The tenets of Izzy Style Wrestling are displayed with prominence inside the suburban Chicago gym where Israel “Izzy” Martínez has molded legions of kids into believers, and the best of them into champions. The principles hang on a banner amid the lingering smell of stale sweat and constant work, near the mats that have launched journeys to national championships and the Olympics.

Martínez feels most at home here, inside the gym he built at the end of a road in a modest industrial park. A great many Chicago-area youth have walked through his doors and found purpose, direction and self-belief. Martínez gets as much, if not more, out of it as he puts in — and he put in enough on a recent Wednesday morning to be covered in sweat soon after a workout began.

“This place is a sanctuary,” he sai

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