Minardi Boxing Club formerly known as TMB (Team Minardi Boxing) was founded by former fighter and current high level professional/amateur boxing Coach Ronnie Minardi. Coach Minardi is best known for his extensive lineage of fighters that dates back to the late 1950s-1960s.

Coach Minardi was surrounded by boxing since his youth leading him to become one of four fighters among his cousins. Watching his cousins’ Tony, Ralph, and Carlo’s televised fights at Madison Square Garden inspired him to stand up for himself. At the age of eight, Coach Minardi experienced bullying, which led him to avoid going to school. Instead of getting on the school bus, he would go into the woods and sit there in tears not knowing what to do. He would explore his neighborhood or sit in the woods until the bus arrived in the afternoon to drop off the kids from school and return home as if nothing happened. After a week of this, his parents found out and confronted him. Coach Minardi explained he remained silent for fear of being beaten by his father. He described instances of his classmates knocking books out of his hands, tripping him as he walked on the bus or in the halls and being jumped by groups of kids. After revealing this, a conversation with his father and uncle took place. Their exact words to him were to walk away after being hit. “If it happens a second time,” they continued, “you will get this scared nervous type of feeling, don’t think about it, act on it. You punch whoever it is as hard as you can in the nose or chin and they will never bother you again, and you will never be in trouble with us.” When he returned to school the next day, he was spat in the face by another student. With the words of his father and Uncle in his ears, he savagely beat the student and went after all the others who had bullied him as well. It became his mission to retaliate against all those who had hurt him. As he became older, he realized that discipline and self-defense was supposed to be a main priority, not revenge.

However, Coach Minardi did not gravitate to boxing right away. Although he loved watching boxing and loved to fight in the street, baseball was his first passion. He was a four-time All-Star and two-time MVP, playing with travel teams with older, more experienced players than him. In addition to that, Coach Mianrdi was a pitcher for his high school baseball team whose talent was noticed by minor league scouts. However, after receiving several suspensions for fighting, Coach Minardi decided it was more important to support his mother and siblings financially than to attend school. He hated to see his mother struggling and felt he needed to be the man of the house since there was none around. At the age of 15, he was taught tile and marble installation by his uncle, Tom Zaffarese and later went on to become a union worker. In the midst of all this, Coach Minardi was reintroduced to boxing by his cousin and went on to fight in the Golden Gloves and numerous shows, later earning himself a sponsorship to turn professional and start training camp. However, on New Year’s Eve, Coach Minardi received the devastating news of the sudden passing of his mother, forcing him to leave training camp, putting his boxing career on hold. Although he did try to return to boxing, continual personal loss interfered. Coach Minardi lost six family members within a five year span, became a single parent to his son and entered into a fierce custody battle making it difficult to focus on his boxing career.
In spite of these hardships, Coach Minardi persevered and understood that it was these things that led him to where he is now. He now passes his knowledge of the craft of boxing and life experiences to teach and mentor others.