Vazquez keeps his inspiration close

Skill, training and determination have allowed Israel Vazquez to become a world champion boxer.

The people who inspire those attributes can be found inside a small Huntington Park home, to which Vazquez returned last August after a grueling title fight in Hidalgo, Texas.

With his two young children inside, a battered Vazquez first found his wife, Laura. He hugged her, and whispered reassurance:

“We won.”

Vazquez had recaptured his title in a compelling rematch with his former Mexico City neighbor, Rafael Marquez, a series that reaches its third act Saturday night at the Home Depot Center in Carson.

In both previous bouts, Vazquez found himself engaged in a brutal course of events that would’ve swallowed lesser men.

“Israel Vazquez is a great champion,” Marquez said. “We give everything in the ring, and this fight won’t be an exception. He has guts, and has shown he’s an excellent fighter -- in both fights.”

Last March in Carson, Marquez connected fiercely with Vazquez’s nose in the first round, grotesquely rearranging the cartilage inside so severely that the World Boxing Council super-bantamweight champion was forced to battle through six more rounds without any air passing through his nose.

Imagine fighting under water without a snorkel, Vazquez has joked.

Breathless before the bell starting the eighth round, Vazquez told his trainer he’d have to fight another day.

Five months later, in Hidalgo, Vazquez re-emerged with a nose reconstructed by a Beverly Hills surgeon. He and Marquez battled through a third round that some boxing observers classified as the round of the year, with Vazquez taking Marquez’s best punishing lefts and answering with hard counters.

By the sixth, blood was pouring from under Vazquez’s right eye, but he relentlessly attacked Marquez, knocking him down first, and then finishing him with a barrage that left a still-standing Marquez dazed and unresponsive. Referee Guadalupe Garcia stopped the assault, awarding Vazquez the technical knockout and acclaim as winner of the fight of the year.

“I know by working hard I’ll get the things I want to gain in my life for my wife and children,” Vazquez, 30, said recently after concluding a training session in South El Monte. “That’s what I strive for.”

The dividends of Vazquez’s blood, sweat and tears can be found both at the humble three-bedroom home where the boxer resides with Laura and their two boys, Israel Jr., 5, and Anthony, 2 -- and inside the three-chair beauty salon known as Studio 77 in South Gate that Vazquez bought and Laura operates.

In preparing to mark the 10-year anniversary of his first U.S. fight -- an arrangement that permanently brought him to Southern California from a life of distracted training sessions in Mexico -- Vazquez said, “This is the perfect example of someone coming out of there and living a dream. This is the promised land.”

Boxing manager Frank Espinoza had seen and heard of Vazquez’s previous success fighting in Mexico, including a thunderous first-round knockout of super-bantamweight world champion Oscar Larios in 1997.

Espinoza pitted Vazquez against a journeyman fighter, Antonio Ramirez, in El Cajon, and the outcome was sluggish, especially defensively. Vazquez won by unanimous decision, but he was “banged up” by the veteran, and Espinoza said his effort to gain a union with high-profile Top Rank promotions was denied, with this harsh judgment:

“He’ll never make it, he has no defense, he’s only a club fighter. Send him back to Mexico.”

Instead, Espinoza said he kept Vazquez in Southern California on a professional athlete’s visa and allowed him to move into his family’s Hacienda Heights home. Vazquez fought 16 more times into early 2002, winning 15 and landing a rematch with Larios. He lost by TKO in the 12th round.

“He was contemplating retirement,” Espinoza said.

But Vazquez also was starting a young family. He had met his wife-to-be at a hair salon, and they had a young boy to support. He aspired to greatness in his work.

“He doesn’t ever want to give up,” Laura Vazquez said. “He didn’t have a financially stable home in Mexico. That’s what makes him want to give his best for us.”

Said Israel Vazquez: “I’ve always wanted to make history. I always believed in myself.”

He went back to the ring, winning a decision a card in National City and gaining his first major title shot in early 2004 against Jose Luis Valbuena at the Olympic Auditorium. Vazquez won by 12th-round TKO.

With money from a promotional deal he signed with the Sycuan Indian Tribe in El Cajon, Vazquez bought his wife a salon.

He then found WBC champion Larios waiting for a third time in 2005.

While training, Vazquez said he was taken “off track” by news from home that Israel Jr. was bleeding excessively from the gums. A blood specialist established that the boy suffers from hemophilia.

“We have to make sure he doesn’t bump into anything, or it swells and bleeds inside without stopping,” Vazquez said. “As long as we notice he’s been hurt, we can give him an injection and stop the bleeding immediately.”

Israel Sr. effectively set aside the family drama to knock down Larios in the first round and then scored a TKO in the third.

Because Vazquez’s defense remains suspect, the inspiration of his family is key. In 2006, he survived two knockdowns at the hands of Jhonny Gonzalez to win by 10th-round TKO.

The two fights against Marquez have established him to peers as a champion made of “bravado and guts,” said Golden Boy Promotions matchmaker Eric Gomez.

“The guy just has a big heart, and as the saying in boxing goes, you can know a guy’s size and skill and boxing ability, but you can’t measure his heart. For him to come back from quitting, and then all that punishment in the rematch to win by TKO, is just incredible.”

Vazquez’s family will be ringside tonight. Win or lose, Israel Jr. will jump into the ring and congratulate his father.

“He’s super proud,” Laura Vazquez said.

Of the frenzied exchanges with Marquez, Vazquez admits, “Sometimes, you get out of the game plan. But then you go back to that mode of practicing, and remember how far you’ve come. Look at where we are now.”

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lance.pugmire@latimes.com

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TONIGHT

Israel Vazquez vs.

Rafael Marquez

at the Home Depot Center

Card begins 4 p.m. (main event delayed, 9 p.m., Showtime)