one has turned on the lights yet. The fighters begin arriving by 10 a.m., bags slung over sloped shoulders and sensible shoes on feet that don’t always work. This is Juarez Boxing in Irondale, Alabama, home to a former professional boxer who now helps people fight for the lives, or at least their independence.

Inside, Frank Sinatra seeps from speakers mounted on the ceiling above punching bags. Bob Hawkins — he spells out his last name because “that’s what Parkinson’s does to you. It makes you hard to…