SKOWHEGAN -- The smell of popcorn hung in the air as Eddie McGovern spun around. It had been years since he'd been close enough to reach out and touch the sport that was so much a part of him.

He'd taken his son to see Sylvester Stallone's latest installment in the endless "Rocky" saga, having packed away his own boxing gloves and shoes more than a decade earlier. Entering the cinema's lobby, McGovern saw the word "Everlast" emblazoned across the back of another patron's satin jacket.

Standing in line for refreshments with Dalton, then just 12 years old, McGovern saw the "Everlast" logo again, the one synonymous across the world with boxing equipment. Eddie got up the nerve, reached out to the man in front of him and offered succinctly, "Nice jacket."

The young man thanked him, asked him if he was a fighter, calling on the parlance of the game.

"A long, long time ago," Eddie remembered telling Brandon Berry that night. "Where do you train?"

"Right here in Skowhegan," Berry answered said.

Eddie's response isn't fit for print, but suffice it to say, it was the picture of astonishment. "Who's your trainer?"

"Carroll Ware."

It was all Eddie McGovern needed to hear, enough to convince him to call the man who had trained him as an amateur boxer years before.

Next generation

Today, Dalton McGovern, at 14, is the youngest member of the Skowhegan Boxing Club, which has 10 boxers under the guidance of head trainer Carroll Ware. The boxers range in age from 14 to 35, with two young women.

In an era where mixed martial arts dominates the competitive fighting landscape -- from Ultimate Fighting Championship to more regional promotions -- amateur boxing is enjoying a small recovery of sorts. When the old Skowhegan Athletic Club folded in 1993, Eddie McGovern was Ware's only charge and he had trouble finding bouts to compete in either here or elsewhere in New England.

Now, though, there are three boxing clubs in Maine and boxers can fight several times each year if they are willing to travel as far as Massachusetts. For some, like 30-year-old Chris Nickerson, boxing was viewed as the best alternative for getting in shape.

"I was a fat guy who wanted to get skinny," said Nickerson, who recently fought for the New England Golden Gloves championship in the light heavyweight division. "I did quite a lot of (mixed martial arts), for probably eight or nine months. But it was tough on my shoulder and arms -- and I have to get up and go to work the next day."

Nickerson, of Detroit, is 3-1 in his amateur career, competing once every six months or so. In the mornings he works at Newport Rental, operating heavy equipment before heading every afternoon to Somerset Sports and Fitness in Skowhegan to train under Ware.

Like the others in the club, Nickerson trains five days a week for nearly two hours at a time. Boxers spar against one another, lift weights, do aerobic exercises, punch stationary bags and work on reflexes and techniques.

A shrieking buzzer pops off every three minutes -- the length of one boxing round -- as the athletes move from training station to training station.

Nickerson works the heavy bag with such force, the room shakes each time he hits it. In the ring, every time he swings at Ware's hands -- protected by thickly padded, oversized mitts -- you half expect Ware to shriek in pain from bones shattering under the strain. Watching Nickerson, it's hard to believe he first showed up for training tipping the scales at 250 pounds, almost 75 pounds heavier than he is now.

For Ware, who grew up in Skowhegan, where he used to sneak up past his bedtime to watch bouts on a black-and-white television with his grandfather before eventually becoming the New England Golden Gloves middleweight champion in 1978, it's never been solely about boxing.

It's about giving people like Nickerson or some of his other trainees -- a number of whom are teens and have already had brushes with local law enforcement -- a pursuit that is bigger than themselves.

"We're trying to build champions," said Ware, noting that he's produced three New England champions and that, since its inception in 2006, the Skowhegan Boxing Club's boxers have an overall record of 14-4 in 18 total bouts. "But we're also trying to build good people here. It takes a certain kind of person to do this. We know it's not for everybody.

"But I want to have a social impact here. This is not just about giving back to the community; it's about giving these guys a place to go where they have responsibility and are expected to do certain things. It's about making a difference."

In the blood

Poor quality home videos provide Dalton McGovern with the only evidence of his father's boxing career. Still, the game is in his blood. He knows this.

It's what makes the chance meeting with Brandon Berry at the movie theater so remarkable. In August 2006, Brandon and Gordon Berry called on Ware, who was teaching a "boxercise" class at Somerset Sports and Fitness, to ask about resurrecting his boxing program.

"Two phone calls later, I had a ring," Ware said. SSF Construction in Benton helped Ware build the ring at Somerset Sports and Fitness -- which allows the boxers to use the space in one of its back rooms, so long as they purchase general membership in the gym.

The Skowhegan Boxing Club was born. Boxing went through a lull in the early 1990s, Ware says, when finding both bouts and other boxers became exceedingly difficult.

"It's a Catch-22," Ware said. "It's hard to keep kids in the gym, training hard every day, training just to train when there are no fights. Then, when there's interest again, everybody's looking for fighters to fill bouts, but there aren't any fighters training."

Today, though, the challenge is keeping boxers from fighting too much, and Ware said he won't allow fighters permission to enter bouts unless he believes they are completely fit, both physically and mentally. Nobody boxes just for the sake of boxing.

Both McGovern and Chris Nickerson recall the first time they stepped into the ring to face someone other than a sparring partner.

"It all goes pretty fast," McGovern said, noting that, even in a crowded auditorium filled with raucous boxing enthusiasts, the room remains eerily still. "You don't hear anything. It's quiet. All it is to you is punch, punch, whoosh, punch. It's totally different than I expected."

"I realized just how unprepared I actually was," Nickerson said of his first bout. "It definitely motivated me to work harder. Reality changed, from what I thought I was capable of to what I actually was capable of."

Boxing, like no other sport in that its purpose is to render an opponent physically unable to perform any longer, separates those who can and those who cannot rather quickly.

"Physically, it's everything I thought it would be," Nickerson said. "But the actual fighting, the mental strain is more than what the average person would ever think it is. I played other sports growing up, and after a game where you'd lose, you could go home and still say to yourself sometimes, 'Well, I had a pretty good game.'

"I've never done that here. When it comes to fight time, there's only one thing that matters, and it's winning."

Ware thinks that, just by participating, his fighters are doing that.

Travis Barrett -- 621-5648

tbarrett@centralmaine.com