Promising Boxing Career

I left the Navy recruiter's office and headed straight to Half Price Books for literature on Officer Candidate School. My application had been submitted, now it was a matter of waiting to hear back. Up to six months, the recruiter said, but my odds were good: eyesight was fine, flight aptitude scores were acceptable, top-secret security clearance was attained. I had as good a shot as any at the coveted ten-year contract as an Aviator.

As I browsed the aisles, an orange textbook caught my eye. It stuck out awkwardly from the top shelf, larger and heavier than its neighbors. Boxing: Aviation Training Division, Office of Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy. Its cover showed a young man with close-cropped hair standing in the corner of a boxing ring, holding his gloves in front of his face. It was a manual written in 1943 for naval cadets about to head off to World War II. Written by boxing champions and coaches, the book's intent was to teach boys to "take a punch" and "hit with deadly intent."

Boxing. The idea had occurred to me once, a year before, when I had joked to my parents over my 22nd birthday lunch that I was considering taking up a new sport: "Either golf or boxing." Horrified by the suggestion, my father immediately bought me a fancy set of TaylorMade clubs, hoping to deter any further interest.

"Para que te queres romper la nariz?" he asked. "Why do you want to break your nose?"

A year before, boxing had seemed like a stupid idea. But now, as I prepared for a career as a pilot, within the context of getting in shape for the military, it seemed fitting. Hell, the manual on boxing was written for the U.S. Naval Aviators. I thumbed through the book and thought back to my childhood doing Karate and Tang Soo Do (Tae Kwon Do's gentler, gayer cousin). It had been years since I had fought, but I had loved it when I was a kid—at one point it had been the thing that made me happiest. I forgot why I had given it up.

As I began researching boxing gyms in Austin, one name kept popping up with every search: Richard Lord.

"Dick Lord," I chuckled to myself. "That can't be his real name."

I called the number.

"Yeah, whaddayou want?" a scratchy voice barked. It was slightly slurred with a southern twang. I couldn't imagine what kind of person such a voice might belong to. I'm not sure why, but I imagined an old, skinny black man with a daily smoking habit.

"Uh—I'm calling about the boxing gym. Is this Richard Lord's?"

"Yeah, this is a boxing gym."

"Oh. Well my name's Juan. I'm looking to start boxing."

"Well we're closing here soon. But we'll have class tomorrow. Seven AM."

"Sounds good, I'll see you tomo—"

Click

I drove by the building four times before I finally saw the sign: "R. LORD'S BOXING GYM." It was July, six forty-five AM, and the Austin heat was on the brink of triple digits. As I stepped out of the car and walked the twenty feet to the tin building with blue walls, I felt the ominous slap of humidity; it was hot, but it was going to get a lot hotter. I noticed a sign in front of the parking space nearest to the door: "If you park here, we will not tow you. We will knock you out!"

I pushed open the door and heard a sickening screech of glass against tile. I instinctively began to turn around to leave when the voice stopped me.

"The hell are you doing here at this hour?" slurred an old white man. He sat behind a desk covered in papers and boxing trophies. He peered at me over his glasses, seeming to size me up. "What's your name, son?"

"Juan Gargiulo, sir," I said. I extended a hand and walked over to the desk. He stood up to grasp it.

"Richard Lord."

He was shorter than he looked from behind the desk, only about five-foot six or seven, but something about him immediately told me that he wasn't someone to be fucked with. Maybe it was the rattail that hung from his graying brown hair down his back. His grip was friendly and deceptively strong, as if he was trying to show how gentle he could be, but his boxer's hands were betraying him.

"Gar-gee-you-low," he said, enunciating every syllable and creating one more. "Italian?"

"Argentine, actually. But I'm from the Dallas area. Fun fact—you ever meet someone with a Spanish name and an Italian last name, nine times out of ten they're from Argentina."

"Huh," he said. "Argentina's got some great boxers. Carlos Monzón!" He threw a combination of punches into the air in front of him. He moved fluidly, with his hips and his legs. He was noticeably older, in his early sixties, at least, and the slur in his voice, combined with the Texas twang, made him sound like a drunk Willie Nelson. Yet there was an undeniable expertise in his movements and in his words; something about the way he effortlessly threw jabs and hooks into the air, and the deliberateness with which he spoke, made you feel that he was dangerous. And dangerously intelligent.

"You go to UT?" he asked.

"Yeah," I lied. I had graduated in May. But a moment before I had noticed the sign advertising prices: sixty a month for students and seventy-five for adults. And, technically, I was still a student; I was taking a real estate course while I waited for the Navy and as Plan B—it wasn't a complete lie.

"I went to UT," he said. "Psychology." He sometimes slurred a word, but there was a deliberateness in the way he spoke—he seemed to choose every word carefully as if placing them on a chessboard. "Whaddayou study?"

"Government."

"Government? The hell you gonna do with that?"

"I ask myself the same thing every day."

He laughed. "Let me show you around, Gar-gee-you-low."

***

"Fighters, touch 'em up," the referee shouted. The crowd at the annual Texas Sigma Chi Fight Night was deafening, drunk, and on its feet.

My opponent was a brother in the Acacia fraternity: Brian "The Lion AKA Brown Sugar" Aninzo. He worked as a bartender at Love Goat, my favorite bar, and we had struck up a conversation two years before about boxing and exchanged phone numbers. We'd made tentative plans to grab a beer but never followed through. As he extended his gloves to me in the center of the ring, I felt the heft of my fists inside the red ten-ounce gloves. They felt so different from the sixteen ouncers I had worn every day for the past six months—they felt lighter, faster, but not right. As I stared him down, grim and serious, he smiled and nodded back. I pounded my gloves against his.

"Back to your corners," the referee mouthed to us. It was impossible to hear him over the roar of the crowd around the boxing ring. "I want you to come out fighting," he yelled. "Protect yourself at all times!"

"Let's go, Brian!" a girl cheered from ringside. Brian stood across from me, shadowboxing the air, bouncing from foot to foot, flexing his grapefruit-sized calves. He wore black shorts reading ARMY. The lion on his t-shirt stared me down with a cold, indifferent intensity, ready to prey on any mistake.

Ding Ding! The bell sounded and the referee lowered his hand. "Let's fight!"

***

Boxing is a sport about the past as well as the present, each equally important. The fights fought, the lessons learned, the scars earned. In a sport where the athletes only competed every six months or so, much of the sport was built on reputation and speculation. The greats were immortalized for their achievements, and the good were forgotten as quickly as the bad. As I walked into the gym for the first time I felt like I was entering a museum. Pictures and posters hung on every inch of the walls, advertising fights and fighters from decades past. The men in the posters looked like gods, barrel-chested and broad-shouldered, their eyes smoldering with strength. I already wanted to step into the ring and test myself. I bounced from foot to foot and clenched my fists in anticipation. I wanted to become a part of the history—of the gym and of the sport. I wanted my triumphs emblazoned on the walls of a foreign boxing gym somewhere. I felt a childish, irrational wonder, a desire to feel the strength those men on the walls seemed to exude. Oscar De la Hoya vs Bernard Hopkins at the MGM Grand. Héctor "Macho" Camacho vs. Sugar Ray Leonard at the Convention Center in Atlantic City. George Foreman vs. Michael Moorer at the MGM Grand.

The most frequent name on the walls, decorating the gym more often than even Lord, was a fighter whom, until that moment, I had never heard of: Jesús "El Matador" Chavez, the former IBF World Lightweight Champion, who had trained at the gym. Posters advertising his fights against Floyd Mayweather, Erik Morales, and Leavander Johnson hung in every corner. It was impossible to jump rope or hit a heavy bag without going eye-to-eye with El Matador.

Behind the main door was a life-sized, black and white photo of Richard, shirtless, hanging from an exercise apparatus by his arms, working his chiseled core while simultaneously talking on a landline brick. His goateed face is smiling a sardonic, playful grin.

He led me over to a wall of jump ropes. All were worn to near-breaking, almost all held together with duct tape.

To the left of the jump rope wall was a water fountain. There was a sign on top reading, "Do not spit in the fountain!" with a Spanish translation underneath.

"Grab a jump rope," he instructed, as he reached for one himself. He immediately started bouncing up and down rhythmically, swinging the rope effortlessly with his arms at his sides. First forward, then in reverse.

I grabbed one and started to jump. I made it to nine before I tripped over my feet. Richard laughed. I started again, trying to make it to twenty-five without messing up. Ten-Eleven-Twelve-"Fuck!" I shouted, accidentally.

"Hey, watch your mouth," he said, his tone suddenly serious. "This is a family environment."

I looked around. There wasn't a single person younger than me in the gym. At least two of the men in the gym had visible ankle monitors. Was that a joke?

***

"Alright, baby, you made him respect you that round," Tractor said to me in the corner. Richard was busy organizing the event, so he had stepped up to fill the role. He was nicknamed Tractor because he worked with the young fighters around the gym. "Sowing the seeds," he said.

"You back out and take it to 'im! Take it to the house! You make this your fight!" He grabbed a towel from behind the corner and whipped it up and down, fanning me with air. He poured a sip of water into my mouth. It went down the wrong pipe and I coughed violently, nearly choking on my mouthpiece. I tried desperately to catch my breath. My legs felt anchored to the canvas. Why was I so exhausted? Why did I feel like I needed to hyperventilate into a paper bag? It had only been one, one-minute round.

"Stretch out your legs," Tractor said. "Get some blood pumping into 'em. You're doing great, baby. Work that jab. Pop, pop, pop. When he comes at you with that straight right you gotta duck and pivot. Hit 'im with the combos. Pop, pop, bang!" He poured water onto my head and it felt like he was dousing a fire inside my headgear.

A ring girl carried a card reading "Round 2" across the ring. The announcer rumbled into the microphone, "Let's go! Rrrround number two!" The crowd cheered as the referee stepped into the center of the ring. He looked first at my opponent, then at me. "Are you ready?" he asked Brian. He nodded. "Are you ready?" he asked me. I nodded.

Ding Ding! The referee lowered his arms.

I darted forward, eager to meet Brian in the center of the ring. He snapped out three feeler jabs to gauge distance, and I countered with a one-two-three—jab, cross, hook. I leaned my weight into each punch, pivoting with every blow to generate momentum. I heard Richard's voice in my head, repeating the same advice he told all the amateurs: "Punches in bunches! Hit 'im with the one-two. Use your reach!"

***

It had been two months and I felt like I hadn't learned anything. If I was making any progress it was too incremental to notice. Every day I showed up to the gym, and every day I suffered through Richard's sadistic abdominal workout: a thirty-five-minute torture routine he had created himself sometime in the eighties. He had a stack of grey and blue yoga mats next to the ring for everyone to use. Of all the workout equipment in that gym—the rusted weights, the worn heavy bags, the moldy, tattered boxing gloves—those mats were perhaps where the most pain was felt in that gym. I learned that core training was everything in boxing. And Richard seemed to want to show this rather than explain it by suffering alongside us, to prove to us that it was possible. I measured my progress by how far I could make it into the ab workout before I started cheating: lowering my legs from ninety degrees, skipping reps, touching my fingertips rather than my elbows to my ankles. The workouts seemed to get longer and longer each time. Even by the time I was able to finish cheating, it was still unforgivably hard.

I could tell Richard loved giving to the newbies—especially to those who wanted to get in the ring and fight. "Catch," he said to me one day, throwing a medieval brick phone in my direction, hitting me in the head. I hadn't seen a landline in years.

"Put it up on your feet," he said. "Keep it parallel to the ceiling." He demonstrated, and I struggled to mimic his movements. I couldn't believe how fit he was at sixty. He was a real-life Bruce Lee.

Everyone always knew whenever the workout was winding down because Richard's German Shepherd, Chica, began whining and running around the ring burying her nose into stomachs and tugging at Richard's shirt with her teeth.

"Okay, Chica," he said. "We're almost done. Three, two, and one!" He hoisted himself up from the yoga mat, climbed out of the ring, ran over to the front of the gym and took off his shirt. He had softer muscles, the kind older men have, but he was still ripped, eight pack and everything. He put the leash on Chica, grabbed a handful of poop bags, and ran out the door not bothering to wait for anyone. People around me groaned, picking up their mats, stacking them next to the ring where they had found them. Several began putting on hand wraps and gloves, while others wiped themselves down with towels and made their way toward the exit. Only a few removed their shirts and followed Richard out the door into the hills of Hyde Park.

Everything hurt. My legs, my abs, my shoulders. Every day I was getting sorer and sorer, and I couldn't see things getting any easier. How the hell did Richard do this every day for so long? I took my shirt off and ran after them, down Lamar, trying to keep pace with the old man.

I barely knew how to get the hand wraps on. Every time was a new struggle, and somehow each of my hands would always come out uniquely wrong; one too padded at the palm and the other too padded at the wrist—neither padded enough at the knuckles. Even through the sixteen-ounce gloves my knuckles would bleed, peeling back folds of skin along the knuckles of my index, middle, and pinky fingers. As I peeled off my bloody wraps one morning, Richard came over and grabbed one of my hands.

"Make sure you hit with these two," he said, pressing his thumb lightly into my index and middle knuckles. I winced. "But looks like you got some punching power, Gar-gee-you-low." He grabbed some pink, foam material from behind his desk. "Put these in with your wraps," he said, sitting down at his desk and putting on his glasses. He began looking through a handwritten journal full of notes and numbers.

"Thanks," I said.

He didn't say anything, seemingly deep in some calculation. I turned to leave and as I opened the glass door it screeched against the tile floor.

"See you tomorrow," he called out without looking up, just as I stepped outside into the scorching heat.

Saturdays were my favorite day: sparring day. Before I had the cojones to step into the ring myself, I loved to stand at ringside and watch. One of my favorite amateurs in the ring was a Mexican featherweight named Manny. His full name was Manuel Mondragon, and the tattoos on his wiry arms and shoulders were a collage of his East Austin neighborhood, of his Mexican roots. He was one of the smallest guys, barely a hundred thirty pounds, but his hands were the fastest—and his heavier opponents often found themselves dazed in the corner, eating barrages of punches until Richard would wave him off. Whenever a round ended, or when a fighter was too beaten or exhausted to keep swinging, someone on the perimeter would jump in. You had to be geared up, laced up, and ready to go in case you were called.

That morning, Manny went for nine rounds against anyone who stepped into the ring, including a six-foot-three-inch Dominican Cruiserweight training for the Golden Gloves and a Professional Middleweight preparing for his next fight. As he stepped out of the ring and removed his headgear, his face looked perfectly tranquil. He began jumping rope and watching the others in the ring.

I had seen Manny in the gym plenty of times. But I had never said anything to him, only overheard him speaking with the other Mexican fighters in Spanish. There was a racial divide in the gym: the black boxers kept to themselves, the Hispanic boxers kept to themselves, and the white boxers—with a handful of exceptions—floated around aimlessly, trying to make heads or tails of the gym, looking for permission as to what they could and couldn't use. I walked over to Manny and said to him, in Spanish, that he had killed it in there, that I couldn't wait to see his next fight.

"Holy shit, man," he said. "I thought you was a white boy."

"Nah, man. Soy un Argentino."

"Bruh," he said, heaving a sigh of relief, "you fucking suck. Let me show you how it's done." He walked me over to the heavy bag and gave me the first real boxing lesson of my life. "Keep your elbows tucked and your chin against your chest. Yeah, like that."

***

As I made my way back to the corner I saw, to my horror, that Tractor did not have the stool ready. As he fumbled for it, I spent ten precious seconds with my arms against the ropes, desperately gasping for breath.

"You got that one, baby," he said. "Now you gotta go out and win this last one. It's close! But this is your fight!" I looked over at Brian across the ring, sitting erect and proud, sipping on his water bottle leisurely. I imagined how I must look—weak, ready to collapse at any moment. Defeated. I could almost hear the announcer shouting "Finish him!" in the Mortal Kombat voice.

When Tractor finally set the stool down, I was only too eager to sit. He poured a small sip of water into my mouth and a larger draw onto my head. I could barely move my arms or legs.

How am I going to survive another round? I remembered something Richard had told me when I first started sparring, as I caught my breath after a tough round: "The fight is won before you ever step into the ring." He was absolutely right.

The referee looked over at the judges as the ring girl cat walked across the red canvas. The announcer called for the third and final round.

Brian stood up across the ring from me.

I stood up. My legs shook with exhaustion, each step labored and painful.

Ding ding!

For twenty seconds, everything seemed to go perfectly. He came at me aggressively. Rather than impairing my decision-making skills, the fatigue seemed to help my boxing—my body was moving on memory alone, and I was wasting less energy with wild, looping punches. For twenty seconds, I hit Brian with six stiff shots to the head.

I won the first two rounds. I can beat this guy. I'm the better boxer in this ring.

He threw out a new combination: a right hook - left uppercut; it took me by surprise, and the second well-timed blow hammered me in the gut, knocking the wind out of me. I groaned in pain and instinctively dropped my hands below my chin. I snapped out a slow lazy jab, halfheartedly warning him to keep his distance.

He was ready for it. He ducked under the punch, stepped to his right, wound up a cross, and smashed a haymaker across my face with the full spring of his calves. I felt the bones in my nose shatter instantly. I lost the ability to breathe as blood began gushing out of my nostrils.

But I didn't stagger. I stood strong, back straight, and threw back a one-two of my own.

Don't you stop this fight, ref, don't you fucking dare. This is my fucking fight.

The crowd roared as someone at ringside clacked together two wooden blocks to signal ten seconds left.

"Come on, Brian!" a guy's voice shouted.

"Come on, Juan!" another man's voice shouted even louder. I could feel the boxing ring shaking with the stomping and cheering of the crowd. For a few seconds, Brian, the ring, the audience, and I all shared a single pulse.

He landed three more shots. Two sent my ears ringing. When the final bell sounded to end the fight, we were both still throwing punches.

The referee stepped between us.

Brian extended a fist. I pounded it. Our gazes met and we exchanged a smile. His eyes weren't the same as they had been three rounds ago. There was no longer a fiery intensity—his eyes were peaceful, respectful.

The referee brought us into the center of the ring. My nose, jutting out awkwardly at an angle, was still gushing blood. I looked down at my blood-stained tanktop as the referee prepared to make the decision. I looked down at the "R.Lord's Boxing Gym" on my shirt and felt a swell of pride. I looked over at Tractor and Richard and Manny at the guys from my gym at ringside. They were applauding me and my broken face. I could hear my father at ringside cheering my name and applauding. I had made a fan out of him after all.

"After three rounds," the announcer said, "we have come to a decision." He paused and the crowd fell silent. "Standing…in. The. Blue! Corner!" The crowd cheered and my opponent raised his fists in triumph. The words, and the disappointment behind them, hurt more than the broken nose ever could.

It took two surgeries to fix my broken nose. The ENT, upon learning how I had acquired the injury, insisted I avoid all contact sports for a few months. As I waited for my nose to heal I received a call from the U.S. Navy: I had been accepted to OCS. I was going to be a pilot. As the recruiter told me the news, his voice lit up with excitement. He could barely contain himself—this was the glorious moment after a year of hard work. Applications, medicals, interviews, essays, and so many arguments with parents. I felt my stomach drop and I knew immediately that I couldn't go through with it. I couldn't sign away ten years of my life. And it literally took a ten-year contract staring me in the face to realize I was about to make a terrible mistake.

Two months later, the South Austin Boxing Gym hosted the annual Golden Gloves tournament. It had been over sixty days since the broken nose—two full months since I had last stepped foot inside Lord's Gym.

The nose had healed up nicely, straighter than ever before, but I still felt awkward about going back to Lord's. I had always assumed that my boxing career would end with Fight Night. First I had been training for the Navy, and then I had been training for the fight. Now that I had neither, why should I keep going back? I assumed Richard had forgotten about me. I figured I was just another of the hundreds who passed through the Lord's Gym screechy door.

"Gar-gee-you-low!" Richard said as soon as he saw me, his eyes lighting up. He smiled and threw a stiff jab into my gut. "Where the hell've you been?"

"Recovering from a broken face," I said, tapping my nose.

"You look okay to me. You coming to the ramps on Sunday?"

To him, it wasn't a matter of if I would go—he knew me well enough by now to know I would be there. That Sunday, I did go to the ramps. And the following Monday morning I showed up at the tin building with sixty dollars cash in hand, ready for an ab workout, a run in the heat, and a life lesson from Richard Lord.

Maybe a record of 0-1 isn't the way to end such a promising boxing career, I thought to myself as I put on the hand wraps correctly for the first time. A week later I received a text message from Brian "The Lion." He thanked me for a great fight and invited me to train with him at his gym in Jarrell, a little north of Austin. I was touched by the gesture, moved that The Lion would want to train with me. But I knew I would never train with him—I knew I would never drive all the way up to Jarrell. There was only one boxing gym.