A boxing gym is loud. Jump ropes slap the floor, the timer won't shut up, heavy bags and mitts are slammed and whacked.

Yet amateur boxers make little noise. At most fights the spectators are relatives and friends.

The annual exception is the N.C. Golden Gloves tournament. The tournament, which begins tonight and concludes Saturday at the Sugaw Creek Recreation Center, sold out last March.

This year there is added luster. Golden Gloves are one of the qualifiers for the U.S. team that will compete in the 2012 London Olympics.

Based on interviews with coaches, administrators and trainers, here are three Charlotte boxers who have a chance to fight in London.

KENDRA MACON is 25. She has a record is 5-1, 7-1 if you count exhibitions.

She studies kinesiology and is a sales associate for Horizon Wireless. She bought her first house last summer and invited her grandfather, who is 80 and has been confined to a wheelchair since he was shot in Vietnam 45 years ago, to move in.

And in her spare time, she models.

Macon ran into Charlotte Boxing Academy coach Al Simpson, who was wearing a USA Boxing T-shirt, at her cell phone store. He wanted to fix a phone. She wanted to box.

Simpson gave her the address of Revolution Sports Academy on Remount Road. People often tell him they want to fight. He rarely sees them again. Macon walked in the first day.

Anybody tell you not to?

"Ev-er-y-bod-y," Macon says. Co-workers. Schoolmates. Family. Mother. Boyfriend. Ev-er-y-bod-y."

Macon, who boxes at 132 pounds, might have the best opportunity to fight in London. Women's boxing is new to the Olympics. She'll face the fewest competitors.

Says Humpy Wheeler, chairman of the Charlotte Boxing Academy: "Most women who are 25 don't say, 'Would you like to come over tonight and hit the heavy bag?'"

If you have an image of a boxer, Macon doesn't fit it.

"It's not something that would cross your mind," she says.

Her hair is held back by a pink headband as she tapes her hands.

Then she gets in the ring. No longer is she a sales associate, a student, a granddaughter or a model. She will knock you out with her right hand.

Says Macon: "They'll say, 'Oh, she is a boxer.'"

MIKE BASALDUA began boxing when he was 14. He's had about 45 fights and won 35 of them.

When he was 19, he hit the wall, or the wall hit him. He took a three-year break. He had a son, Isaac, now 21/2. He got a job at Firehouse Subs. This fall, he returned.

"I see a more focused fighter," says Simpson.

Basaldua, 23, changed because his life did.

"It's not about me anymore," he says. "Nothing is about me. It's about Isaac. Everything I do is going to affect his life."

Basaldua, who boxes at 132 pounds, will still slug with you. But he'll fool you, set you up and make you miss.

"There are so many ways to fight," he says. "You can create a combination that's never been done. You can invent a new style.

"I look at it like an art form. I want people to look at my fights the way they would a picture and say, 'Wow, that was something else.'"

HASAN YOUNG's father was a boxer and took him to Bozy's Dungeon, an underground Philadelphia gym, when he was 10.

So you fight the Philadelphia style?

"No, that's not me, man," says Young, 20. "I try to keep looking good. I try not to get hit. I'm not Joe Frazier. I stay slick. Good movement. Good defense."

Young has fought about 50 times, and won 40. His talent is apparent. Yet, like Basaldua, he burned out. At 18 he left the sport.

"I wanted to learn what I was fighting for," he says.

He attended the Philadelphia Institute of Art.

What did you study?

"It might not seem like something a boxer would," he says. "Fashion marketing."

Young, who fights at 152 pounds, moved to Charlotte with his family and found Simpson and the Revolution Sports Academy. The gym is decidedly not underground; the floor is showroom clean. But the language is the same.

"It's the quintessential language," says Young. "You could go to Egypt and if you can fight, they speak it."

Welcome back.

"I love it," Young says. "I walked in and thought - this is where I'm supposed to be."