Inductees

For more than a decade, Darrell “Smitty” Smith has been giving back to the sport that provided him with so much.

The Hillcrest High School graduate has been running Smitty’s Mid-West Boxing Gym & Youth Center in Springfield since 2012. Along the way, the USA Boxing-certified gym has seen more than 1,500 youth get involved in the sport, helping teach leadership skills and self-confidence.

Smitty’s gym has created Golden Gloves champions, Junior Olympic champions and professional boxers and that is why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame proudly inducted Smitty with the Class of 2026.

Smith was an accomplished boxer himself with 30 regional Golden Gloves championships, 18 Junior Olympics championships and has been the Springfield Fighter of the Year five times. He was inducted into the Fort Bragg Boxing Hall of Fame in 2018, the Springfield Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2022 and will join the Indiana Boxing Hall of Fame in May.

All of the success and accolades started when Smith walked into the Boys & Girls Clubs of Springfield—Henderson Unit as a youth. Back then, though, it was just the Boys Club of Springfield.

He had an interest in boxing and trainer Jim McManis took Smith under his wing. Smith said he had a rough first year, but McManis — another Springfield Area Sports Hall of Fame inductee — stuck with it, and Smith improved.

Fast forward to his senior year of high school, McManis suggested that Smith consider coaching the sport. Smith said he recalls McManis telling him out of all the boxers he’s trained, he’s cut out for it.

“I told him he was crazier than a box of rocks,” he said with a chuckle. “There ain’t no way I put up with all these different kids and different moms and dads coming in here, getting mad about this and that.”

Smith would join the United States Army, spending 10 years in the 82nd Airborne Ranger. After that, he worked as a deputy in Greene County and then later worked for BNSF Railroad. Injuries sustained while serving in the Gulf War eventually caught up to him and led to his retirement.

Smith said there was a time in his life when he couldn’t wait to get out of Springfield and explore the world. He said after doing that, he couldn’t wait to get back to the 417.

“I got back here and I saw a need,” he said. “There was a lot of kids in the street, a lot of kids on drugs. There were a lot of kids dropping out of high school. I thought it was terrible. And I remembered how it was back when I was growing up here.”

He recalls the impact boxing had on him and he was going to open up a gym to help draw in kids and teach them life lessons he learned through the sport. He got kids back in school, helped send some kids to college, others to vocational school and a few followed his footsteps and joined the military.

Early this year, he got a letter in the mail from Fort Benning, Georgia. He knew that town; it’s where he learned to jump out of a plane for the military.

It was one of his former boxers who was completing infantry training and was set to graduate.

“I am doing the same thing that got me started out and it feels like I’m doing what I was supposed to be doing,” Smith said. “So I guess, (McManis) was right on that one.”

The 13th “Always Ready to Rumble” event this fall draws boxers from 14 states and is a banner event for his gym. In the past, former boxing champions have come to Springfield to meet Smith’s younger boxers. That group included Larry Holmes, Riddick Bowe, Thomas Hearne, James Toney and Ray Mercer, to name a few.

The more he coaches and the more he is involved in the sport, the more love for it Smith finds. Now, the impact will be recognized statewide.

“It’s one of the greatest honors anybody, like me or a coach, could receive, especially being a coach that doesn’t coach from a college or coach from a high school,” Smith said. “So I’m truly honored. You know, Springfield is my hometown, so even though I’ve done a lot of stuff in this world, I’ve always made it back in Missouri.”

Now, he is part of Missouri sports history with the induction into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.