Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Jake Maier, 15, of Castle Shannon, and Minh Nguyen, 31, of Shadyside, spar this week at the Third Avenue Gym Downtown -- a gym that could also double as the United Nations of boxing.

Somehow, Jimmy Cvetic became the secretary-general of a United Nations boxing club housed in a dank, basement gym next door to his Downtown cafe.

Bring him your Russian bears, your Mexican and Ecuadorian students from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, your Vietnamese son of a prisoner of war, your teen pugilist-wannabes from across the City, your British free-lance journalist, your mother of two whose family roots supposedly trace to Madagascar, and more.

His Third Avenue Gym is open to all. Feel free to hit the bags, spar in the ring, swear in your native tongue. Mostly, though, Pittsburghese and boxing are spoken here.

"Like that song, 'On a corner in Pittsburgh, Pa.,' " Cvetic kidded the other day while overseeing his gym, his boxers and the Western Pennsylvania Golden Gloves card scheduled for Saturday at Margarita Mama's in Station Square. "I joke with them all, but I tell them they should be proud of their tribe."

Leave it to the writer to put this living room-sized gym into worldly perspective. Jonathan Green has traveled the globe to report for such publications as Men's Journal, Esquire and The New York Times. That photo on the beam next to the ring? That's him and the Dali Lama. There's a gym remnant you don't see every day.

"You tend to think of a boxing gym as a place of aggression. Which it is," began the Brit Green, 36, who discovered the place on the Internet and comes for the exercise. "But you're welcome with open arms here. Jimmy offers the opportunity to everybody -- race, color, creed, faith, sex. It's a cosmopolitan kind of flair. And it's a community here."

Added the Saigon-born Minh Nguyen, 31, "You learn a lot in school, but you learn a lot more down here."

So let's start with the schoolkids, who have the most to learn.

Jake Maier was the youngest in the gym this past Thursday night. He is 15, an eighth-grader in the Keystone Oaks school district. Cvetic said the kid arrived at his door with "a baby face."

"I just love boxing; I got a flat nose now," said Maier, who is scheduled to fight Saturday in the Golden Gloves at 136 pounds. Mike Pucciarelli, 16, an Allderdice junior from Highland Park, is scheduled to box in the 110-pound finals April 28 in the Cadet (beginner) state championships at Wilkes-Barre, having won two bouts to advance that far.

Charlie Lehner, 18, is a former Allderdice student now home-schooled in Greenfield, the son of a late Vietnam vet and the grandson of a boxer. This three-time junior Golden Gloves champ already has secured a spot in the Pennsylvania Golden Gloves championships April 21 at Heinz Field.

Then begins the Team UN feel. Part-Cherokee Randy Jefferson, 21, of McKeesport, said he is working toward his GED and taking up boxing. "I said, 'The only thing we're lacking here is an American-Indian,'" Cvetic said, "and two days later, he walked in." Natiata Porter, 26, is a White Oak mother of two, a PNC collector and the owner of a 3-1 pro-boxing record. Her Madagascar roots don't seem as impressive as her back story: "I was a little overweight, 250 pounds, after having my daughter." Exercise lead to her boxing, where she said she arose to a No. 5 U.S. ranking at 160 pounds before losing.

Mexican-born Pedro Oviedo of Ellsworth, Mich., and an Ecuadorian schoolmate at the Art Institute, Franklin Carpio of New Jersey, stumbled into the gym and into boxing as a way to keep fit. Same for Nguyen, a pharmacist from Shadyside. His history: His mother whisked him, his older brother and sister from Saigon to Madison, Wisc., soon after their father -- a novelist, intellectual and South Vietnamese Army colonel -- was arrested and turned into a prisoner of war for 12 years, Nguyen said.

Then there's the biggest of the multilingual bunch, Slava Matvyeyev, 23, an emigre from Chelyabinsk, Russia. Matvyeyev started in the sport by working out in the same Ukraine club that gave rise to the Klitschko brothers. His family brought him to America almost six years ago. He has permanent residency, but that isn't enough to permit him to enter the Golden Gloves and other competitions that serve as the U.S. Olympic trials feeder system. "I definitely want to turn pro," said Matvyeyev. Added Cvetic of this power-punching heavyweight, "My biggest fear is he's going to miss the mitt and hit me."

Cvetic, a former Allegheny County narcotics detective, is the founder of the Western Pennsylvania Police Athletic League, which next he is helping to expand into a Clairton gym location. He and local boxing official Gloria Sztukowski operate Iron City Pro Boxing, the effort to stage the area and state Golden Gloves championships in Pittsburgh, the cafe next door and, of course, this basement with an international flavor.

Steel and coal attracted immigrants over the centuries and transformed this metropolis into a melting pot. Is boxing at a corner gym doing the same?

"I just wish," said Cvetic, "the world could get along like this little gym in Pittsburgh, Pa."