California Sports Journal

Fernando Barajas looks like he’s 12, shaking hands and giggling his way through the front door of King’s Gym on 35th Avenue. His nose is flat – many of the noses here are – and his blue T-shirt hangs loosely from his frame. When he starts using a nickname he’ll go by "El Munstro Feo" ("The Ugly Monster").

"My guy Fernando has the best shot," says Barajas’ trainer, "Spider" Joe Burke, who’s been in boxing for 54 years, the past seven as a trainer at King’s. "But my old promoter used to tell me, ‘Don’t fall in love with these guys, they’ll break your heart."

King’s is the training ground of the city’s boxing hopeful, those who would be the champions of the sport and those whose goals are more modest. They pay $55 a month and come here four nights a week to train under the eyes of the sport’s ghosts and legends in the making. The ghosts appear in framed photographs covering the walls, the legends come walking through the door.

This well-lit, two-room gym was – and still is – the training ground for Andre Ward, who found God on his way to winning the Olympic gold medal in the light-heavyweight division of the 2004 games in Athens. Ward is here every night, stretching ringside as security guards, carpenters and women who work as customer service representatives for airlines work it. There are dozens of promising fighters training at King’s.

It’s a recent Monday night and the walls are humming. Every red and blue bag is being worked and the thumping of fists hitting canvas is rhythmic. Rap music plays softly from a stereo in the corner, the subtle bass competing for supremacy of the air with the whipping jump ropes and pounding gloves. With every movement comes another grunt, another whistle from a young fighter.

Ward arrives, followed by an entourage in sweat suits, and says very little as he wraps his hands in tape and stretches his neck. In three nights he will win his second professional fight, a unanimous decision over Kenny Kost in a super middleweight bout in Lemoore. But this night, as a television crew waits in the corner for an interview, Ward is watching Barajas and his face is incredibly still, as if his eyes are constantly sizing up everyone in the room. His presence in the gym is inescapable; trainers say he is a complete boxer.

"The whole package," says Burke. "Talent, focus, guts."

Burke, 71, got his nickname from his first trainer, Spider Roach, who claimed he taught Rocky Marciano the overhand right. With silver hair and broad, stiff shoulders, he looks remarkably like Clint Eastwood’s character, Frankie Dunn, from "Million Dollar Baby." He’s even got his own Maggie.

Nikki Garrett is a female boxer who, if she ever gets in shape and looses a few pounds, has the talent to make it as a professional. She’s been training with Burke for the nearly two years since she moved up from Fresno and has a job working the ticket counter for Jet Blue at the Oakland Airport. She’s also been in a couple of street fights and the male boxers jokingly call her a bully.

"I’m very aggressive," she says.

But if she doesn’t get into better shape soon, Burke’s probably going to leave her. At 22, Garrett says she’s three months away from turning professional, although she hasn’t had any fights yet. She’s mean, she’s talented and she has her goals. It just isn’t enough, not without the discipline.
Ward is off in the corner somewhere as Garrett takes one slice after another at Burke’s hands, her punches weakening with each strike.

"I don’t know, she’s very talented," Burke says. "I should have made up my mind some time ago.
I don’t know about this yet," he says as he points to his heart.

That’s not an issue with Barajas. He works so hard he falls asleep in his car some days.

"This is the nicest young man you could ever meet," Burke says as Barajas gets ready. "But when Fernando is in the corner ready for the bell, the switch is turned. He even starts to look different."

It’s a trait all the great ones possess. So many boxers have something in their past they’re trying to escape, something working the back of their minds that keeps them upright when the hits keep coming.

"I don’t know what it is, bad potty training or the guy hates his mother," Burke says. "A lot of these guys have been in jail and struggled. A lot of them came up the hard way."

Barajas’ drive is subtler; he is, for lack of a better term, normal. He’s 20, has a girlfriend and ran track at Castro Valley High School, making it all the way to the state finals in the 800 meters with a time under two minutes. Four years ago he couldn’t speak English and he could barely box. Now he’s a promising middleweight with a diploma.

At times it looks like his feet don’t touch the ground as he glides in circular, smooth motions around the ring. Then he pauses, sizes up an imaginary opponent and explodes: an uppercut with the right, a few swings with his head back and forth, a fury of short, quick jabs.

"Elbows in," Burke says calmly from the corner.

Barajas’ record is 11-9, a mark Burke says is deceptive because his kid has never been knocked out and most of those losses came very early in his career against much more experienced fighters. His first fight in the Golden Gloves – the area’s premier amateur event – was called last year in the second round because Barajas had a broken nose, but Burke said the title could have been his.

The trainer looks at Barajas like he would a son.

Barajas has dinner with Burke and his wife on occasion and Burke was in the crowd when Barajas graduated from high school last year. Burke got the kid a job working security at an industrial site, bought him light blue boxing shoes with hot pink stripes – "they were cheap," Burke says – and drives with him to fights in Fresno and San Rafael.

"The principle thing about boxing is that I like it," says Barajas. "It’s my free time, my hobby. It’s interesting, I find it very interesting. When you look at boxers you have to look at their technique. When we do something, there’s always a reason."

When Barajas first started Burke told him, "if you can dance, you can box." It’s about balance and foot movement, the trainer said.

"I just keep telling him to control this thing," Burke says.

His goals are simple: he wants to stay healthy, turn pro in six months and eventually "fight the best guys in the country and then the world."

The best in the world is here already. Ward’s presence is everywhere, his face hanging on posters next to Foreman, Ali and Robinson. His gold medal – and the young professional career it sparked - is the greatest achievement to ever come out of King’s, which until recently was merely a stop on the trail to dusty arenas like the Oakland Auditorium. George Foreman trained here - once.

Now here’s Ward, working on a career. He watches Barajas spar and work the bag but never changes that look on his face.

Burke is there too, wondering if he has the next big thing.

"He’s a killer," he says to himself.