Jimmy Glenn, the boxing trainer and owner of the storied Times Square bar Jimmy’s Corner, has died after battling coronavirus, fight game officials and his family said Thursday. He was 89.
“A legend of boxing has heard his final bell,” World Boxing Council president Mauricio Sulaiman said on Twitter in a tribute to “such a great human being.”
The beloved former trainer and gym owner — who had once trained Muhammad Ali — had been hospitalized and suffering from COVID-19 since mid-April, his family told The Post.
“He has lived an incredible life, been around some of the most famous and influential people in history. He was never star-struck, but he got to be a part of history,” Glenn’s son Adam, 39, said.
“He really built something for himself and his family — he built a legacy and a name that will be remembered.”
The father of seven had been battling the virus for a little over a month and succumbed to it at 5:30 a.m. Thursday at NYU hospital, with Adam at his side.
Tributes to the New York City icon poured in following news of his death.
“My heart is broken right now,” Hall of Fame boxing promoter Lou DiBella wrote Thursday as he confirmed the news.
“Jimmy Glenn was more than a friend to me, he was my family. Along with my late Dad, Jimmy was the best man I have ever known. He was a source of unconditional love and support in my life for 30 years.”
DiBella called Jimmy a New York City “icon and a legend.”
“Not because he was a giant in #boxing or because he owned an incredible pub, but because his heart was giving, pure and boundless,” he said.
“There are literally COUNTLESS people that Jimmy touched who are grieving right now.
“Every single time I saw Jimmy he’d tell me that he loved me … every time. I loved him more … and forever.”
Adam had previously confirmed to The Post that his father was hospitalized with coronavirus, with him battling red-tape to try to get him pioneering convalescent plasma treatment.
He called his father “an amazing man and an amazing New Yorker” and “the most generous person I’ve ever met.”
“He has helped hundreds of kids stay off the streets, has taught boxing and life to countless young men (some of whom are now pretty famous) and has been a pillar of the New York City community for almost 70 years,” he told The Post in an email.
Adam — a former corporate attorney who now runs Jimmy’s Corner — had been updating fans on his father’s condition through messages posted by Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler.
“Sad day. No more updates Woke up to message from Adam Glenn that his father Jimmy, everyone’s Daddy, is gone,” Trampler said Thursday.
He said Glenn “fought the good fight and NYC and boxing lost a great man.”
“I have no further words to describe our beloved owner of Jimmy’s Corner. RIP, buddy,” he wrote.
Born in South Carolina, Jimmy moved to the Big Apple in the 1940s and made his own brief attempts in the ring as an amateur — most notably against future heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson.
“I lost that one. Patterson beat me,” Glenn, a gracious, soft-spoken man, once told The Post. He recalled losing a tooth in that bout “But I went the distance.”
After starting as a boxing trainer in Harlem, he set up the famed Times Square Boxing Gym in the ’70s, where he’d train Muhammad Ali whenever he stopped into town, The Ring said.
Glenn had an amateur record of 14-2, but came to realize he was a better teacher than fighter, saying he knew how to box but wasn’t the strongest puncher.
“I started helping kids out on the street. The PAL gym was sold to a church, so I talked to the reverend and he let us train the kids on the top floor. We gave parties to raise money,” he recalled.
A charity stepped forward to help, and the program thrived, with his kids winning a number of Golden Gloves trophies before the church was demolished in the ‘70s.
Glenn ran a series of nightspots before opening Jimmy’s Corner in 1971, an old-style working-class bar that was surrounded on West 44th Street by posh hotspots like chef Geoffrey Zakarian’s Lambs Club and The Long Room, an Irish gastro-pub.
For many, he was best known for greeting customers at the Times Square hang-out, which was plastered with boxing memorabilia and was a regular stop for fighters visiting the city.
Jimmy’s Corner also drew crowds of tourists and Midtown workers and was known for a sign behind the bar that declared the discussion of politics to be off-limits, a rule Glenn strictly enforced himself.
Glenn never wanted to keep up with the latest trends — he didn’t serve food, just beer, wine and cocktails on the cheap.
“That’s what I like. People like the cheap drinks, the jukebox, all the old songs,” he said.
One of his fighters who knew Glenn, Monte Barrett, said Thursday that he had “looked to him as my father.”
“Today we lost one of the best human beings in the world,” he said in a moving Instagram tribute.