It is easy to believe that modern sport is a mishmash of the overpaid and the overweening, sponsored alice bands and endorsed driving licences. It is surface fluff in the scheme of things, but then you talk to Luke Dowdney about death and drug traffickers. Or a boy such as Pedro, who says: “I had two aunts who were pregnant at the same time. One of them was murdered for violating a drug code, but they got the wrong one so they went back and got the other. This was my world, but then there was the boxing club.”

It was a decade ago when Dowdney decided to set up a humble gym in Complexo da Mare, one of the grimmest favelas in Rio de Janeiro, divided into territories by the three largest drug gangs. An amateur boxer with a degree in anthropology, he believed that the sport could provide an alternative to a life of guns and drugs and started with a threadbare ring in a battle-scarred building. Now he has an MBE and a purpose-built base with turrets.

He does not like to highlight the violence of the favelas because, he says, it is 2 per cent of people who affect the lives of the rest and he knows that Brazil is not unique. That is why he is bringing his Fight For Peace model to London’s meanest streets. “Boxing is essential because there is the parallel that you only get out what you put in,” Dowdney said. “Get in the ring without training and you’re going to get beat. That’s an important lesson.”

The club extends beyond boxing and tries to rearm members with the tools to get out of drug trafficking, but it is the ring that is the epicentre of this revolution. “The things they get from drugs – identity, status – they now get from boxing,” Dowdney says.

Last year, he joined forces with Ger-ry Storey, Barry McGuigan’s former trainer, and visited the Holy Family gym in Belfast with some of his boxers. Some had never been out of the favela and the culture shock was seismic. “They couldn’t understand why anyone would fight over religion,” Dowdney says. “As far as they’re concerned it’s about drugs. Then they saw the murals with gunmen with AK47s and said, ‘Ah, this is like home.’ ” In Belfast, the Holy Family gym has always welcomed republicans and loyalists and Fight For Peace has also risen above society’s schisms. Attending the gym is the only reason the drug barons will allow young men to cross enemy lines. “They were very scared at first,” Dowdney said. “And they were very brave because they had never been able to cross the line before. But sometimes the traffickers send kids to us because they don’t want them to do what they’re doing.”

When Dowdney puts on shows, the traffickers lay down their weapons to attend.

Londoners may think that this is someone else’s problem, but Dowdney’s research suggests that there has been a marked rise in the levels of “lethal violence” in the capital. He also emphasises that there is less daily aggression in the favela than in Oxford Street. “People are much nicer to each other in Mare, but guns are everywhere and so when it turns nasty, it can be very quick,” he says.

How nasty was evident when I met Dowdney four years ago. It was the day that Rio’s drug lord, Luiz Fernando da Costa – aka Freddy Seashore – declared war on the state from his prison cell, effectively shutting down the capital. Dowdney had flown into São Paulo to try to convince the Laureus Sports for Good Foundation that he was worth backing. Fifty-one policemen were killed in a day as bounty hunters were offered $2,000 a head. Now 96 per cent of prisoners belong to the PCC, an underground organisation that grew from a prison football team, while the military police often operate a shoot-first policy. There are 3,600 murders a year in Rio, 6,000 in the state and 40,000 in the country.

“We’ve had six of our kids killed by gunfire in the last four years,” Dowdney said. “Maybe it’s a stray bullet, mistaken identity, maybe they’re involved in drugs.” It is no secret that summary executions also take place in Rio; two years ago, ten policemen were implicated in the murders of 29 people in what Amnesty International called Rio’s worst massacre.

Dowdney won Laureus’s backing and Fight For Peace is a flagship programme. He won the academy’s Sport for Good award at a plush ceremony in Barcelona this year and is working closely with Emerson Fittipaldi, an academy member. In São Paulo, the threat of kidnap means that the Formula One legend drives an armoured car with bombproof glass, but he walks freely in Mare and is fêted as a hero. “The challenge is to make trafficking the worst option,” Dowdney says. Fight For Peace also offers free access to sport and education programmes. “Boxing is fundamental to everything we do,” Dowdney says. “It’s about giving them confidence.”

He is a boxing nut, the 1995 British Universities light-middle-weight champion, who fought as an amateur in Nepal and Japan. Now he has a Brazilian coaching li-cence and is starry-eyed when he talks of meeting people such as Marvin Hagler and McGuigan.

Dowdney is adamant that Fight For Peace can be transferred to some of London’s worst areas, but he accepts that it does not always work. After we met in 2003, Pedro excelled in the ring and was rising through the Rio State Federation’s ranks. Then he was shot in the back. “They had to break open his ribs to get the bullet out,” Dowdney says. “He’s lucky to be alive.”

Now Pedro is in prison for robbery and Dowdney has moved to London, working with the Community Links charity and Ballymore property company to recreate his success. He has plans to take his model to Jamaica, South Africa and Colombia. To some, boxing is a bloody anachronism, the most vile and violent of sports. But Fight For Peace provides a cast-iron case for the defence.

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