The Right Side Of The Wall : Junior Welterweight Champion Lopez Fights Back From Self-Imposed Adversity

Hector Lopez finally has learned to just say no.

Approached at a gathering by a man asking the Palmdale boxer to speak to a group of troubled youths, Lopez winced and wrung his hands.

“I wish I could,” Lopez said. “I know where Reseda is, I used to live there. But right now I gotta focus on the fight. I’m just being honest with you.”

Lopez, 34-5-1 with 17 knockouts and the North American Boxing Organization junior welterweight champion, will fight Carlos (Bolillo) Gonzalez in a 10-round non-title fight Monday night at the Forum.

For Lopez, 30, a 1984 Olympic silver medalist for Mexico and a graduate of Hoover High in Glendale, the fight is his 21st since being released in 1991 from a 2 1/2-year prison term for assaulting the father of his former girlfriend.

Part of Lopez’s rehabilitation has been his participation counseling gang members in the San Fernando Valley though a community outreach program.

But with his prime slipping away, Lopez is trying equally hard to resurrect a once-promising boxing career derailed by years of self-imposed adversity.

“I try to support them the best I can, but now I’m making fewer appearances these days,” Lopez said. “My consistency is starting to come through in the ring.”

Lopez, a tenacious competitor with good boxing skills, is 15-4-1 during his comeback. Ranked No. 4 by the World Boxing Organization, he has won his last six fights, including an impressive 12-round decision over Johnny Avila to win the title in November at the Forum.

Lopez won a 10-round split decision over Israel Cardona in his last fight Feb. 16.

Gonzalez, 24, a former WBO junior welterweight champion, is 45-3-1 with 40 knockouts and ranked No. 9 by the WBO. The winner likely will fight for the WBO title sometime this year.

“I’ve been on the top and I’ve been on the bottom,” Lopez said. “It’s taught me to have a lot more respect for people and respect for myself. I’m not 30, I’m 21 because that’s how I feel. I didn’t fight for three years. That was good for my body. I never got beat up.”

However, he has absorbed his share of self-inflicted wounds.

In June of 1995, after losing a split 12-round decision to Sammy Fuentes in Las Vegas for the vacant WBO title, Lopez tested positive for marijuana use. The offense was Lopez’s second in three years and the Nevada Athletic Commission suspended him for a year.

During 1996, Lopez won four fights in a row in Australia before meeting Avila in November.

Since then, Lopez says, he has been drug-free. Married for three years to the woman whose father he assaulted, Lopez and his wife are parents of a 2-year-old son.

“I’m far from a choir boy,” Lopez said. “I may have [messed] up outside the ring, but inside the ring, I’m smart.”