Post by Erika on Feb 16, 2005 22:02:37 GMT -5
This is just a good read I found about Mario Lopez. Learn about his boxing hobby. This article mentions him towards the middle of it.
www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/10904316.htm
At this gym, every boxer created equal
By Gayle Pollard-Terry
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES – Even with the door wide open, this place smells of old sweat.
There’s no air conditioning and the windows stay shut. Hundreds of old fight posters and photographs of boxers cover the walls, including one of Muhammad Ali showing his daughter, Laila, some moves in the ring here.
The Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood is not as ancient, nor as gritty, as the fictional Hit Pit, where most of the action takes place in the Clint Eastwood-directed movie “Million Dollar Baby.” Yet, they feel much the same with their dreamers who will do almost anything to wear a championship belt and those who dream no more.
At the Wild Card, there are other dreamers too. Those who long for sculpted bodies and are willing to work like boxers.
“This is the quintessential gym. You got the old beat-up bags. The smell is kind of raunchy. Everybody’s always trying to make weight, so we have to keep the windows closed,” says trainer Macka Foley, a former light-heavyweight. He and a cadre of ex-fighters train professional boxers and amateurs alike.
Quintessential? Yes, except for the movie stars, boxing royalty and affluent professionals who train at Wild Card. After all, this is Hollywood.
On a recent day, actor Mario Lopez spars with a larger man who has challenged him. All bets are on Lopez.
“Mario trains like a fighter. He trains every day,” the owner, Freddie Roach, says.
A former boxer, Roach steps into the ring to referee as trainers, club members and spectators push close to the ropes. Five sharp bells and a green light signal the start of Round 1.
Lopez goes right for the head.
His opponent, Mike Lin, pounds away with body shots.
They’re punching, feinting, looking for an opening.
The trainers are shouting to Lopez: “Go old school! Go back to your jab! Move your head! Move your feet! Keep your composure! Represent! He asked for it! Give him some more!”
Lin, who boxed regularly five years ago and met Lopez at the gym in the building where each works, is out of shape. He holds his own as a long bell and yellow light signal 30 seconds left in the round.
But soon Lopez knocks him down. Lin rises. Down again. He gets back up. Again. Fight over.
Outside the ring, workouts resume. As a dozen men and a couple of women sweat through their shirts, powerful punches jangle the chains holding heavy bags from the ceiling. The loud thuds provide the bass to the staccato smack smack of speed bags and double-end bags and the light tap-tap of jump ropes. This is the gym that Freddie Roach built. The Boxing Hall of Fame trainer wears big, black glasses except when he’s in the ring, and he looks quite different from the longhaired boxer, shown in posters above the front counter, who turned pro at 18, fought two-time featherweight champion Bobby Chacon, among others, and narrowly missed a shot at the title.
He presides over this club, located up a steep flight of stairs above a Laundromat, at the rear of a nondescript mini-mall.
A tough guy from rough and tumble South Boston, Roach began boxing at 6. He grew up in a gym that he says resembles the Hit Pit, in the Oscar-nominated movie that tells the story of a determined young woman (Hilary Swank) who insists on boxing and an aging trainer who reluctantly takes her on.
Seedy gyms like that are around somewhat, Roach says. “But, in Los Angeles today, you have more of a white-collar crowd, for lack of a better word,” like 70 percent of his members, he says. “My clientele is not always good boxers. So this gym is a little bit cleaner, a little bit neater.”
Six days a week (the gym is closed on Sundays), 125 people, including some of the 40 women who belong, work out between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. Because of their support, Roach says his gym is one of the few boxing clubs that break even financially.
Roach says his favorite role in the movie is Morgan Freeman’s ex-boxer who lives at the Hit Pit.
“I have three fighters living in my gym right now. They pursued boxing, didn’t make it, like 99 percent of us. I’m one of them. They didn’t make it to the big time. They didn’t make the money … they can never fight again,” he says. “His role was the most realistic thing about the movie because that does happen. You have people who live in the gyms and clean the gyms. That’s the way it goes here. I live in the gym.”
He takes issue with the film’s portrayal of dirty fighting and fixing a broken nose in the ring but found the gym work, footwork and taking lessons from a pro pretty realistic.
While Swank trained primarily in a Brooklyn gym, plenty of celebrities come to Wild Card, like Mira Sorvino.
“She’s a pretty good fighter,” Roach says, also naming Denzel Washington, John Travolta, Wesley Snipes, Cuba Gooding Jr., Sylvester Stallone, Mickey Rourke and the singer Pink.
Tyrese Gibson has visited to prepare for the film “Annapolis.” He came in with an attitude, Roach says, but getting hit while learning how to be a fighter humbled him and taught him respect.
No one gets special treatment. “People like that … no one is treated any better than anyone else. They pay either $50 a month or $5 a day,” Roach says.
Roach and his trainers are especially interested in “Million Dollar Baby” because four of the fighters who face Swank’s character are former professional boxers who came out of Wild Card: Lucia Rijker, an undefeated world champion welterweight whose current passion is acting; Cynthia Prouder; Bridgett “Baby Doll” Riley, who works as a stuntwoman and Danielle Doobenen.
“Lucia is the first woman I trained,” Roach says. “I worked with her on the first day, but I wasn’t sure if I really liked women boxing or even if it was a proper thing to do for girls. But her work ethic was so great that I couldn’t deny her.
“She’s probably my best student … in my life and I’ve had 17 world champions. I trained Virgil Hill, Mike Tyson, James Toney, Michael Moorer, Vladimir Klitschko, Roberto Duran, Johnny Tapia, Stevie Collins,” he says, going on to list them all.
Rijker rarely stops at the Wild Card, but her photo remains on the door of the ladies’ room, part of a collage of female boxers that also features Cynthia Prouder and Rita Valentini, and frames a large photograph of Marilyn Monroe. The fighters all look feminine, and none has a damaged face or cauliflower ears.
“I’ve had a broken nose a couple of times. Up to this point, I haven’t had any cuts or major contusions,” says Valentini, who won her last bout with a first-round knockout.
Her favorite part in the movie is the relationship between the boxer and her trainer.
Valentini knows what that feels like. “I’ve had more attention to my emotional state, mental state and physical health since I’ve come into boxing … than anyone has (given me) my whole life,” she says.
While she talks, Danielle Mora pounds a heavy bag. She boxes because she manages a professional fighter, featherweight Juan Carlos “El Panda” Martinez, her fiance.
Nearby, Holly Lawson dances around another heavy bag, hitting it, while trainer Eric Brown encourages her.
“Keep your chin down. When you’re up like this,” he says, mimicking her stance, “you look like you’re windmilling your punches like a catfight. You don’t want that. You want to box.”
www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/10904316.htm
At this gym, every boxer created equal
By Gayle Pollard-Terry
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES – Even with the door wide open, this place smells of old sweat.
There’s no air conditioning and the windows stay shut. Hundreds of old fight posters and photographs of boxers cover the walls, including one of Muhammad Ali showing his daughter, Laila, some moves in the ring here.
The Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood is not as ancient, nor as gritty, as the fictional Hit Pit, where most of the action takes place in the Clint Eastwood-directed movie “Million Dollar Baby.” Yet, they feel much the same with their dreamers who will do almost anything to wear a championship belt and those who dream no more.
At the Wild Card, there are other dreamers too. Those who long for sculpted bodies and are willing to work like boxers.
“This is the quintessential gym. You got the old beat-up bags. The smell is kind of raunchy. Everybody’s always trying to make weight, so we have to keep the windows closed,” says trainer Macka Foley, a former light-heavyweight. He and a cadre of ex-fighters train professional boxers and amateurs alike.
Quintessential? Yes, except for the movie stars, boxing royalty and affluent professionals who train at Wild Card. After all, this is Hollywood.
On a recent day, actor Mario Lopez spars with a larger man who has challenged him. All bets are on Lopez.
“Mario trains like a fighter. He trains every day,” the owner, Freddie Roach, says.
A former boxer, Roach steps into the ring to referee as trainers, club members and spectators push close to the ropes. Five sharp bells and a green light signal the start of Round 1.
Lopez goes right for the head.
His opponent, Mike Lin, pounds away with body shots.
They’re punching, feinting, looking for an opening.
The trainers are shouting to Lopez: “Go old school! Go back to your jab! Move your head! Move your feet! Keep your composure! Represent! He asked for it! Give him some more!”
Lin, who boxed regularly five years ago and met Lopez at the gym in the building where each works, is out of shape. He holds his own as a long bell and yellow light signal 30 seconds left in the round.
But soon Lopez knocks him down. Lin rises. Down again. He gets back up. Again. Fight over.
Outside the ring, workouts resume. As a dozen men and a couple of women sweat through their shirts, powerful punches jangle the chains holding heavy bags from the ceiling. The loud thuds provide the bass to the staccato smack smack of speed bags and double-end bags and the light tap-tap of jump ropes. This is the gym that Freddie Roach built. The Boxing Hall of Fame trainer wears big, black glasses except when he’s in the ring, and he looks quite different from the longhaired boxer, shown in posters above the front counter, who turned pro at 18, fought two-time featherweight champion Bobby Chacon, among others, and narrowly missed a shot at the title.
He presides over this club, located up a steep flight of stairs above a Laundromat, at the rear of a nondescript mini-mall.
A tough guy from rough and tumble South Boston, Roach began boxing at 6. He grew up in a gym that he says resembles the Hit Pit, in the Oscar-nominated movie that tells the story of a determined young woman (Hilary Swank) who insists on boxing and an aging trainer who reluctantly takes her on.
Seedy gyms like that are around somewhat, Roach says. “But, in Los Angeles today, you have more of a white-collar crowd, for lack of a better word,” like 70 percent of his members, he says. “My clientele is not always good boxers. So this gym is a little bit cleaner, a little bit neater.”
Six days a week (the gym is closed on Sundays), 125 people, including some of the 40 women who belong, work out between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. Because of their support, Roach says his gym is one of the few boxing clubs that break even financially.
Roach says his favorite role in the movie is Morgan Freeman’s ex-boxer who lives at the Hit Pit.
“I have three fighters living in my gym right now. They pursued boxing, didn’t make it, like 99 percent of us. I’m one of them. They didn’t make it to the big time. They didn’t make the money … they can never fight again,” he says. “His role was the most realistic thing about the movie because that does happen. You have people who live in the gyms and clean the gyms. That’s the way it goes here. I live in the gym.”
He takes issue with the film’s portrayal of dirty fighting and fixing a broken nose in the ring but found the gym work, footwork and taking lessons from a pro pretty realistic.
While Swank trained primarily in a Brooklyn gym, plenty of celebrities come to Wild Card, like Mira Sorvino.
“She’s a pretty good fighter,” Roach says, also naming Denzel Washington, John Travolta, Wesley Snipes, Cuba Gooding Jr., Sylvester Stallone, Mickey Rourke and the singer Pink.
Tyrese Gibson has visited to prepare for the film “Annapolis.” He came in with an attitude, Roach says, but getting hit while learning how to be a fighter humbled him and taught him respect.
No one gets special treatment. “People like that … no one is treated any better than anyone else. They pay either $50 a month or $5 a day,” Roach says.
Roach and his trainers are especially interested in “Million Dollar Baby” because four of the fighters who face Swank’s character are former professional boxers who came out of Wild Card: Lucia Rijker, an undefeated world champion welterweight whose current passion is acting; Cynthia Prouder; Bridgett “Baby Doll” Riley, who works as a stuntwoman and Danielle Doobenen.
“Lucia is the first woman I trained,” Roach says. “I worked with her on the first day, but I wasn’t sure if I really liked women boxing or even if it was a proper thing to do for girls. But her work ethic was so great that I couldn’t deny her.
“She’s probably my best student … in my life and I’ve had 17 world champions. I trained Virgil Hill, Mike Tyson, James Toney, Michael Moorer, Vladimir Klitschko, Roberto Duran, Johnny Tapia, Stevie Collins,” he says, going on to list them all.
Rijker rarely stops at the Wild Card, but her photo remains on the door of the ladies’ room, part of a collage of female boxers that also features Cynthia Prouder and Rita Valentini, and frames a large photograph of Marilyn Monroe. The fighters all look feminine, and none has a damaged face or cauliflower ears.
“I’ve had a broken nose a couple of times. Up to this point, I haven’t had any cuts or major contusions,” says Valentini, who won her last bout with a first-round knockout.
Her favorite part in the movie is the relationship between the boxer and her trainer.
Valentini knows what that feels like. “I’ve had more attention to my emotional state, mental state and physical health since I’ve come into boxing … than anyone has (given me) my whole life,” she says.
While she talks, Danielle Mora pounds a heavy bag. She boxes because she manages a professional fighter, featherweight Juan Carlos “El Panda” Martinez, her fiance.
Nearby, Holly Lawson dances around another heavy bag, hitting it, while trainer Eric Brown encourages her.
“Keep your chin down. When you’re up like this,” he says, mimicking her stance, “you look like you’re windmilling your punches like a catfight. You don’t want that. You want to box.”
Visit our blog today! 
