BoxRec

kikibalt wrote:Anybody for pancakes?

kikibalt wrote:

dagosd2000 wrote:SOMETHING CAUGHT MY EYE

Reading Frank's response about the 50's Armando Muniz that had a brother who boxed, brought to mind of the WBHOF's president and former welterweight contender by the same name that also had a brother who laced them up. Tragically Mando's brother died in a plane crash in Poland along with a contingency of amateur boxers that were going to compete in Europe. With that team that day was their coach Junior Robles.

Junior was an amateur boxer who had given back to his community of National City(a town just south of San Diego)a boy's amateur boxing program. Junior was also involved with youth basesball. Junior was just plain involved with anything in Nat City.The homeless. Old folks. Anything that needed to be addressed that involved helping people,you could find Junior Robles. He kind of revived a community that was starting to reveal a darker side . That was part of Junior's mission. He wanted to improve the quality of life looking to the future of National City.

When I was dabbling in the sport of boxing,I remembered Robles's gym. It wasn't a place to dabble. If a kid didn't want to sacrafice he was shown the door. But not many kids took that exit. Junior was a fella' steeped in pride. He was respected. Never a bad word from anyone's lips did I hear mention of Junior Robles.

When that plane went down in 1980 I was disconnected from the sport of boxing. One day after work(I was working at a school for handicapped kids in National City) I stopped by a local ice cream parlor for a homemade ice cream. As I was entering the establishment I saw that a newspaper article was posted on the front window of the store. It was the news of the plane crash and an obituary of Junior Robles.

How could that have passed by me? I was in no mood to eat something sweet after reading that story.

Junior Robles,the Mexican kid,meant so much to National City,but outside that community hardly anyone had heard of him. His name was submitted twice to enter the local Hall Of Champions and denied. Just this year Junior was finally crowned. There's a street in National City with his name on it. Maybe it's because his sport was boxing. Maybe it was because he was Mexican. Maybe that's why he wasn't a San Diego name like a Tony Gwynn or a Marshall Faulk.

One day ,way back when, I walked inside Robles's gym. It was packed to the doors with kids wanting to take Junior's direction.Learning how to be a fighter. Bring up the name of Junior Robles's name today in Shell Town(the nick name for National City)and people are still trying to follow his way.That's a place where they never forgot.

Roger,,,Hate to be a dick here, but that was Carlos Palomino's brother "Paul" that got killed in that plane cash and not Mando Muinz's. Mando's brother Javier, went on to have a pro career in which he fought Roberto Duran if memory serves.

kikibalt wrote:Tough Tijuana!
June 10, 2009 by Felipe Leon


CREA Gym

In my travels as a boxing journalist, I have visited my fair share of gyms. From the Wild Card gym before it was THE Wild Card gym to white collar training facilities in San Diego to seedy Barrio Logan holes in the wall. But no matter where these north of the border schools of hard knocks are located or what equipment they have, they are worlds away from the run down establishments their south of the border brethren like to call gimnasios.

If a San Diego white collar gym is a two story, three bedroom house, then a TJ gym is a cardboard shack.

Although there is one “white collar” gym in Tijuana which is located in the modern Sports World gym, no fighter of consequence has ever come out of there despite having former journeyman fighter “Zero” Sanchez as the man in charge.

I guess you can’t turn Tijuana bankers into world contenders.

The next best equipped gyms in Tijuana are the ones funded by the Municipal Institute for Sports which is helmed by former three time world champion Erik Morales.

The most well known is located next to the Municipal Auditorium and is inhabited by an array of amateur stars as well as professional fighters such as current IBF featherweight champion Cristobal “Lacandon” Cruz. The gym boasts a regulation size ring and rows of double end and heavy bags. Same thing can be said for the gym run by former bantamweight champion Raul “Jibaro” Perez who among the top amateurs who train there, you can also find former two time Jr. middleweight champion Alejandro “Terra” Garcia and former straw weight champ Roberto “Mako” Leyva. This gym also has a normal sized ring and plenty of heavy bags among others.

You might be asking why I keep bringing up the fact that both of these gyms have “regulation” or “normal” sized rings. It’s because as far as I have witnessed, these are the only two that do.

The CREA gym where many world champions have gone thru its doors such as the living legend himself Julio Cesar Chavez Sr, the afore mentioned Raul “Jibaro” Perez, Humberto “Zorrita” Soto, Jose Luis “Temible” Castillo and Jorge “Travieso” Arce has no such thing. Other fighters who have trained or train there are Antonio DeMarco, JC Chavez Jr and his brother Omar as well as the cream of the Tijuana’s crop of up and comers, in my humble opinion, all under the watchful eye of Romulo Quirarte and his two sons.

This gym has no regulation ring but two make shift areas that I would be hard pressed to even call a ring. Instead of a bouncy canvas you have what might have been the floor of a high school gym still marked with the Greco Roman wrestling boundaries.

The double end bags as well as the rest of the equipment is held together by the ever resilient duct tape that needs to be reapplied every evening before the doors are locked with a heavy lock.

This is Tijuana after all.

No fans are visible or felt anywhere in the gym and since the majority of the warriors inside are training to make weight for an upcoming bout, all the windows and doors are kept tightly shut. The temperature surely reaches 110 degrees during the summer.

Don’t get me started on the restrooms.

The Azteca Gym located in the Colonia Independencia wished it was as nice as the CREA. Located in one of the oldest neighborhoods of Tijuana, visitors need to go down a series of steps to enter the roughly double car garage sized room. The “ring” sits squarely in the middle of the room and since I didn’t stay long in fear of encountering a rat the size of my seven lbs. Chihuahua, didn’t notice much equipment. WBC #3 ranked featherweight Juan Carlos Burgos, and jr. welterweight Pavel Miranda among others train there. Three time welterweight champion Antonio Margarito also shakes down at the Azteca before traveling to Los Angeles for camp.

Even though many current, former and retired champions have come out of Tijuana and trained in these conditions, I often wonder what kind of fighters they would be if they trained in a high class facility such as the one Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV” trained in.

Will they still be as hungry? Will they still be as tough?

Who knows?

What I do know is that probably they wouldn’t be as happy since every time I visit one of these gyms, every fighter greets me with a smile as they continue to hit each other or the bag in front of them.

You can tell they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

jdbutler16 wrote:

dagosd2000 wrote:COPING

Spud Murphy's Gym was named after the fallen fighter who had his licensed revoked because of a bad brain scan. His father let him workout in the gym still, and after a sparring session,Spud collapsed in the shower and died.

I remember Irish Spud Murphy fighting preliminaries at the Coliseum. From the start you could tell that the kid didn't have it. There was a lot of talk about the father trying to make something out of his son when it would have been best to leave him alone. But Spud kept plugging along although he didn't have anything going for him. He didn't have a punch. He was frail looking. And he cut easy.

It wasn't until much later that I found out about his death. Terry Norris told me about it when I went up to Spud Murphy's gym to watch him train for a fight.

The parents still kept the doors open. I remember that there were always a lot of fighters working out. The gym was upstairs above a pool hall.

The father ,I think, went a little crazy after his son's death. He'd talk about his son like he was still alive. He also went on about how his son was a great fighter. There were newspaper clippings of his son's short boxing career,I remember,pasted on the wall. I also remember the mother. She was an elderly heavy set gal with gray hair. Looked like someone's grandmother. She wore a plain plaid dress. She stayed mostly behind the counter. She sold sodas and candy. I'd see her limp around carrying cases of beer and keepng things straightened out. Towels stacked high. Sweeping the floor. Cleaning the lockers.

While her husband was talking everyone's head off about his son and whatever,I never heard his wife say anything. Maybe that was their ways of dealing with Spud's death. The father trying to keep ahead of the power curve by talking all the time. The mother just trying to keep moving and stay busy.

The Man dagosd refers to in this post and others as Spud Murphy I refer to Spud as Dad. He was my father and I remember the gym a little differently than dagosd. I remember they gym as a place people came and had fun and worked out. I remember folding towels and filling water bottles for the boxers. It was a great place that even if you didn't have the cash to workout my grandparents would still let you box just to keep you off the streets. I remember watching my dad spare and thinking he was great. I remember my dad and my grandpa traveling to compete and seeing the clippings from the paper and wishing I could have been there. My father loved boxing and that's why he did it not to please his dad. He was born with the condition that took his life. When he passed he left 3 daughters and a son, 2 of which never really knew him as they were to young. My Grandfather passed away some time after my dad and my grandmother couldn't keep the gym going by herself so it eventually closed. She still to this day resides in San Diego. 21 years has passed and people still continue to talk about the staple my family left beautiful San Diego. Please keep writing I love reading the way others remember the past. I was 8 when my dad passed away and my last memory of him was my 8th birthday he died a month later. BTW his licenses was not revoked.

bennie wrote:

kikibalt wrote:Tough Tijuana!
June 10, 2009 by Felipe Leon


CREA Gym

In my travels as a boxing journalist, I have visited my fair share of gyms. From the Wild Card gym before it was THE Wild Card gym to white collar training facilities in San Diego to seedy Barrio Logan holes in the wall. But no matter where these north of the border schools of hard knocks are located or what equipment they have, they are worlds away from the run down establishments their south of the border brethren like to call gimnasios.

If a San Diego white collar gym is a two story, three bedroom house, then a TJ gym is a cardboard shack.

Although there is one “white collar” gym in Tijuana which is located in the modern Sports World gym, no fighter of consequence has ever come out of there despite having former journeyman fighter “Zero” Sanchez as the man in charge.

I guess you can’t turn Tijuana bankers into world contenders.

The next best equipped gyms in Tijuana are the ones funded by the Municipal Institute for Sports which is helmed by former three time world champion Erik Morales.

The most well known is located next to the Municipal Auditorium and is inhabited by an array of amateur stars as well as professional fighters such as current IBF featherweight champion Cristobal “Lacandon” Cruz. The gym boasts a regulation size ring and rows of double end and heavy bags. Same thing can be said for the gym run by former bantamweight champion Raul “Jibaro” Perez who among the top amateurs who train there, you can also find former two time Jr. middleweight champion Alejandro “Terra” Garcia and former straw weight champ Roberto “Mako” Leyva. This gym also has a normal sized ring and plenty of heavy bags among others.

You might be asking why I keep bringing up the fact that both of these gyms have “regulation” or “normal” sized rings. It’s because as far as I have witnessed, these are the only two that do.

The CREA gym where many world champions have gone thru its doors such as the living legend himself Julio Cesar Chavez Sr, the afore mentioned Raul “Jibaro” Perez, Humberto “Zorrita” Soto, Jose Luis “Temible” Castillo and Jorge “Travieso” Arce has no such thing. Other fighters who have trained or train there are Antonio DeMarco, JC Chavez Jr and his brother Omar as well as the cream of the Tijuana’s crop of up and comers, in my humble opinion, all under the watchful eye of Romulo Quirarte and his two sons.

This gym has no regulation ring but two make shift areas that I would be hard pressed to even call a ring. Instead of a bouncy canvas you have what might have been the floor of a high school gym still marked with the Greco Roman wrestling boundaries.

The double end bags as well as the rest of the equipment is held together by the ever resilient duct tape that needs to be reapplied every evening before the doors are locked with a heavy lock.

This is Tijuana after all.

No fans are visible or felt anywhere in the gym and since the majority of the warriors inside are training to make weight for an upcoming bout, all the windows and doors are kept tightly shut. The temperature surely reaches 110 degrees during the summer.

Don’t get me started on the restrooms.

The Azteca Gym located in the Colonia Independencia wished it was as nice as the CREA. Located in one of the oldest neighborhoods of Tijuana, visitors need to go down a series of steps to enter the roughly double car garage sized room. The “ring” sits squarely in the middle of the room and since I didn’t stay long in fear of encountering a rat the size of my seven lbs. Chihuahua, didn’t notice much equipment. WBC #3 ranked featherweight Juan Carlos Burgos, and jr. welterweight Pavel Miranda among others train there. Three time welterweight champion Antonio Margarito also shakes down at the Azteca before traveling to Los Angeles for camp.

Even though many current, former and retired champions have come out of Tijuana and trained in these conditions, I often wonder what kind of fighters they would be if they trained in a high class facility such as the one Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV” trained in.

Will they still be as hungry? Will they still be as tough?

Who knows?

What I do know is that probably they wouldn’t be as happy since every time I visit one of these gyms, every fighter greets me with a smile as they continue to hit each other or the bag in front of them.

You can tell they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

It's good to read that Raul "Jibaro" Perez is giving something back. Rog said he went through a few 'lost' years, as we all do.

kikibalt wrote:

bennie wrote:

kikibalt wrote:Tough Tijuana!
June 10, 2009 by Felipe Leon


CREA Gym

In my travels as a boxing journalist, I have visited my fair share of gyms. From the Wild Card gym before it was THE Wild Card gym to white collar training facilities in San Diego to seedy Barrio Logan holes in the wall. But no matter where these north of the border schools of hard knocks are located or what equipment they have, they are worlds away from the run down establishments their south of the border brethren like to call gimnasios.

If a San Diego white collar gym is a two story, three bedroom house, then a TJ gym is a cardboard shack.

Although there is one “white collar” gym in Tijuana which is located in the modern Sports World gym, no fighter of consequence has ever come out of there despite having former journeyman fighter “Zero” Sanchez as the man in charge.

I guess you can’t turn Tijuana bankers into world contenders.

The next best equipped gyms in Tijuana are the ones funded by the Municipal Institute for Sports which is helmed by former three time world champion Erik Morales.

The most well known is located next to the Municipal Auditorium and is inhabited by an array of amateur stars as well as professional fighters such as current IBF featherweight champion Cristobal “Lacandon” Cruz. The gym boasts a regulation size ring and rows of double end and heavy bags. Same thing can be said for the gym run by former bantamweight champion Raul “Jibaro” Perez who among the top amateurs who train there, you can also find former two time Jr. middleweight champion Alejandro “Terra” Garcia and former straw weight champ Roberto “Mako” Leyva. This gym also has a normal sized ring and plenty of heavy bags among others.

You might be asking why I keep bringing up the fact that both of these gyms have “regulation” or “normal” sized rings. It’s because as far as I have witnessed, these are the only two that do.

The CREA gym where many world champions have gone thru its doors such as the living legend himself Julio Cesar Chavez Sr, the afore mentioned Raul “Jibaro” Perez, Humberto “Zorrita” Soto, Jose Luis “Temible” Castillo and Jorge “Travieso” Arce has no such thing. Other fighters who have trained or train there are Antonio DeMarco, JC Chavez Jr and his brother Omar as well as the cream of the Tijuana’s crop of up and comers, in my humble opinion, all under the watchful eye of Romulo Quirarte and his two sons.

This gym has no regulation ring but two make shift areas that I would be hard pressed to even call a ring. Instead of a bouncy canvas you have what might have been the floor of a high school gym still marked with the Greco Roman wrestling boundaries.

The double end bags as well as the rest of the equipment is held together by the ever resilient duct tape that needs to be reapplied every evening before the doors are locked with a heavy lock.

This is Tijuana after all.

No fans are visible or felt anywhere in the gym and since the majority of the warriors inside are training to make weight for an upcoming bout, all the windows and doors are kept tightly shut. The temperature surely reaches 110 degrees during the summer.

Don’t get me started on the restrooms.

The Azteca Gym located in the Colonia Independencia wished it was as nice as the CREA. Located in one of the oldest neighborhoods of Tijuana, visitors need to go down a series of steps to enter the roughly double car garage sized room. The “ring” sits squarely in the middle of the room and since I didn’t stay long in fear of encountering a rat the size of my seven lbs. Chihuahua, didn’t notice much equipment. WBC #3 ranked featherweight Juan Carlos Burgos, and jr. welterweight Pavel Miranda among others train there. Three time welterweight champion Antonio Margarito also shakes down at the Azteca before traveling to Los Angeles for camp.

Even though many current, former and retired champions have come out of Tijuana and trained in these conditions, I often wonder what kind of fighters they would be if they trained in a high class facility such as the one Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV” trained in.

Will they still be as hungry? Will they still be as tough?

Who knows?

What I do know is that probably they wouldn’t be as happy since every time I visit one of these gyms, every fighter greets me with a smile as they continue to hit each other or the bag in front of them.

You can tell they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

It's good to read that Raul "Jibaro" Perez is giving something back. Rog said he went through a few 'lost' years, as we all do.

I'm still "Lost"....

bennie wrote:

kikibalt wrote:

dagosd2000 wrote:SOMETHING CAUGHT MY EYE

Reading Frank's response about the 50's Armando Muniz that had a brother who boxed, brought to mind of the WBHOF's president and former welterweight contender by the same name that also had a brother who laced them up. Tragically Mando's brother died in a plane crash in Poland along with a contingency of amateur boxers that were going to compete in Europe. With that team that day was their coach Junior Robles.

Junior was an amateur boxer who had given back to his community of National City(a town just south of San Diego)a boy's amateur boxing program. Junior was also involved with youth basesball. Junior was just plain involved with anything in Nat City.The homeless. Old folks. Anything that needed to be addressed that involved helping people,you could find Junior Robles. He kind of revived a community that was starting to reveal a darker side . That was part of Junior's mission. He wanted to improve the quality of life looking to the future of National City.

When I was dabbling in the sport of boxing,I remembered Robles's gym. It wasn't a place to dabble. If a kid didn't want to sacrafice he was shown the door. But not many kids took that exit. Junior was a fella' steeped in pride. He was respected. Never a bad word from anyone's lips did I hear mention of Junior Robles.

When that plane went down in 1980 I was disconnected from the sport of boxing. One day after work(I was working at a school for handicapped kids in National City) I stopped by a local ice cream parlor for a homemade ice cream. As I was entering the establishment I saw that a newspaper article was posted on the front window of the store. It was the news of the plane crash and an obituary of Junior Robles.

How could that have passed by me? I was in no mood to eat something sweet after reading that story.

Junior Robles,the Mexican kid,meant so much to National City,but outside that community hardly anyone had heard of him. His name was submitted twice to enter the local Hall Of Champions and denied. Just this year Junior was finally crowned. There's a street in National City with his name on it. Maybe it's because his sport was boxing. Maybe it was because he was Mexican. Maybe that's why he wasn't a San Diego name like a Tony Gwynn or a Marshall Faulk.

One day ,way back when, I walked inside Robles's gym. It was packed to the doors with kids wanting to take Junior's direction.Learning how to be a fighter. Bring up the name of Junior Robles's name today in Shell Town(the nick name for National City)and people are still trying to follow his way.That's a place where they never forgot.

Roger,,,Hate to be a dick here, but that was Carlos Palomino's brother "Paul" that got killed in that plane cash and not Mando Muinz's. Mando's brother Javier, went on to have a pro career in which he fought Roberto Duran if memory serves.

He gave Duran a good fight. He also fought Leonard, if my own memory serves me right. I never knew he was Mando's brother.

bennie wrote:I remember Duran put him down in the first round but then failed to budge him again, and the crowd were booing Duran by the later rounds. Duran, for possibly the first time in his career and certainly not for the last, was not looking fit.

Rick Farris wrote:

bennie wrote:I remember Duran put him down in the first round but then failed to budge him again, and the crowd were booing Duran by the later rounds. Duran, for possibly the first time in his career and certainly not for the last, was not looking fit.

Javiar Muniz . . .

Bennie . . . Duran didn't train hard for many of his fights, including his first loss to Esteban Dejesus. Many people are not aware that the great Duran we saw wasn't always at his best, this was especially true when the title wasn't on the line. With all respect to Javiar Muniz, Jimmy Heair, and Mexican champ Javiar Ayala, I believe their lasting a full ten rounds with Hands of Stone was a product of Duran's disinterest.

On this thread, Frank and I have referred to an L.A. boxer named Rudy "Porky" Acuna. Porky is Ruben Navarro's nephew and he and Muniz were paired in an amateur contest in late 1969 at the Olympic. Porky knocked Javiar out, face down-out cold. Not discredit to Javiar Muniz because all of us know that sometimes that just happens. Shortly afterwards, Javiar was introduced to the U.S. Army boxing team coaches by his brother, Armando. Like his older brother, Javiar spent two years boxing for the Army which gave him two consecutive years of solid training and international experience. He came out a better fighter. Of course, one must credit the inherent toughness of the Muniz family genes in carrying Javiar the distance with Duran, as well as Roberto's questionable conditioning for the match.

I asked Armando about Javiar not long ago, and he said he sees his brother occasionally. He mentioned a "bitterness" between the two of them, which Mando does not understand. I didn't take it any farther, I understand that family things are family things. I will say this, when I heard that Javiar was scheduled to fight the great Duran, I still had the feeling of Duran's rocky fists in head (they really were "hands of stone"). I remember thinking back to Muniz face down on the Olympic canvas courtesy of Porky Acuna and shook my head, "He won't last long with Duran", I thought. I'm glad I was wrong, Javiar fought the champ like you'd expect froma Muniz and was around at the end.

I remember seeing Javiar at junior events in the later 60's, Frank must have matched him a number of times. Any amateur boxers that came out of L.A.'s Jr. GG's program during the 60's and 70's (which was 90% of us) were matched by Frank Baltazar at one point or another. In those days, Frank was the youngest of all the veteran coaches, barely 30-years-old, I can still picture his energy, in the scramble of coaches attempting to get their kid "the best match".

When you watch a kid over several years, see them grow as much as one hundred pounds, watch them growing in size and experience, able to see how they move, act, think, react to certain styles of opponents, see how they react when stung, or tired, how they win and how they lose. This is where Frank's opinion and experience come from. We have fans that will see a kid fight a couple times on TV and think they have them all figured out. When you have lived with the fighters for awhile, you understand everything you need to know. When people try to understand a boxer, they must see more than what goes on im the ring. It isn't just about how they fight, but how they live.


-Rick Farris

bennie wrote:"If Jibaro is on the right course, then he's a step ahead of me." That makes two of us, Rog.
We don't really have 'shrinks' over here. We hang on in quiet desperation, as Pink Floyd once sang.

Rick Farris wrote:

bennie wrote:"If Jibaro is on the right course, then he's a step ahead of me." That makes two of us, Rog.
We don't really have 'shrinks' over here. We hang on in quiet desperation, as Pink Floyd once sang.

Hey Bennie . . .

Are you familiar with a singer named "Sam Brown".
Sam (as in "Samantha") was lead back-up singer for Pink Floyd's "Pulse Tour" in 1994.
Sam had some popular songs in the '90's, one was "Stop".
I got to know her over several weeks a long time back, I still think of her.
She has the most powerful voice, she's the blonde among a couple black girls (Claudia Fontaine & Durga McBroom) that formed the back-up trio.

I'm going to YouTube and see if I can watch her solo "Great Gig In The Sky" from Pink Floyd's Pulse Tour.
Just a special memory. What a wonderful woman.


-Rick Farris

kikibalt wrote:Joss Stone & James Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt0BwEPqXO8
"Its A men's World"

Rick Farris wrote:

kikibalt wrote:Joss Stone & James Brown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt0BwEPqXO8
"Its A men's World"

Frank . . . Great choice. A favorite of mine.