Fort Worth boxing trainer did not see good future for White Settlement church shooter
Bobby Dodds has been in the fight game for 20 years. As a longtime boxing promoter, Dodds has seen more than 1,000 fighters come and go, but it’s the very first fighter Dodds ever promoted who is easily the most infamous one with whom he’s ever worked.
“I was watching CNN and I saw his name on the crawl and thought, ‘I know that name,’” said Dodds, who lives in Oklahoma City. “I looked it up, sure enough, he was on the first card I ever promoted.”
The name Dodds is referring to is Keith Thomas Kinnunen, the man who entered the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement on Dec. 29 and gunned down two people before he was shot and killed by armed parishioners.
“It’s so upsetting and disconcerting,” Dodds said. “I figure I have had over 1,000 fighters fight for me, and this is the fifth one who murdered someone. Boxers often come from tough circumstances, but most of them are good guys and they represent every day people. You never think someone would do this.”
Long before Kinnunen’s life went into a dark place, he was an aspiring boxer training in Fort Worth. He fought two professional fights in his career, and trained at the now closed Armadillo Boxing Gym in West Fort Worth under Wayne Harrison.
Harrison only knew Kinnunen came from a tough background, and all of his experiences with him were anything but ordinary.
“He was a street tough kinda of a guy. When he came into the gym he was not going to be a serious boxer, from my perspective,” Harrison said. “He was tough, but looking back on it he had delusions of grandeur. He thought he was going to be an elite-level boxer.”
Kinnunen’s first fight was Oct. 10, 2004, against Charles Hester at the University Plaza Hotel in Springfield, Missouri. Kinnunen lost in a unanimous decision.
“After his first match he came in very committed and trained hard,” Harrison said. “He was very focused to get that win in the second match.”
And about a month later, on Nov. 5, Kinnunen scored a technical knockout against Edgar Galvan at the Aragon Ballroom in Oklahoma City.
“I think when he did that, he had accomplished whatever goals with it he had,” Harrison said. “After those fights, he disappeared basically, which is not uncommon.”
The fight game is brutal. Too hard for most. Guys think that after winning a few after-hours fights in an alley will translate to wins in the ring. Typically, those guys learn quickly that winning a bar room brawl is nothing like fighting a man who has been trained to box.
Yet whether he was classically trained or a back-alley brawler, Dodds still remembered him. “His [second] fight was my main fight against my big-ticket seller. He came in and beat my guy.”
After that second fight, Kinnunen’s boxing career was basically over with a career record of 1-1. He might have made about a $1,000 or so in the process.
Over the next two to three years, Harrison would occasionally see Kinnunen at the gym. He had heard Kinnunen was doing some landscaping work, but, like so many aspiring boxers, they are here and gone. Just another guy in a sport loaded with people who come from awful circumstances, and often cannot escape them.
As a boxer Keith Kinnunen was just another fighter who flamed out with nowhere to go.
“It’s shocking but, at the same time, looking back he was the kind of guy who was in trouble the law,” Harrison said. “He was transient. You don’t see a good future for him. Maybe if he had been involved with boxing from an early age he gets on a better path and does all right in life. By the time he started with me, he was in his late 20s or so.
“It’s a sad situation all the way around,” Harrison continued. “With him, [and] certainly the victims at the church. He needed serious help, and either the resources were not available or he was not willing to pursue it.”
This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
