Studying the Sweet Science : Despite Sport’s Troubles, Some High School Boys Find a Home in Orange County Boxing Gyms

The sport of boxing has taken its share of blows in recent years, most of them self-inflicted. Questionable decisions, mysterious knockouts, knockouts that end in death and unscrupulous promoters are only a few examples of why boxing has lost its luster.

Even amateur boxing isn’t what it used to be. At the Atlanta Olympics, NBC did not televise one live boxing match in prime time.

Boxing has never been recognized as a sport in Southern California high schools. In fact, the Southern Section rule book states that any school participating in boxing will be suspended from athletic competition for one year.

“It’s not something that has come up in the last 15 years,” said Southern Section assistant commissioner Bill Clark, “mainly, because of the safety of the kids.”

But to the more than 100 high school students who put on the gloves in Orange County’s four main boxing clubs, boxing’s benefits outweigh its problems. To them, boxing is as pure as baseball, football or soccer.

Some of them walk into boxing gyms looking for respect, some are looking for a way to defend themselves, some are searching for gold medals and Mike Tyson-like million-dollar paydays, and some are simply looking for something to do.

Javier Mora walked into the Westminster Boxing Club three years ago with the reputation for a being a bully, a lazy bully.

“I got into a lot of fights,” Mora said. “I didn’t have respect for anybody. Everybody wanted to get into a fight with me because I was big and they wanted to see how big I was.”

No one is quite so curious anymore. Mora, a 15-year-old heavyweight, stands 6 feet 3, weighs 230 pounds and can outbox most lightweights and outpunch most heavyweights in his gym. Mora is so big and talented that his trainer, Dick McCarthy, has been able to get him only two fights in three years. He won his first in a first-round knockout and lost his second in a close decision.

“In spite of his size, he’s very well-coordinated,” McCarthy said. “That’s why he’s fit in well here.”

Said Dick Jones, McCarthy’s assistant: “He’s almost a shoo-in to win the nationals at this year’s Junior Olympics.”

Mora’s size and agility also have made him a hit with Westminster High football Coach Stan Clark, who doesn’t see many kids with credentials like Mora’s in his program. Mora played freshman football last year and started on the offensive and defensive lines. He considered dropping football to concentrate on boxing before his friends, his father, his boxing coaches and Clark finally convinced him to try football again.

“I like boxing a lot,” Mora said. “First of all, it’s free. It also keeps me away from trouble. I get a good feeling out of boxing. Everybody helps me at the gym and everybody is looking out for me.

“It’s also an individual thing. I like the team sports, but boxing’s a one-on-one thing. It’s me. It’s who I am. If I make a mistake in the ring, it’s my fault and I have no one else to blame.”

Abundio Cruz and his brother, Rafael, started boxing about the age of 12. The brothers have tried other sports--Abundio swam for Saddleback High and Rafael ran cross-country and track--but they have yet to find another activity they love like boxing.

“People at school say I’m crazy,” Abundio said.

If anything, Abundio is crazy about boxing. He’s usually up at 4 or 5 in the morning to run. Once, his alarm clock was three hours off and he rose at 1 a.m. only to find the streets empty. Undeterred, Abundio still got in his four miles.

Most afternoons, the Cruz brothers can be found at the TKO Boxing Club in Santa Ana with 60 to 75 kids, half of them of high school age. They hit the speed bag, shadow box and spar in the evenings for three hours under the tutelage of Irleis “Cubanito” Peres, a former top-10 lightweight who has fought world champions Hector Camacho, Meldrick Taylor and Jimmy Paul.

Peres said Abundio, 17, has a future in boxing if he remains dedicated.

“He has a lot of ability,” Peres said. “He’s a perfectionist. I don’t push him too hard. I just want him to become a good all-around fighter.”

Abundio and Rafael fit the profile of most kids in the TKO Boxing Club--small, quick, fit and Latino. Abundio fights at 118 pounds. Rafael, who’s 15, at 106 pounds.

“Some kids are too small for baseball or football,” Peres said. “When they box, they can compete with anybody their own size. I know boxing brought me a lot of self-confidence. I realized I didn’t have to use my fists to fight.”

Dave Martinez, a trainer at the La Habra Boxing Club for 14 years, said most kids who come into his gym also lack self-confidence. So he spends most of his days building egos while teaching the proper way to throw a left jab.

“When you participate in boxing, you have a lot of indirect respect,” Martinez said. “Because you belong to the boxing club, even if you don’t box in actual matches, you are respected in the community and by your peers. And that’s the first step to getting respect in life.”

Javier Mora Sr. has seen how boxing has helped his son mature and he knows his son is happy when he’s in the ring. But he still isn’t sold on the sport.

“I’m going to be honest, I don’t like the boxing thing,” Mora Sr. said. “Javier’s really tough. But if he gets hit by some of the other big professional and amateur guys he spars with, he might get brain damage. It’s a dangerous sport.”

A dangerous sport that doesn’t offer college scholarships. Most amateur fighters are not going to become professionals or even accomplished amateurs.

“If they have a future in boxing, great,” Martinez said. “But I don’t stress that. It’s a tough sport. If they only have one or two bouts, it doesn’t matter. It’s an individual sport that takes a lot of motivation and a lot of talent. Unlike other sports, you don’t go to college for boxing. In boxing, you box to become pro. And that takes the exceptional kid.”

Mora says he believes he might be one of the exceptional ones.

“I look up to De La Hoya,” Mora said. “He reminds me of me. He’s Mexican American like me. That’s what I want to do--represent the U.S. and win a gold medal.”

But even Mora admits the odds for success are better in shoulder pads than boxing gloves.

“I know if I can stick to football, I can get a scholarship,” Mora said.

Mora’s father knows the odds too.

“Football’s the only way we can pay for his college,” Javier Mora Sr. said. “But if he likes boxing, what can I do? I have to support him.”

For now, Javier’s father and Stan Clark have convinced Mora to take a break from boxing to concentrate on football. Since Mora missed preseason practice and the first three regular-season games, Clark said he will start Mora on junior varsity while he plays his way into shape.

The cost of football had been a major issue for Mora. The $200 participation fee at Westminster High is much higher than boxing’s yearly fees. Each amateur fighter younger than 18 pays about $5 a year in fees--$3 for a mouthpiece and $2 for hand wraps. Gyms provide headgear and gloves. The boxer’s insurance costs are covered by the Westminster Boxing Club, which is partly funded by the United Way.

“Boxing’s a great deal,” said trainer Dick Jones, who along with McCarthy volunteers his time at Westminster. “I wish it were this cheap when I was a kid.”

Jones said the insurance costs are much lower than most sports because of amateur boxing’s recent record.

“We’re worried and we know boxing doesn’t have the greatest image, so we’re extra careful with these kids,” Jones said. “We have a lot of headgear, the referees are quick to stop the fights whenever there’s a doubt a kid’s hurt. And rarely do we ever let a kid get past one serious knockdown.”

Clark can’t do anything about the safety of football, but he has tried to make it inexpensive too. He has told Mora he would help him with the participation fee if he would come out for football.

Mora finally relented and on Wednesday told his boxing coaches and his employer at a furniture store that he would be playing football this fall.

“I would have hated to see him limit himself to one sport,” said Clark, whose Westminster team has lost two of its first three games. “He’s a kid. I told him to have fun. I told him, ‘You can work all your life.’ I think it’ll be good for the kid as well as good for us.”

Whichever route Mora eventually takes, he recognizes his path might have been much different without boxing.

“As a little kid, I didn’t use my head,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’m big. I’m cool. I can do anything.’ But once I started boxing, I realized I had to stay in shape or I could get hurt in the ring. I was lazy. I would tell them I ran, but [the trainers] would always find out because it would show up in the ring.

“Now, every time I go in the gym all I think about is boxing. When I’m done, I’m so tired I don’t even think about the streets. Football is a good sport, but it’s only one season. Boxing is year-round and it’s always been there when I needed it.”

Martinez said he has heard all the criticisms of boxing and he admits many of them are justified. But he also thinks most of that criticism should be directed at professional boxing, not the amateur ranks.

“The amateurs and the professionals are two different worlds,” he said. “We have two-minute rounds, in some cases one-minute rounds. Most of the time we spend training, not boxing.”

Still, Martinez said, boxing is not for everyone.

“In boxing, you either like it or you don’t,” he said. “A lot of kids simply don’t like to get hit. You can’t teach guts, only technique. You can tell after about a month if a kid likes it. If he doesn’t, we’ll still work with him. We just won’t put him in the ring. He can be part of the club. There’s boys here who’ve been here three, four years and they’ve never had a bout. We’d never tell them they’re not good enough, we just work them on the bags and take them on field trips so they can be part of the club.”

Sometimes, Martinez says, he is fooled by appearances.

“I had this thin kid, a straight-A student, come to my gym,” he said. “He didn’t have a lot of self-esteem, but he was tough. In boxing, it’s not how much weight you can lift, but what you can do in the ring. He won about eight bouts for me and turned into a pretty good little boxer. He also developed some self-esteem along the way. Now I hear he’s in medical school at Stanford.”

Not every boxing story turns out that well. But there are certainly enough of them at Westminster, TKO and La Habra boxing clubs to give the sport at least a fighting chance.