Alfred Brooks' life looks like it's falling apart, he's a high school dropout and has a grocery store job that is amouting to nothing.  His best friend is sinking deeper and deeper into drug addiction.  So Alfred decides to start to go to Donatelli's Gym, a boxing club in Harlem that has trained champions.  He starts to turn his life around. He learns there that it's the effort that makes the man, not the win.