In Boxing Circles, Chavez Is Proving to Be a Real Knockout

The calendar says he’s just a kid, but the calendar sometimes lies.

True, Mike Chavez is only 15. And the Harbor City native’s hairless face seems so youthful at first glance that it might throw you. But look closer; this is no kid. At least not when it comes to boxing.

A junior at Narbonne High, Chavez is the newly crowned Junior Olympics lightweight champion. With 100-plus fights under his belt and about 10 years in boxing--as well as sparring bouts with Olympic gold medalists Oscar De La Hoya and Paul Gonzalez--Chavez has more experience between the ropes than most fighters five years his senior.

His battered nose bears witness to an already lengthy fight career. His lean, wiry body and ashen skin are a testament to long hours spent inside the gym at the Boys and Girls Club of San Pedro, where he trains with his father, Ray, and John Ibarra, the club’s boxing coach. The brown and purple bruise spread in a semicircle under Chavez’s right eye is a fading keepsake from his greatest boxing triumph yet.

Chavez brought that black eye home from Gulfport, Miss., where he won the Junior Olympics gold medal in the 132-pound lightweight division last Sunday after beating four opponents in as many days.

Ibarra said it will be neither the final nor the most glorious chapter in Chavez’s career.

“I’ve worked with a lot of world-class fighters,” says Ibarra, whose former charges include De La Hoya and Gonzalez. “This kid’s something special. He’s in a class of champions. There are kids that come around every so often. There are kids that are just as talented (as Chavez), but that doesn’t mean that they have it. Mikey has it.”

Chavez was 5 when his parents, looking for an outlet for their rambunctious son, took him to a gym to work out some of his aggression. By the time he was 6, he was taking on older kids in amateur bouts.

“The first day he got into the ring, he was just real aggressive,” Ray Chavez said. “He knocked the other kid down a couple times and (the opponent) was about a year older than Mike. He just loved the sport, that one-on-one contact. He would just go at it. If he got hit, he’d just go right back in. If I had thought he (didn’t enjoy it), I wouldn’t have put him in boxing. But he was eager to do it.”

Chavez quickly became a scholar of the sport, studying boxing books and videos. He works out two hours a day in addition to running three miles each night before bed. His hard work has helped him win 90% of his fights, losing only 12 bouts in 10 years.

When Ray Chavez has tried to direct his son to other sports, such as baseball, it has always led back to boxing.

“Boxing keeps me going,” Chavez said. “I enjoy it. Baseball I don’t enjoy, I get bored. That’s the way I am with those kinds of sports, I just don’t like them. The most I can play is five minutes, then I get fed up with it. Boxing, I can train for hours and hours. Sometimes I train at night, by myself, because I enjoy doing it. I know this is something that I can do well at, if I try hard.”

Considered short for his weight at 5-foot-8, Chavez compensates in other ways. His training has provided him with superior stamina, making the third round his strongest. He has developed an aggressive, attacking style that enables him to work inside on his typically taller and longer-reaching opponents. And he possesses a mental toughness that allows him to look past the fact that he’s almost always looking up.

“I’ve been at 132 (pounds) since I was 13, and I was a lot shorter at 13, so (my opponents) were even bigger then,” Chavez said. “But I was still beating them.

“The guys look big, but I never worry about it. It’s all in your head. . . . They look big, they look strong, but as soon as you get in the ring, it’s a different story. Can they take the last round?”

Chavez’s most valuable asset in the ring may be his ability to adjust to an opponent’s style. In the championship bout at Gulfport, Chavez faced a considerably taller Jeffrey Resto of the Bronx, N.Y. Chavez changed his normally aggressive style, out-boxing Resto to earn a 3-2 decision.

“(Resto) was tall, about six feet,” Chavez said. “I was nervous on that one. I didn’t know whether to box or to be the aggressor, so I just waited for him to punch, then I countered. He wasn’t real fast, but when we saw him (in the earlier rounds), he looked like he was strong. He stopped a guy in 30 seconds in his first match, so we figured he was a strong guy. But he hit me with one good shot and that was it. He didn’t hit me hard again.”

Ibarra, who was unable to make the trip last week with Chavez and his father, gets special satisfaction from the young fighter’s performance against Resto.

“I asked Mike, ‘Did you bang him? Did you kick his butt?’ And he said, ‘No, I boxed him.’ That made me the happiest when he said that.”

The Junior Olympics title means more than a gold medal to Chavez, who earned a trip to Marquette, Mich., to participate in a two-week training camp with USA Boxing later this month. The camp concludes with a tournament between the U.S. team and those from Ireland and Canada.

It will be Chavez’s first opportunity to represent his country in international competition. He considers it an important step toward achieving his next goal: a gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

Ultimately, Chavez wants to be the undisputed world champion of his weight class.

“If you’re a champion, there should be no other champs with you,” he said. “It should be you. I don’t want one of those guys who just have the (World Boxing Council) or (World Boxing Assn. title).”

Chavez also sets high standards for the way he carries himself in and out of the ring. He points to current junior welterweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez (no relation) as a role model.

“I do like the way he presents himself. . . . I just like to be a quiet guy and present myself well, not be a bad-mouth or anything,” Chavez said.

“And I don’t put anything on my shorts. I don’t like all that fancy stuff on the shorts. You see guys, they got real nice shorts, but then they get knocked out, you know?”

Not this kid.