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THE ROPES
The plan, in full — for Teddy and Teddy Jr
Nothing below is final — still being worked out.
Target: 3,000 sqft — meaningfully larger than 9Round's own footprint (their spec runs 1,500–2,500 sqft), so there's real room to add iPad infrastructure per station without cramping the circuit.
Criteria: New Jersey, near NYC, ideally near a train line, ideally near other gyms with an existing fight-sports following.
This corridor hits every criterion with real evidence behind it, not just proximity math.
Alternative: 1 PATH Plaza has retail space literally inside a newly renovated PATH station, but the available units run larger (5,100+ sqft ground floor) — oversized for the target and further from the existing gym cluster.
Also checked: Hoboken and the waterfront. Real listings found there too (e.g. 74 Hudson St, 3,050 sqft at $78/sqft/yr), and Hoboken's transit is genuinely better — a true multimodal hub (PATH, NJ Transit, ferry, light rail all in one terminal, vs. Central Ave's HBLR-only access). But it runs roughly 2.7–3.3x the rent of Central Ave (likely $16,000–20,000/mo for a comparable space vs. $6,000/mo) and its combat-sports presence is thinner and more boutique-fitness (Rumble Boxing, CKO) rather than a real boxing/MMA cluster. Central Ave stays the pick — the rent gap is too large to justify for an unproven first location. Hoboken is worth revisiting later if this location succeeds and a second one makes sense.
Next step: this is as far as remote research can responsibly take it — touring 298/367 Central Ave with a broker is the actual next move.
Teddy Jr replied to Jay's email directly with the areas that stand out to him: Edgewater NJ, Red Bank NJ, Jersey City NJ, and Staten Island NY. Jersey City validates the pick above — here's honest research on the other three, ranked, not just validated across the board.
| Area | Real estate | Fight-gym presence | NYC transit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edgewater, NJ | Real comps near target size (~$90/sqft/yr avg — 3x Central Ave) | Little Mac Boxing Gym on the same strip — real, not boutique | Best of the three: direct ferry to Midtown + free shuttle, ~20 min |
| Red Bank, NJ | Best price/size match (~$31/sqft/yr, 3,397 sqft avg) | Crosscut Boxing, several others — leans boutique-kickboxing | Weakest: NJ Transit rail, ~90 min to Penn Station |
| Staten Island, NY | Thinner data, no confirmed lease at target size | Deepest bench of serious gyms (Ironhand, Iron Shepherd, Rustam's) — but that's also saturation risk | Free ferry, ~25 min — but only if the site is near St. George; most of the borough isn't |
Honest read: Jersey City Heights stays the pick. If it falls through, Edgewater is the clear #2 — fastest NYC connection, real comps, proven boxing-specific demand. Red Bank is #3 — cheapest, but furthest from the city. Staten Island is worth keeping on the list since Teddy Jr named it, but shouldn't get real diligence time before the other two are fully vetted.
A styled 3D look at the room — walls, wall quotes, the black-light color shift. Not a precise floor plan (that's above); this is about how it should feel walking in.
This is a fast styled render, not a photoreal one — for an actual walkthrough Teddy Jr can move through, next step is a real floor-plan tool (Coohom or Planner 5D) once he's given notes on this direction.
Copying 9Round's proven 9-station structure directly rather than reinventing it:
| Station | Equipment |
|---|---|
| 1 | Jump rope |
| 2 | Dumbbells / kettlebells / medicine ball |
| 3 | Double-end bag — hand-eye, jabs/crosses/hooks |
| 4 | Heavy bag |
| 5 | Wrecking-ball bag — hooks/uppercuts from any angle |
| 6 | Heavy bag |
| 7 | Horizontal / uppercut bag — hooks, uppercuts, bag presses |
| 8 | Speed bag |
| 9 | Core / ab mat |
Plus a trainer-led station (hand pads, Thai pads, kick shield) — where Teddy Jr's real coaching happens, not a fixed piece of equipment. 3-minute rounds, room-wide rotation, same rhythm as 9Round. No reservations — drop-in model, matching the format being copied.
Nothing here is decided. This is the real list of ideas being weighed, with an honest read on how proven or unproven each one is — not a single recommendation.
The open question that drives everything else. 9Round's own real model has no instructional screens at all — just a live trainer and a room-wide bell — which is the honest baseline to compare every idea below against. None of these are picked yet:
Researched in real depth, tested against real footage. Two very different pieces:
Custom bag or glove sensors (gamified punch data, à la FightCamp) are real hardware — something that has to be built, tested, and can break or feel janky, which is a genuine cost most software ideas don't carry. Off-the-shelf heart-rate wearables (the MYZONE approach 9Round and Orangetheory actually use) are safer — mature, proven, nothing to build.
A voice clone of Teddy, built from his own YouTube and ESPN audio. In progress. Separate from — and much further along than — the video/talking-face idea above.
Five alternate names, in case "The Ropes" doesn't end up available for the physical gym once Teddy weighs in. None of these are picked — a brainstorm to react to.
Real finding worth knowing: Teddy already has an established personal brand at teddyatlas.com — a distinctive hand-script "Teddy Atlas" wordmark over stark black-and-white photography. Whatever name/mark gets picked should probably riff on that existing style rather than clash with it. The marks below are simple placeholder shapes to communicate direction, not final art — I don't have an image-generation tool available to produce polished logo renders; that needs a real tool (Looka, Brandmark.io) or a designer.
Leans straight into "We Are Firemen" — his single most famous moment. Gives the space a literal, coherent visual world: bell, red brick, firehouse signage, alarm-style round bell for the station rotation.
Boxing term for a trainer's corner — directly evokes his legendary corner speeches. The mark is a literal ring corner-post. Simple, ownable, not generic "gym" branding.
Straightforward use of his surname — Atlas also evokes strength and mythology (holding the world up). Clean, timeless, easiest of the five to clear for trademark.
Boxing term with a nice double meaning. The mark is a target/ring-post crosshair — distinctive, not a cliché boxing-glove logo.
Boxing term for going the full distance, round after round. Energetic, active name that matches a bell-driven station format directly. Mark is the literal bell.
A separate deep-dive, not a replacement for anything above — three worked directions for what the per-station iPad actually looks like during a live round, built out far enough to react to instead of imagining from a bullet list.
Full writeup, sourcing (including a real Teddy Atlas bio/quote pass), and the live mockup are in Teddy Atlas Design Brain — July 28 2026/, a sibling folder to this one. Direct link to the interactive mockup: station-screen-concept.
Flag before this goes further: all three use a warm coral-and-brass accent on near-black, matched to the punch-counter app's own existing palette (Theme.swift) — not the plain black/white/red noted above, and not teddyatlas.com's hand-script-on-black-and-white look. That was a deliberate exploration, not an oversight, but it needs a real decision: extend Teddy's existing black/white(/red) identity, or treat the station screen as its own sub-brand the way FightCamp's app doesn't try to look like a magazine cover.
His actual real quotes, pulled directly from his own interviews — not written for him. Final wall selection is his call; this is the shortlist.
Sourced from BrainyQuote and AZQuotes, cross-checked against interview/video clips where findable. Worth his direct sign-off before anything goes on a physical wall.
Before signing any lease: run a pop-up clinic at a gym Teddy already has real ties to, to build buzz and prove demand.
Brooklyn (DUMBO), the oldest active boxing gym in the US, since 1937. This isn't a cold outreach target — Teddy has a genuine, decades-documented history there, training fighters under the Cus D'Amato lineage going back to the 1980s. Gleason's also already runs a recurring guest-clinic program (Personal Trainer's Clinic, All Female Boxing Clinic, Masters Sparring Clinic) in a proven weekend format — 2 days, ~8 classes, priced as a package rather than hourly rental.
Typical cost for a name-trainer weekend clinic runs roughly $400–500/attendee, or hourly space rental elsewhere in NYC runs $250–1,000+/hr for name-brand gyms. A 6–12 week pre-sale waitlist campaign (100–150 "founding members" at a discount) is standard practice for validating real demand before committing to a lease.
Prep work that can start before the space is even secured, per the "sooner the better" priority.
Suggested order below — this is one reasonable sequence, not the only way to do it. Teddy and Teddy Jr (and Jay) should treat this as a starting checklist to adjust, not a script.
New Jersey has a specific law (N.J.S.A. 56:8-39) covering any business devoting 40%+ of its space to fitness services — this gym qualifies. It requires registering with the NJ Division of Consumer Affairs before opening, and if memberships run longer than 3 months, posting a surety bond (10% of prior-year gross income, $25K–$50K floor/ceiling). Members also get a mandatory 3-day cancellation right. A month-to-month membership model with no long-term contracts sidesteps the bonding requirement — worth deciding the membership structure with this in mind, not as an afterthought.
Jersey City also requires a separate local Commerce Division business license beyond state registration, plus a Certificate of Occupancy for the fit-out.
This was a vague "five-figure cost" earlier — here's a real number. Rough estimates for a 3,000 sqft space, lean-but-real (not luxury, not bare-minimum):
| Item | Estimate |
|---|---|
| Rubber gym flooring, installed | $9,000–18,000 |
| Bags (heavy ×2, wrecking-ball, uppercut, double-end, speed) + mounting/rigging | $2,500–5,000 |
| Free weights (dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls) | $2,000–4,000 |
| iPads (9 stations + spares) + mounts | $4,500–7,000 |
| Front desk / reception setup | $2,000–5,000 |
| Signage, wall graphics, paint, lighting (blacklight fixtures add real cost here) | $5,000–15,000 |
| Sound system | $1,000–3,000 |
| Misc — jump ropes, ab mats, gloves/wraps for sale, first aid, locker room basics | $2,000–5,000 |
Total: roughly $28,000–62,000, call it ~$40,000 as a working number. Phasing this — opening with fewer stations fully equipped and adding the rest as revenue comes in — is a real way to cut the upfront number if the budget's tight.
This is one way to think about the split, not a rule — Teddy and Teddy Jr decide how to actually divide the $250K. If $150K goes to salary, that leaves $100K for everything else. Running the real numbers against the Central Ave space (~$6,000/mo):
Total: ~$136,500–154,500 against $250K. Leaves roughly $95,500–113,500 for salary and cushion, not $150K.
If $150K salary matters more than anything else, the gap (~$36,500–55,000) has to come from somewhere: a smaller deposit, phased equipment buildout, or the pop-up-clinic pre-sale (see Testing It First) generating real cash before the lease is even signed.
Honest verdict first: there's no real way to auto-fill these. Every core NJ/Jersey City filing is a live government web form, not a downloadable fillable PDF, and none of them have a public API — checked GitHub directly, nothing exists for this. The AI-branded services (Rocket Lawyer, Firstbase, ZenBusiness, Clerky) are template generators with a human filing it for you, not automation — and for a plain single-state LLC like this, Reddit's small-business consensus is blunt: you don't need one, it's a 2-page form.
| Filing | Where |
|---|---|
| NJ Certificate of Formation | njportal.com/businessformation/home — $125, same-day |
| EIN (IRS SS-4) | irs.gov — free, instant, online interview tool. Skip any paid service offering to do this. |
| NJ-REG (tax/employer registration) | njportal.com/DOR/BusinessRegistration — file after the Certificate of Formation is approved |
| NJ Health Club Services Act registration | njconsumeraffairs.gov/healthclubs — also has a downloadable "Declaration of Exemption from Security Requirements" PDF, worth checking with a lawyer since month-to-month membership may qualify for exemption from the surety bond |
| Jersey City business license + Certificate of Occupancy | jcnj.org/permitportal (GovPilot) — Commerce Division for the license, Construction Code for the CO, plus a required NJ Division of Fire Safety inspection |
What's actually useful here: a pre-filled checklist of the exact values needed across every form (LLC name, registered agent name/address, NAICS code, business purpose language, principal address) so it's copy-paste into each portal instead of re-deriving it five times. Want that built as its own document once the name and registered agent are settled?
His audience skews national, not local — mostly not geographically near wherever the gym lands, which matters for how it gets used. Being newly independent from ESPN actually strengthens the pitch: no network exclusivity, and real incentive to build his own thing harder than ever.
Existing asset worth knowing about: he already sells a $97 structured boxing instructional product ("Fundamentals of Boxing") and, per the flag at the top of this page, already runs the teddyatlasboxing.com "The Ropes" app with tutorials, community, and paid coaching tiers.
| Idea | Real tool to use |
|---|---|
| Archive-mining / clipping | Descript or Otter.ai for transcription; Opus Clip or Vizard for auto-generating short clips from long-form video |
| Coaching Philosophy Codex | No special tool needed — a Claude Project (or ChatGPT custom GPT) with his transcripts loaded as reference material, used to keep any AI-assisted copy in his actual voice |
| Superfan geography mapping | Real but likely overkill for this stage — tools like Sprout Social or Brandwatch do this, but cost real money monthly. Worth skipping until there's an actual pop-up tour to plan around. |
| AI first-pass video evaluations | Ties directly to the computer-vision work already in progress on the app track — same technology, different use case |
| Scheduling/posting once content exists | Buffer or Later — standard, cheap, nothing fancy needed here |
Honest note: most of the real value here is the archive-mining idea (turning 1,800 existing videos into new content) — that's the one worth actually starting first, the rest are lower priority.
To be clear about what "done" means here: everything below the line is research and suggestions only — none of it is a real-world action. Nobody has toured a space, filed anything, signed anything, or posted anything yet. That's all still ahead, and it's Teddy and Teddy Jr's call how to use it.