From the director of “Training Day” and “The Equalizer” comes “Southpaw”, a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Rachel McAdams, that follows the fall from glory as pro boxer Billy Hope loses his wife, and custody of his daughter, after an ornery fight beyond the ropes. The film answers the question mom-and-pop gyms and boutique studios all over the globe have been asking: Has the limelight returned to the ring?

Only now, it has its answer.

In a profile for RL Magazine, Joshua David Stein treks into a training ring tense with emotion, exploring the feeling professional and fair-weather boxers alike have known. Stein surmises, “a boxing gym bursts with a chorus of grunts and the exhalations of boxers boxing, the shouts of trainers as their fighters go to work on each other in a creaky old ring, the exultations of the winner and the silent slouch of the defeated.”

Stein notes, in its return, boxing has received a bourgeois welcome – with boutique gyms like Equinox, Soho House Chicago, Punch Fitness, and Aerospace featuring training. The post-Rocky pre-boutique era Stein and so many others had come to revel in are on their way out, but the popularity won’t dissuade their of the sport. Only in a ring does the world fade to quiet, muffled by the steady, methodical rhythm of a one-two, one-two count.