Brought together in a virtual setting on Facebook Live by the WBC because of the coronavirus pandemic, six legendary fighters opened up from their homes with stories about their favorite boxers, best fights, worst nights and various other topics.
It’s interesting to discover how Latin American boxing legends such as Roberto Duran, Sergio Martinez, Erik Morales, Marco Antonio Barrera, Alfonso Zamora and Jorge Arce put on their gloves for the first time.
“Hands of Stone” Duran, an admirer of Muhammad Ali, recalled that he was introduced to boxing because of his brother.
“When you’re born as I was, in a poor neighborhood with humble, hard-working people, our needs took on the face of hunger,” he said. “I started boxing by mistake. My brother was the boxer, and one time he told us to go to the gym. I waited for him and when he walked out of the locker room I loved how he was dressed. What I loved most was his headgear, the cup and the gloves. I asked him what I had to do to have all that, and he said become a boxer.
“One day, my brother fought in the gym and I went with him. One fighter didn’t have an opponent, so I raised my hand. I weighed 89 pounds but the fight was for 100. They stuffed rocks in my shorts so that I could make weight. That night we fought and I pounded the other guy, and so started the career of Roberto Duran.”
Martinez wanted to be a soccer player, not a boxer.
“I dreamed of playing soccer. I was 20 years old and I come from a family of boxers, but I was on two teams and was looking for a big club that would sign me. One day a scout saw me and told me I’d have a tryout in a month.
“I started to train, and part of that was going to the boxing gym where an uncle took me and trained me with weights. I started to box, and by the second day I knew I was going to be a boxer. A month later, instead of the tryout, I had my first fight with a kid who was 14. I won on points.
“I fought using somebody else’s license,” he admitted.
Morales was practically born into the sport, as his father, Jose, was a boxer and later a trainer. He mentioned Sugar Ray Leonard and Duran as his inspirations.
“I would go with him to the gym when I was very small, started training at 5 and fighting at 6,” Morales said. “My dad was a trainer, he had a gym and I lived through him, I trained because I liked it. I would help with some of the fighters who wanted to work on their defense and sought me out even though I was young. It was a bit more formal when I turned 15, then I made my debut at 16.”
Barrera said everything seemed to be a child’s game at first.
“I was very small at 7. A friend of a friend trained with Rudy at the Pino Suarez gym. He asked us to go with him and we started playing around. My parents’ thinking was that I would study, study, then help out with set designs. But it was destiny that we would thrive at boxing,” said Barrera, who admitted to falsifying paperwork to show that he was 17 instead of 15.
Five-time champion Arce said he had a feisty personality at an early age, but a promise to his father took him to championship heights.
“They wanted to kick me out of school because I was always getting in fights, so one of my uncles asked if I wanted to be a boxer. He took me to a boxing gym with Manuel ‘Kochul’ Montiel, and on the first day he told me that I was going to be a world champion.
Arce continued: “I began to train, and within a week they entered me in a tournament, which I won. One day, my dad was close to dying after a work accident, and when they told me he wasn’t going to make it I promised him that I would be champion. My father taught me to keep my word, so I didn’t have any other choice.”
Zamora, the only Mexican boxer to achieve both a gold medal and a world title, said he entered boxing under murky circumstances.
“It was a bit tragic for me. Since I had just finished grade school but couldn’t go to high school because I failed the test for it, I stayed behind as a troublemaker in my tough neighborhood, Tlatelolco. I was on the streets at 12, 13, a troublemaker with no structure, and I had to force myself to do something.
“There was a professional manager in the building where we lived, Ernesto Gallardo, and my dad took me to him so I could work. I carried water, kept time, hung the heavy bags, the speed bags, then took them down. After a while, when the gym was empty I would start hitting the bag. One day someone caught me doing it and liked what they saw. That’s where my career started.”