By Thomas Gerbasi

It was the Christmas gift to end all Christmas gifts.

“Of all-time,” Steve Cunningham smiles, one of many he has these days. It’s not the demeanor normally associated with a prizefighter a few days out from a pivotal fight, but the U.S. Navy veteran is no typical fighter and the story of what he and his family have gone through over the last nine years transcends anything that happens in the ring.

As has been well-documented, Cunningham and his wife Livvy’s now nine-year-old daughter Kennedy was born with a congenital heart defect where the left side of the organ was unable to function. In the hospital for the first year of her life, her prognosis was not good, but like her father, she never stopped fighting. Eventually though, the Cunninghams were told to prepare for life without their daughter.

They got a second opinion, and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh put Kennedy on their list for a heart transplant. The only catch was that the family needed to move from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh because in cases like this, there was only going to be a four-hour window to get Kennedy into surgery.

After hearing the story, the boxing community responded, raising over $30,000 to aid the family and get them to Pittsburgh. On December 5th of last year, they got the call. Hours later, the surgery was successful and Kennedy Cunningham had a new lease on life.

“She’s doing awesome,” the proud papa said, making it a point to thank all those who donated to the family’s fund. “That is the highlight of our lives right now. It’s still day-by-day because it’s a heart transplant, but she’s been out of the hot water. Three weeks after the transplant, she was home. The only word I can use to sum it up is miraculous.”

A little over three months later, it’s dad’s time to fight, this time in Montreal against unbeaten Ukrainian Vyacheslav Glazkov. The winner of the USBA title fight will move in position to challenge IBF world heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, and you would assume that with Kennedy’s surgery a success, Cunningham can now return his full-time focus to the ring. But as he rightfully points out, he and his family have been dealing with his daughter’s health issues for the last nine years.

“We always concentrated on boxing while we always concentrated on Kennedy and our family,” he explains. “We never dropped one to pick up the other. Kennedy’s nine years old and we’ve been dealing with this since she was born. Me and my wife told ourselves that we don’t want our lives to change too differently. My daughter spent the first year of her life in the hospital, so we basically lived at the hospital. But I would get up, go run, go to the hospital and then go to the gym later that afternoon. We just did what we needed to do. I have a family to take care of and this is my job.”

That’s Steve Cunningham, a blue-collar worker in the ultimate blue-collar job. Yeah, those nights under the lights can often be glamorous, but it’s the hours in the gym that no one sees that truly tell the tale, and Cunningham has spent plenty of those in the notoriously tough Philly gyms.

In keeping with that Philadelphia tradition, Cunningham was never handed a gold key to the kingdom. He came up the hard way, finding his way to South Africa in his 15th pro fight to upset hometown favorite Sebastiaan Rothmann, kicking off a pattern of fighting the best available opposition, often in their backyards. In 2006, in the second of two straight trips to Poland, he avenged a controversial defeat to Krzysztof Wlodarczyk by winning a majority decision and the IBF cruiserweight crown.

In the ensuing years, Cunningham would lose his title, regain it and lose it again, with the losses on his record often disputed, but he never walked away in disgust like others have, remembering his family every step of the way.

“I’m a champion,” he said. “Champions seek out challenges and we love that. If someone says you can’t do this, this is impossible for you, that’s what gets me up.”

In 2012, the challenge was to move up to heavyweight, and yeah, most said it was impossible, especially when he showed up at 207 pounds for his first heavyweight bout against 239-pound Jason Gavern in September of that year. Cunningham won a near shutout decision.

He would lose his next two, a razor-thin decision to Tomasz Adamek in a 2012 rematch, and a seventh-round knockout at the hands of Tyson Fury, but not before he gave the unbeaten Brit a scare with a stunning second-round knockdown.  Three wins over Manuel Quezada, Amir Mansour and Natu Visinia have followed for Cunningham at heavyweight, so it seems like he’s got himself acclimated to his new weight class.

He laughs.

“I’m getting a little more comfortable in it, but not acclimated,” Cunningham said. “The only way I’ll feel acclimated as a heavyweight is if I came in 220 and probably an inch taller. (Laughs) I fight like a cruiserweight at heavyweight and I feel that size doesn’t mean everything in boxing. What really matters is speed, ability and ring generalship, and I have that. That’s what helped me make this decision.”

It’s one his good friend, former heavyweight champ Chris Byrd, has been trying to get him to make for years, but as Cunningham points out, “Mentally, I wasn’t ready back then, but now I’m here. I’m a heavyweight and I’m gonna perform and do what I do best, and that’s being a boxer-puncher. I’ll be a puncher when I need to be, a boxer when I need to be, and go for it when I see it.”

And he takes more than a little inspiration from Byrd’s journey, which saw him fight the biggest and best and win a world title despite being an undersized heavyweight. He did it with technique, with skill and with unwavering heart, three attributes Cunningham most certainly owns.

“He’s got a win over (Vitali) Klitschko and he fought everybody that they threw at him,” Cunningham said of The Slipmaster. “That’s similar to me. This is fourth undefeated heavyweight, third in a row, and that’s all I know. That’s the cloth I’m cut from. I came up sparring with Chris a lot and taking a lot of tutelage from him, learning about the business and the sport, and just learning about life from him and his wife. I think Chris was more skilled than me (Laughs), but I’m working on that still.”

Now he’s one win away from a title fight against a Klitschko. I ask Cunningham if he realizes what a great story this is. He does, but with a qualifier.

“It’s a great story, but a win over Glazkov will make it even better.”

So true.