Silent Might

OXNARD — For someone who takes such command in the boxing ring, 17-year-old Jose Aguiniga doesn’t cut a very imposing figure.

He’s short and slight, with a quick, embarrassed grin that seems to creep out when he’s the center of attention. He’s serious and quiet, his friends say, the watcher in a crowd of competing talkers.

But under a baggy shirt, he’s a lean 112 pounds of muscle, stacked like coils of rope. To see him in the ring is to understand that words aren’t necessary. A simple jab speaks volumes. A cocked head and a flurry of punches convey a silent, yet clear, message.

But local boxers have a lot to say about him, dropping his name with the likes of Fernando Vargas and Robert Garcia, boxers who started at the La Colonia Youth Boxing Club and eventually made the Olympic team and the professional ring.

Aguiniga, some say, is next in line.

After winning a tournament in Florida last week, Aguiniga is preparing for the Olympic trials in February, where he’ll take on other tournament winners from across the nation. If he wins at the trials and the subsequent competition, he’ll head for Sydney in 2000.

“This is pretty big,” he said. “I like to work out hard. I want to be ready for anything.”

And the boxing club is prepared for anything, as well. His coach, Ruben Juarez, sounds almost giddy when he talks about Aguiniga. He says he’s even considering quitting his job, if Aguiniga makes it big.

“He’s probably the best boxer [of his weight] in the whole United States,” Juarez said. “I can brag about that, because the whole team knows it. All of L.A. knows it.”

Aguiniga, a junior at Channel Islands High School, has a troupe of young admirers at the boxing club, 8- and 10-year-olds who slap hands and bump fists in greeting. They shadowbox their way over to him, bobbing and weaving to get alongside. Amid a collage of Garcia and Vargas photos, several of Aguiniga stud the gym’s walls.

His strategy is simple: “Hit and don’t get hit.”

And it’s one he seems to have mastered. He’s 76-10 in his career--several of those losses to the No. 1-ranked, 112-pound boxer he just beat for the Police Activities League title in Florida.

It’s this gym and the coaches, in a neighborhood where many kids congregate whether they box or not, that Aguiniga credits with turning him into a serious fighter.

A virtual boxing factory in the middle of Oxnard’s roughest barrio, the La Colonia gym has been almost mother and father to hundreds of boys and young men through its 30-year history. The city of Oxnard and the Police Activities League cover much of the cost of running the club, partly as a means of keeping energetic kids busy in an area plagued by gangs.

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Aguiniga has been to this gym nearly every day for the last eight years. He started at age 9, along with his older brother, Mario, now 18 and a pro boxer, and learned that with work he could be good.

Though not a brawler by temperament, he’s dedicated.

From the start, he was serious and focused in the ring. He moved fast and fought smart. He could read his opponents quickly. If a boxer were aggressive, he was light on his feet. If a boxer held back, he came out punching.

“I learned everything in this gym,” Aguiniga said. “When I started, it was old and rundown. When we were small, we would look up to Robert [Garcia] and Fernando [Vargas].”

And now the small ones look up to him, watching during his two to three hours a day of punching the bag, jumping rope, hitting mitts and sparring.

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“He’s really talented,” said 13-year-old Daniel Cervantes. “A lot of us just like to see him train.”

Closer to the Olympic trials, he will head with his coach to Big Bear, where his brother and Garcia are now training. With the thinner mountain air, a workout is tougher there, and there’s little distraction for a young boxer accustomed to Oxnard. He’ll study away from school for that month and a half. Boxing will be the priority.

And for a boy from working-class Oxnard, who would probably never have traveled more than a yearly trip to Mexico, boxing has opened up the world. Thanks in part to financial help from the city of Oxnard, he’s been to Kansas, Michigan, New York--and perhaps next to Sydney.

His family lives in a trailer home near the Five Points neighborhood of Oxnard. His parents, who emigrated from Mexico, speak little English, and he often translates for them. They started him boxing, and though his mother was once nervous and avoided his bouts, she is now one of his biggest fans.

In a world where boxers are expected to be brash and combative out of the ring, Aguiniga is thoughtful and self-effacing, not the persona that makes a media superstar.

“He doesn’t talk back. He’s really honest,” Juarez said. “He doesn’t like this media stuff.”

And so he’s still hesitant, and unlikely to use the macho hyperbole that has become so typical among boxers and promoters.

Asked about his Olympic chances, he was characteristically disinclined to brag. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “I really want to go.”

But whether or not he heads to Sydney, Oxnard is home, and he hopes to be based there when he turns pro and continue his boxing career there. There’s only one thing he wants to be in life right now. And he’s already achieved that goal.

“I like how it feels when I punch,” he said. “I can’t be at home and just sitting there. I have to be in the boxing gym. It’s like a habit.”