Fighting Her Way Back : Teresa Arguello Goes Into the Ring With New Confidence

The dreaded flashbacks begin for Teresa Arguello the moment she climbs into bed. They always start with the same haunting scene--her live-in boyfriend holding a gun to her head and firing two bullets.

“I remember all the blood on my face,” she says. “It’s like a movie that won’t go away.”

One bullet missed, but the other grazed her forehead. Arguello did not suffer any serious permanent damage in the shooting in August, 1992, but it steeled her resolve to resume an unusual career that her boyfriend-turned-assailant made her give up: professional boxing.

“Six weeks after I got out of the hospital, I was back at the gym, training. If I had still been in training, maybe I could have defended myself,” she said. “I can’t let him ruin my life.”

Arguello is the only professional female boxer in Orange County and one of just 50 in the country, according to her trainer. She will have her fourth professional fight tonight at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas.

Arguello, 32, raises three children by herself in La Habra, but boxing isn’t paying the bills. She figures she’ll be fighting only a few times a year at up to $500 a match, and she relies on her day job with a local moving company to support the family.

Tonight’s bout is a rematch, pitting Arguello against Helga Risoy, who beat her twice before. At their previous fight in December, the fight judge stopped the bout when Arguello got a bloody nose. Without a trainer at the time, Arguello did not know how to stop the bleeding.

“I was disappointed, but I know I’m going to win this time,” said Arguello, who at 5 foot 2 and 137 pounds fights in the welterweight class.

Growing up in San Antonio, Arguello’s first teachers in the sweet science were her eight brothers.

“They were always beating me up,” she said. “I had to fight for everything, for food at the dinner table. But I learned a lot from them. It made me aggressive and strong.”

Her mother and aunt began a campaign to turn the young tomboy, the only girl in the family, into a young lady when she hit puberty, but that failed.

“My aunt sent me an apron for my birthday when I was 12. I guess she thought I was going to cook or something,” Arguello said. “I wore it to play baseball with my brothers for when I was sliding.”

If she had stayed in Texas, Arguello said, the disapproval from family members and friends would have been too strong to take up such a sport as boxing.

“I probably would have had eight or nine kids and for sure would have never started boxing if I stayed there,” she said.

But Arguello moved to California 12 years ago with her then-husband. Away from her family for the first time, she decided to take boxing lessons to learn how to defend herself. Afraid to let her husband or anyone else know what she was doing, Arguello would tell him she was working late--and then go to the gym to train.

“I knew he wouldn’t like it, but I figured I wasn’t hurting anybody so I’m going for it,” she said.

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For six years, she boxed--mostly for fun and fitness. It wasn’t until 1990 that she first put on the gloves professionally in a Las Vegas bout, beating a woman from New Mexico, and even then, she didn’t return to the ring for money for another two years.

But her pro career was derailed fairly abruptly after she met the man who ultimately shot her. The boyfriend, whom Arguello declined to name, wanted her to give up boxing--mostly because he was jealous of the idea of her training around so many men, she said. She complied.

Then came the night of the shooting in August, 1992. It left Arguello in the intensive-care unit at Whittier Presbyterian Hospital for five days and her boyfriend in prison for 12 years on an attempted-murder conviction, she said.

Within weeks of her release, Arguello had a new goal: to box again.

Although the sport has become popular with women at fitness clubs as an alternative to aerobics, Arguello trains in a male enclave at the La Habra Boxing Club, surrounded by men and boys of all ages.

“At first, they didn’t take her seriously,” said Dave Martinez, Arguello’s trainer. “Then they saw the way she warms up, her advanced style, and now she’s accepted as one of the guys.”

Arguello’s training regimen is the same as the other professional boxers whom Martinez trains.

She’s up every morning by 6 a.m. to run the three miles to La Habra High School. When she gets to the school she goes through a series of jumping exercises and sprints, and then she runs the three miles home.

In the afternoon, Arguello spends 90 minutes at the gym. Because there are so few female boxers, Arguello spars with men. And her trainer says she fights like them too.

“It’s not really a problem because she weaves and slips; she fights like a man,” Martinez said. “When she puts on the headgear, you can’t tell she’s a lady.”

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Hector Rivera, who trains at the gym and has sparred with Arguello, said sparring partners who underestimate Arguello do so at their own risk.

“I was really surprised at how hard she punched,” Rivera said. “She looks like a girl, but she fights like a man.”

On a sunny afternoon earlier this week, Arguello wrapped up her last day of training before the fight.

In the ring with Jose Lopez, a 17-year-old amateur, Arguello sparred for 20 minutes. The quick jabs and combination punches the two traded appeared to be equal, and if Arguello has less upper-body strength than Lopez, it didn’t show.

Two of her children, 13-year-old Pearl, and Dragon Anthony, 11, sat near the ring, watching their mom take a series of blows to the head.

“It doesn’t bother me watching her get hit,” Pearl said. “I know she’ll be OK.”

After sparring, Arguello spent about 20 minutes shadowboxing around the ring to cool down. When trainer Martinez hollered for her to stop, Dragon Anthony jumped up to give his mother a drink from a water bottle.

“I tried boxing, but I don’t like it,” he said. “I like watching my mom, though.”

Both Pearl and Dragon Anthony accompany their mother to the gym every afternoon. Her third child, 12-year-old April, usually stays home to finish cooking the meal that Arguello starts before she leaves for the gym at 4 p.m.

On Tuesday, the night Arguello left for Las Vegas fight, the four sat down for a dinner of barbecued chicken, rice and vegetables.

Just an hour after trading jabs at the gym, Arguello was all mother at home, grilling April about her homework, Pearl about boys and the phone, and Dragon Anthony about his next haircut.

“A buzz no, a step cut, yes,” Arguello told him.

Raising three kids by herself is a far tougher challenge than stepping into a boxing ring, Arguello said. In the ring, at least, you have only one opponent at a time, and you get a break every two minutes.

“Raising kids today takes a lot out of you,” Arguello said. “They need so much of my attention. If it isn’t one of them, it’s another one. They’re good kids, though. They always keep after me to stay in training, to eat right and to get enough sleep.

“It’s like having one trainer at the gym and three more at home.”

Although she played more traditional women’s sports such as softball and volleyball in high school, Arguello said boxing offers a different athletic challenge.

“It’s like a puzzle or a chess match,” she said. “There’s all these different pieces to put together. You have to be one step ahead of your opponent.”

And perhaps most critically, mastering a sport long dominated by men has boosted her self-confidence and redefined her self-image from that of a victim to that of a victor.

“I feel better since I started training again,” she said. “I feel stronger and happier. There is a whole world out there and I can do anything if I just reach for it.”