Boxing legend Tommy Hearns' voice filled with sadness on Sunday afternoon as he surveyed the burnt ruins of the old Kronk boxing gym, where he and dozens of other notable Detroit boxers trained from the 1970s into the 2000s.

The world-renowned gym had been situated in the basement of the city of Detroit's Kronk Recreation Center, which had been abandoned for a decade and was largely destroyed in a fire Saturday night. The Detroit Fire Department called the blaze suspicious and said an investigation is underway.

“It’s just sad to see that people didn’t value this place like we did," said Hearns, 58, the smell of charred debris still lingering in the air. "What this building brought for me was a chance at life. I got a chance to become somebody out of this building right here.

"To see it like this is pitiful — it’s really pitiful."

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Hearns was among several current and former Detroit-area professional boxers who ventured out Sunday to see what remained of the original Kronk gym. The get-together had the atmosphere of a wake.

“I heard, but I had to see it with my own eyes," said Tarick Salmaci, 45, of Dearborn, who began boxing at Kronk in 1986 and also went on to fight as a professional.

Firefighters responded to an emergency call at 9:25 p.m. Saturday, arriving at the empty recreational building at McGraw and Junction on Detroit's west side.

The fire had already spread to the second floor and there was heavy smoke rolling across McGraw Street, according to Deputy Fire Commissioner David Fornell.

"We tried to attack it from inside but because of the danger of the roof falling in, the chief pulled the crew out and (we) fought the fire from the outside," Fornell told the Free Press, noting the roof eventually caved in. The crew fought the blaze for about 4 1/2 hours, he said.

Because the building is in sparsely populated neighborhood, — "the two blocks around the building are almost vacant, there are no neighbors," Fornell said — the fire was able to spread quite a bit before it was called in, he said.

"It was a ... part of history that was destroyed," Fornell said.

The city-owned Kronk Recreation Center was built in 1921 and named for Detroit City Councilman John Kronk. Its heyday, however, came five decades later, when boxing trainer/manager Emanuel Steward took over the center's boxing programs.

Fifty amateur boxing champions, 30 world champions and three Olympic gold medals came out of the gym. Its roster of fighters included Hilmer Kenty, Mickey Goodwin, Milt and Steve McCrory, Duane Thomas, Jimmy Paul and William (Caveman) Lee and Tommy (The Hitman) Hearns, the first boxer to win world titles in five weight classes.

Hearns recalled Sunday how he trained for three or four hours a day in the old Kronk gym, six days a week.

“I hope it meant to Detroit almost as much as it meant to me," he said. "This was a safe haven for me."

Champions and neighborhood kids often trained shoulder to shoulder in the small basement gym, which was notorious for its stifling heat.

"The walls used to sweat — it was that hot," recalled Cornelius (K9) Bundrage, 44, who began at Kronk in the 1990s and still boxes professionally.

The original Kronk also was known for its survival-of-the-fittest training regimen.

“We would spar and go all out," recalled Salmaci, now a real estate broker. "Our sparring sessions were harder than the fights.”

But Kronk gym came into hard times in the mid-2000s, as the city struggled to maintain the recreation building and its programs. The city shut down the building in September 2006 after vandals had ripped out wiring and copper pipes, cutting off water service.

By then Detroit was reeling from financial woes and there was no money to make repairs and reopen the building and its legendary fight club.

Plans in the boxing community to purchase and renovate the building with private funds never came to fruition.

The Kronk boxing program stayed open and relocated to a succession of locations. It is currently housed at 9520 Mettetal on the city's west side. Steward, now recognized as the Godfather of Detroit boxing, died in 2012.

News of the fire at the old Kronk Gym comes a week after a fire ripped through the auditorium at the old Cooley High School, gutting the vacant but historical space.

Fornell, the deputy fire commissioner, said he doesn't see anything connecting the two fires at the moment — they occurred at different times and in different neighborhoods — but noted this doesn't mean investigators won't look at all angles.

"It's unfortunate that we are losing these architectural gems, but also, they've been vacant years, nobody stepped up," Fornell said. "Right now the city is working on getting street lights, lowering response times, there are a lot of priorities in the city."