Dreaming of Olympic Boxing…What do you think???

Seattle boxer preparing for trials
Papering the walls of the subterranean Howard Street Boxing Club are the usual posters from bouts and cards going back decades, and they suggest the musty odor of smoke and beer from arenas and armories long razed. Those yellowing bills were the back-in-the-day come-ons for wannabe fighters.

By JOHN BLANCHETTE
The Spokesman-Review

SPOKANE, Wash. —
Papering the walls of the subterranean Howard Street Boxing Club are the usual posters from bouts and cards going back decades, and they suggest the musty odor of smoke and beer from arenas and armories long razed. Those yellowing bills were the back-in-the-day come-ons for wannabe fighters.

Here’s how much boxing has changed: Converts are now made in beauty shops.

It helps, of course, if a boxer is in the chair.

This happened just on Monday to Queen Underwood, who by virtue of her bronze medal at the last world championships and her Seattle roots is the flag-bearer for next month’s U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Women’s Boxing at Northern Quest Resort. Booked for an awards show later this week, she made an appointment with a stylist.

“I’m tired of braids and ponytails,” she said to the stylist, pinning her hair issues on her current vocation of boxing.

So on Underwood’s return trip to the salon, there to greet her were the woman’s two daughters, armed with cellphone cameras and big smiles and the message, “We want to box.”

“When you get that,” Underwood said, “you kind of know what an important opportunity this is.”

She is talking about the debut of women’s boxing in the Olympic Games this summer. You could call the Spokane trials the first step on that journey, but in fact the first step came 10 years ago.

She was Quanitta Underwood then, a player on the basketball team at Garfield High School and a state-placing sprinter in track. A strength coach had been brought in to help the basketball team with conditioning and so Underwood soon dabbled in power lifting, too. But what she really wanted to do, she told the lifting coach, was box.

“I like the spotlight part of boxing,” she said, “that you’re the one having your hand raised.”

Except that her first time out, it was someone else getting her hand raised.

“I was so nervous,” she said, recalling her introduction to the ring at 19 years old. “I’d never got in a fight outside of boxing. It was all the normal stuff: I’m a lover, not a fighter,’ and I don’t want my teeth knocked out.’

What happened inside the ring, however, wasn’t nearly as bitter as what happened outside it.

“Nobody likes to be a loser,” she said. “Nobody talks to you afterward, or if they do it’s people saying, Oh, I thought you won,’ or You did good’ and you really don’t want to hear that.”

Underwood hasn’t had to hear it all that often since. She went to her first U.S. championships in 2006 and the next year started a run of five straight national titles the first three as a light welterweight, the last two having dropped down to the 132-pound lightweight division, one of the three being contested for women at the 2012 Games in London.

The big breakthrough came at the 2010 world championships in Barbados, where she won the bronze medal after losing a narrow 18-16 decision to three-time world champ Katie Taylor of Ireland storming back after falling behind 10-2 after two of the four rounds.

But this past year, Underwood lost two important international bouts to Great Britain’s Natasha Jones at a test event in London, and to Puerto Rico’s Kiria Tapia in a controversial tiebreaker at the Pan-American Games.

Those came amid the chaos of trying to find a training fit after splitting with her longtime coach in Seattle a quest that led to a December relocation to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., and an association with former Olympic coach Basheer Abdullah, who had been in her corner in Barbados.

“I needed to find someone I could connect with,” she said, “someone I could trust.”

This has meant some sacrifices, not the least of which is that her 2-year-old bull mastiff King Queen spots him 3 or 4 pounds, at least lives with a military family across town. But you only get one chance to be America’s first Olympic female boxing medalist.

It was 2009 when the International Olympic Committee finally caved to the inevitable and added women’s boxing to its offerings. At the time, Underwood was in the middle of a five-year apprentice program as a sprinkler fitter UA Local 699.

“You’re not supposed to have a cellphone at work, but I was always breaking the rules,” she confessed. “I saw the text and work went out the window. They were like, Get back to work,’ and I said, You don’t understand I have to go train.’”

Actually, she stuck it out to gain her journeyman’s status and promptly got laid off.

“They do that I was kind of expecting it,” Underwood said, “and 2011 was a slow year.”

She’s expecting 2012 to be something else altogether.

What do you want to see next???

Stay tuned for some great video of young Seattle boxers during workouts!!! in the edit suite as we speak!

Is Anyone into Lucha Libre?

Associated Press
RENTON, Wash. (AP) – They go by the names of Phoenix, Fugitive, Vagabond, Baby Rock and Chicano Power.

In a garage-turned-boxing gym in Renton, they jump-kick each other on their chests and swing one another over their bodies. Some are wearing tights. One dons lipstick red boots. They practice moves called “Mortal Japanese” and “Suplex.”

“The hits are real. So are the falls,” said coach Jose Gomez. “But the key is not hurting oneself.”

Such was the scene at a recent practice of Lucha Libre Volcánica, Washington state’s only masked Mexican wrestling club.

Lucha libre _ meaning literally “free wrestling” _ is Mexico’s own brand of wrestling that dates back nearly 80 years.

As Mexican immigrants moved north to the United States, lucha libre followed. Clubs like Gomez’s have popped up in Los Angeles, Chicago and other areas with large Latino communities.

“My father used to take me to the arena, even as a little girl,” said Raquel Matias while watching her 19-year-old son, who goes by the luchador name of Chicano Junior, perfecting the moves. “Now we’re here, supporting lucha.”

The club is a labor of love for Gomez.

For years, Gomez, 48, toured Mexico as a pro wrestler, one half of the two-man team known as “Los Guerreros del Futuro” or “Future Warriors.” Eventually, though, his family moved north. He’s now a construction worker.

“It’s like having a piece of Mexico here,” Gomez said.

He founded the club back in October of 2010 with two students. Slowly, after word-of-mouth and dozens of fliers left at Latino stores, his student troupe has grown to 20. The youngest student is 10 years old. The oldest around 46. The fee is $50 a month for six practices a week.

Gomez has doled out his own money to fix up the gym’s roofing and painted the walls. He has the masks, boots and tights for his luchadores custom made in Mexico City.

His biggest challenge so far is finding an audience. The group had a successful outing at a block party in the Seattle neighborhood of South Park during the summer. A subsequent show this fall had lackluster attendance, though.

But Gomez is optimistic. His brother is working on a website to promote the club and one of his students is trying to line up a show at University of Puget Sound in a few weeks.

And now that his club numbers nearly 20, Gomez is glad to see the sport he dedicated most of his life to be alive in his new country.

“I’m leaving something I learned in Mexico City here,” he said.

In Mexico, even if the fan base has waned, lucha libre remains a popular sport.

It was an American import that Mexicans embraced and developed into their own, becoming part of the nation’s cultural identity, said Temple University anthropology professor Heather Levi, who wrote “The World of Lucha Libre: Secrets, Revelations, and Mexican National Identity.”

Lucha libre is “a hybrid of sports and theatrical performances,” Levi added. It’s taken “simultaneously perfectly serious and a big joke. It’s representative of Mexican culture.”

One of the marquee aspects of lucha libre is the masks the intricate wrestlers wear _ a Mexican addition to the American version. The masks are meant to evoke the character of the luchador, be it an animal, a hero or a mythical creature.

Their real life identities aren’t supposed to be known. If a wrestler is unmasked in the ring, it’s frowned upon for them to wear a mask again.

It was national news in Mexico when one of the sport’s biggest stars _ El Santo _ took off his mask on television. El Santo had starred in more than 50 movies, Levi said.

But for all the showmanship, lucha libre is a physically challenging endeavor.

During a recent practice, six of Gomez’s students practiced tumbling, forward rolls, diving, and jump kicking in rapid succession. They also have to learn how to balance on ropes feet up and upside down. They learn how jump off the ropes, turning in the air to fall properly. The bouts last three rounds.

Gomez points out to one of his students his body wasn’t positioned right as he fell. “Does your waist hurt?” he asked.

“No,” said the student, later admitting, “just my butt.”

The practices are mix of English, Spanish and Spanglish.

“It can be a little frustrating,” said Michael Leveton, one of the few native English speakers and the most advanced of Gomez’s students, seemingly doing all the drills with ease.

Leveton, 28, had always been attracted to acrobatics. When he learned about the club, he tried it out and was impressed by the physical challenge. But on top of that is his history. Leveton was born from Mexican parents, but was adopted as a child.

Lucha libre, he said, was a way of getting to know a part of the culture he rarely knew.

Orgullo Nica!

82 wins, 8 losses. That’s amazing!

Hoy les enseñare este video a unos jóvenes boxeadores en Seattle. Ustedes que piensan de Arguello?

Conocen de algún gimnasio de boxeo en Nicaragua que este dedicado a ayudar a jóvenes? Los invito a que lean sobre un gimnasio en Seattle, Washington que hace excelente trabajo a favor de jóvenes. Lean este blog y se enteraran.

También les pregunto, aun tras su muerte, los Nicaraguenses siguen adorando a Alexis Arguello? Que significa el no solo para Nicaragua sino para la historia del boxeo? Por que no usar su imagen para impulsar a jóvenes al boxeo?

I am planning to show this video to a group of young boxers in Seattle. But for now, tell me, what do you guys think of Alexis Arguello in Nicaragua?

Young Boxers….Asi lo hacen!

Courtesy: Sea Mar Youth Boxing

Courtesy: Sea Mar Youth Boxing

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“Why I Box….Por que Boxeo”

I imagined that Seattle’s cold weather would begin deterring teens from boxing practice. As I visited several local boxing clubs I quickly noticed that was NOT the case. Perhaps I’m one of the few people that consider this cold weather! Anyways, my point is that these teens continued to be focused on improving their boxing skills, and yet more impressive, they remained committed to attending practices on a constant basis. They aren’t looking to become boxing champs, but instead of potentially putting themselves in troublesome situations, they decide to spend their evenings boxing.
That day, I spoke with a young female boxer who at first seemed annoyed that I was interrupting her routine. That sense of dedication for the sport made me want to talk to her even more so. I admired her determination as she went through her drills as well as that hesitation to talk to someone like me, who at that moment was interrupting her focus. But to my surprise, not only did she eventually talk to me, but she very eloquently expressed that it was upon taking on boxing that she was able to manage what she calls, “severe anger issues.” Having been raised by her grandmother, she often spent free time with friends in situations that according to her got her into plenty of trouble. She drank and even did drugs at one point. I had many more questions, but she abruptly stopped my short interview because her boxing partner had arrived and they had little time to practice. Like I said earlier, I RESPECT and admire her new found focus. It matters very little that it’s boxing. Or does it? Why is boxing becoming ever so popular among troubled teens?

Me imagine que el frio en Seattle seguramente iva a hacer que los jovenes NO llegaran a sus practicas de boxeo de manera frecuqnte. Pero, al visitar algunos gimnasios de boxeos en Seattle, me di cuenta que ese no era el caso. Quiza solo yo creo que este clima es frio! Pero bueno, mi punto es que estos jovenes continuan a enfocarse en mejorar como boxeadores, y quiza aun mas impresionante es que se mantinenen comprometidos a preparase de manera constante.
Ese dia platique con una joven boxeadora que en un principio parecia enojada que le estaba interrupinedo su tutina. Pero esa determinacion por el deporte hzo que quisiera hablar con ella aun mas. Viendo como practibaba, admiro su determinacion, como tmbien me llama la atencion que no quizo hablaro conmigo en un principio para No interrumpir su rutina. Pero a mi sorporesa, no solo hablo conmigo pero compartio su experiencia y que la llevo al boxeo. Cuenta que fue cunado hace un anho ella empezo a boxear para mejorar lo que dice son “problemas de caracter seversos.” Crecio con su abuela, y desde muy pequena pasaba tiempo libre con amigos que regularmente la llevaron en malos pasos. De repente, paro mi entrevista porque habia llegado su pareja de entrenamineto y teniam muy poco tiempo para entrenar. y Como dije anteriormente, respeto muchismo su dedicacion al deporte como manera de mejorar su temperamento. Al final, no importa que el metodo sea el boxeo. Lo que importa es el enfoque y las ganas de mejorar.

Awesome Female Boxer/Increible Boxeadora

(CNN) — The 2012 Olympic games in London are still months away but boxer Marlen Esparza is fighting to increase her chances at making the U.S. national team.

Esparza, who was featured in CNN’s documentary “Latino in America: In Her Corner,” won a silver medal at the World Cup of Petroleum Countries held in Surgut, Russia, this weekend.

It wasn’t what she was hoping for. “I really thought I had won,” she told her coach, Rudy Silva, over the phone. The judges favored local champion, Svetlana Gnevanova, by 10 points to eight.

The tournament hosted boxers from 15 countries, which gave Esparza the chance to fight some of the women she could face at next year’s world championships or the 2012 Olympics.

Before any of that happens though, Esparza will have to make the national team and defeat her opponents at the U.S. Olympic trials in February.

“All international fights are hard,” she told Silva, who asked questions on CNN’s behalf while Esparza is in Russia. “That level of fighting is more like a chess match and it makes you raise your fighting game up to another level.”

Since “Latino in America: In Her Corner,” aired in September, Esparza has barely taken a break from her grueling training schedule. At 112 pounds, the 22-year-old Mexican-American flyweight from Houston won the national championship in Colorado Springs in June. She became one of the only women to hold six national titles.

Now, she’s off to Ukraine to fight against the country’s top-ranked boxer on Saturday. She said she’s looking forward to meeting even more opponents that might preview her future.

“This competition is very important to me because it gives me the international experience that I very much need to keep up with other countries’ style of boxing,” Esparza said as she prepared to head overseas.

“I will be preparing for when it comes to getting ready for the Olympics.”

The opportunities for women boxers have grown since the sport was added to the Olympics. In 2009, women could box only at the Women’s Continental Championships. In 2011 they’ve had eight competitions, most of them connected to tournaments where women’s boxing is making a debut, like the Pan American Games.

In the past two weeks, U.S. women boxers have been matched with opponents from Mexico, Russia, Poland and Germany. While Esparza is in Russia and Ukraine, some of her peers were in London.

Natural fighter vs. the world

“With the inclusion of women into the Olympic games, I think all countries have made it a priority to make women events scheduled within their own country or events were women can participate,” said Anthony Bartkowski, executive director of USA Boxing. “We’re starting to see more women and men competing at the same events.”

USA Boxing coach Gloria Peek traveled with the group that participated at the London Test Event, where countries who have Olympic boxing teams get a chance to match their athletes.

“It’s a dry run of the Olympics,” Peek said. “It is an opportunity to test the fighters on top who might be facing our fighters.”

For Esparza and 23 other women, the competitions are a chance to improve their style before facing each other at the U.S. Olympic trials, which start on February 13.

“The challenge now is just staying focused on my training and to continue to do what has made me successful in and out of the ring,” Esparza said. “The goal in my mind is of course making it to London and bringing back that gold medal for me, for my family, for all the Hispanic people in America and of course for everybody who has ever supported me.”

Arguello….en acción…

I don’t know but is he better than this man??

82 wins, 8 losses. That’s amazing!

My friend Jonathan posted this video. Simply AMAZING. What do you guys think? What made Arguello so great? was he great?

Un amigo, Jonathan, dejo este video. Simplemente ESPECTACULAR!!! Que piensan? Que hizo que Arguello fuese uno de los grandes? Fue un grande del boxeo?

What do you think?

Program teaches boxing, keeps kids off streets
‘You have to be ready. Life’s going to throw you curves.’

By JOHN IWASAKI, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Published 10:00 p.m., Thursday, December 8, 2005
Condensation trickles down the windows of the Sea Mar Boxing Club, testament to the effort going on inside a plain South Park gym adorned with cracked mirrors and a poster of Muhammad Ali.

More than a dozen youths, mostly Latino, position themselves around the perimeter, punching heavy bags that dangle from the ceiling.

One of them, a muscular 14-year-old with a thin, braided ponytail, stretches and jumps rope before launching into a routine that includes head feints and foot shuffles, quick jabs, snapping uppercuts and a tattooing of the speed bag. Johnny Gutierrez owns an easy smile, but you might not see it much inside the gym, where he’s disciplined, efficient, all business.

In adopting its 2006 budget last month, the Seattle City Council approved about $295,000 for four agencies in South Park that provide gang-prevention, after-school, literacy and other programs.

Nearly $20,000 will pay for a half-time coordinator for the boxing club sponsored by Sea Mar Community Health Centers, which specialize in health and community services to Latinos.

While the premise might sound incongruous — an anti-violence program that teaches kids the right way to punch each other — coaches say it’s making a difference.

As proof, they point to Gutierrez, a fixture at the club throughout its five-year existence, someone who admits he used to “hang around kids who were not good.”

He threw rocks at passing cars, witnessed brutal fights and saw a friend shot point blank and wounded on a street corner. Without boxing, “I’d probably be pretty bad, getting into fights, gangs, drugs,” he said.

Gutierrez, who lives in the Delridge neighborhood, started as one of three original members of the South Park Boxing Club.

The others were his older brother, Danny, and Randy Gomez, who earlier this year reached the 112-pound quarterfinals of the U.S. Championships in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The boxers originally trained in the basement of the South Park Neighborhood Center. When the program ran into financial difficulty four years ago, Sea Mar took over as sponsor, renamed the club and housed it adjacent to its treatment center on 17th Place South.

As many as 25 boxers from South Seattle and beyond, from 9-year-olds to adults, show up weekday evenings to train. Boxers pay $20 per month, though those strapped for cash aren’t charged.

The gym is “a place for kids to go in the afternoon where they can feel safe,” said Tony Rago, volunteer program coordinator. “A lot of them aren’t in high school team sports. We have a little gang problem down here in South Park. This is an avenue away from that.”

The club has attracted such teens as Paco Reyes of Renton, who dreams of representing Mexico in the Olympics someday; Alan Guerra of Burien, whose middle-school principal brought him to the club; and Martha Garcia of White Center, one of four girls in the program.

“Most of my friends are gang members,” said the 17-year-old Reyes, whose father, Lorenzo, is head coach of the Sea Mar club. “After I started boxing, I thought, there’s a good future in this.”

Instead of getting into trouble after school, “you come here,” he said. “After that, you’re too tired.”

Guerra started at the club eight months ago as a self-described “chubby kid” with an anger problem.

“I was getting into too many fights at school,” said Guerra, 15. “A lot of people were talking about me and disrespecting me and my family.”

His principal paid his club dues. Guerra dropped 25 pounds, and now unloads his emotions on punching bags.

Garcia, 15, doesn’t shy from contact. It’s no big deal, she said, because she grew up with brothers.

“I like things involving hitting, like karate and tae kwon do,” she said.

Garcia said the discipline of boxing has even helped her at school, making her a better listener and communicator.

Juan Garcia, the volunteer director of the club, has kicked kids out of the program for being gangsters or wannabes.

He and Rago counter concerns about violence in the ring, saying amateur boxers seek to earn points from judges, not injure their opponents, and wear protective gear not used by pros.

“A lot of kids think they’re tough because they fight on the street,” Garcia said. “They find it’s a totally different environment when it’s controlled.”

The coaches keep fledgling boxers out of the ring until they’ve trained for a minimum of six months and know how to protect themselves.

“It’s the same thing with life,” Garcia said. “An education will help you protect yourself. Some kids get it. Some don’t give a (bleep). You have to be ready.

“Life’s going to throw you curves.”

The club is one of about 10 major activities in South Park aimed at stemming violence. Collaboration between the programs was started by Dr. Julian Cecilio Perez of Sea Mar following the shooting death of 16-year-old Fernando Esqueda in April.

Esqueda, a Sea Mar club boxer, was killed as he sat in his brother’s car on a South Park street, the third of three deadly shootings in the community in 13 months. Perez was one of the first people to respond to the shooting.

The club renamed its spring tournament after Esqueda and presented a trophy to his parents, along with a heart-shaped card signed by the boxers.

Gutierrez said Esqueda’s slaying had a sobering effect on the boxers.

“Everybody knew him,” he said. “When they heard he was shot for no reason, it probably made them think.”

Gutierrez has been doing that at Denny Middle School, where the 5-foot-7-inch eighth-grader stands tall, literally and figuratively.

“I can see he has a lot of potential. I see him as a leader,” said Maria Ivarra, teacher for Proyecto Saber, a class providing academic support and cultural studies to Latino students. “I do worry about his academics, but I think he does, too.”

Gary Bolma, an eighth-grade counselor, said Gutierrez knows how to “balance right and wrong while still being in the in crowd.”

Gutierrez calls math his favorite subject, because it involves “thinking a lot and figuring out a problem,” the same thing he does when facing an opponent in the ring. “I like the physical contact. I like getting hit,” he said after a recent workout.

“After (an opponent) hits me, I get encouraged to hit back. My coach says it’s like chess. He hits you, you hit him, till you knock the king down.”

Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Program-teaches-boxing-keeps-kids-off-streets-1189489.php#ixzz1eILTCu5v