Antisemitism prompted the family to leave Odessa for Brooklyn, New York, in the late-1980s, when thousands of Jews were emigrating. Salita first began to understand his Jewishness as a young child; when his older brother Michael was bullied he could not understand why “some people didn't like us just because of that”.
He then had to grapple with a new form of being an outsider. Crammed into a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, his family had little money – and wearing discount shoes and speaking no English did not help him to assimilate at his new school.
“Going to the store and paying with food stamps as a young kid was quite embarrassing,” he says.
It drove him to do whatever he could to get out of this position.
Salita in the ring[Missing Credit]
His parents signed him up to the cheapest local karate programme they could find in Brooklyn. Observing his family’s challenges, his trainer Paul Momondo allowed the youngster to come as much as he wanted. Salita visited every day. So talented and committed was he to combat sports that Momondo suggested he try boxing.
When he started, he could barely manage ten push ups. At 13 years old, he walked into the Starett City Boxing Club – a gym that was free to go to because it was subsidised. Set in the basement of a car park in a ghetto of Brooklyn, there was no running water, no air conditioning in the summer, no heating in the winter and no bathroom. But it was everything to him.
“It was surrounded by kids that went on to become world champions and some of the best boxers that the sport has produced,” he says. “From the first day of walking into that place, I really felt inspired and that this would be my path out of my ghetto, so I worked as hard as I could to be a champion.”
He recalls fondly Jimmy O'Pharrow, the African American boxing trainer who ran the gym. “He connected to me even though I was different from all the other kids in that place. He took me under his wing, and taught me the ropes of boxing, and I believe he was my guardian angel through a significant portion of my life.” Of his promising young protégé, O'Pharrow once said: “Kid looks Russian, prays Jewish and fights black.”
Just as Salita’s future in boxing was burgeoning, so too was his faith. Odessa had been a centre of Jewish culture and learning, but the only religious practice Salita recalls from this part of his childhood was when his father found a way to buy matzah for Passover. Living in Brooklyn was the first time Salita saw religious Jewish people wearing kippot in the streets. “I really wanted to know what it means to be a Jew. Why do people dress a certain way?” he says.
At 14, he discovered the Chabad, where he immediately felt a “harmonious warmth and connection”. He had held his bar mitzvah in Brooklyn at a Russian restaurant that was more of a “birthday party”, with a cake and 13 candles, than a religious event. His “real” bar mitzvah came later when he had started to practice Judaism.
He remembers how he started to put on tefillin when he had not quite stopped eating McDonald's and Burger King. And in his early boxing days, he viewed his fights as parallel to his increasing observance of Jewish laws. He would tell himself that after a boxing tournament, he would go to Friday night and Saturday services at synagogue and that he would not turn on the computer or the TV: “I took personal small steps in a direction towards becoming fully observant,” he says.
[Missing Credit]
That the worlds of boxing and Judaism are somewhat incongruous – two different communities that would not typically crossover – was something he only considered years later, after he had retired from boxing.
“As a religious Jewish person, you're encouraged to bring ethics and professionalism to whatever you're doing,” he says. “They are two very different worlds, and when I was fighting, I was so focused I didn't even notice it. But I’ve been in both worlds since I was a young kid. I need both.”
Despite their differences, Salita found that his boxing helped to enhance his Jewish practice and vice versa.
“It's a spiritual sport,” says Salita, describing sparring. “It is very intense, takes you to different places, makes you connect to yourself and to your spirituality, and deepens that connection. I felt that connecting to Judaism really helped strengthen my mind, and in going through the challenges of boxing, my religious observance progressed.”
When Salita was 18, and planning to turn professional, with a hugely important tournament at the US National Tournament in Mississippi lined up, his rabbi urged him not to box on Shabbat. “It was a very difficult decision for me,” he recalls.
As he progressed in the tournament and made it to the semi-finals, knocking out one of the favourites to win, he was interviewed by a local reporter who was impressed by the newbie’s success. When Salita explained that as an observant Jew he could not play his afternoon game because it was Shabbat and that he would therefore be disqualified, the reporter spoke to the organisers, and his fight was rescheduled. Salita won.
When he turned professional in 2001, his contract stated that he would not fight on a Sabbath or Jewish holiday.
Since retiring from boxing, Salita is now the go-to promoter for established female fighters. On his books is Claressa Shields, who is regarded as the best female boxer of all time. When he read about Claressa Shields in the Wall Street Journal before she won her second gold medal in the 2016 Olympics, he recognised her potential. “I really felt she was the best boxer, male or female, coming out of the 2016 Olympics.”
With Claressa ShieldsTerrell Groggins
Salita believed she had the talent to help highlight the growth of women's boxing, and she did – Shields became the first woman in the history of the sport in the United States to be the main event on premium cable television: “That opened the door of possibilities for women's boxing,” says Salita. “Between then and now, a lot of glass ceilings have been broken.”
He adds: “As someone who grew up knowing what it's like to feel overlooked, and second class, I really felt connected to Claressa’s journey.
“My trainer Jimmy [O’Pharrow] used to drive me around New York City and say ‘Dimitriy, when I used to box in 1930, I couldn't go in the front door because of the colour of my skin.’ Travelling the country with [the black female boxer] Kesha Snow, who couldn't make money as a boxer even though she was outstanding … all of these align with my own challenges. That these people from different walks of life face discrimination because of the colour of their skin, because of their gender, that is terrible and unacceptable to me, and something I've experienced because I am a Jew.”
