It’s true. I started boxing a little over a year ago. I wrote about my experience for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
They have a paywall, so I’ve included the text below:
There’s a 900 sq ft boxing gym, tucked into the furthermost corner of a well worn strip mall on the northside of Arrow Highway where Azusa’s city limits rub against Covina’s. You have to want to find Valverde Boxing Gym to see it. I found it 8 months ago as a 47 year old dad looking to lose some pandemic weight. In the process, I’ve learned the sport of boxing, and the consecrated place and space where it happens, the gym, reflect the values that ground our pride during Hispanic Heritage Month (and beyond).
Take for example the ambition of gym owners, Daniel and Yuridia Valverde. Daniel came to the United States in 2005 from Coahuilla, Mexico, landing first in Philadelphia where he took odd jobs, squeezing in time to train at renowned Philly boxing gyms, and then onto New York City for a brief work stint and finally in Los Angeles, where he turned his boxing expertise into a business. His wife, Yuri, is foundational to the operation.
Together, at 6:30 am, they open the gym doors Monday through Friday and close them around 9:00 pm, as the last student and her parents amble out. You’ll find their 6, 5, 3 and 1 year old children at the gym, the three oldest boys not only learning to bob and weave but also tossing baseballs and playing tag. The gym has almost 100 students and Daniel trains a handful of professional fighters. These fights take him across the country, away from the gym and his wife and kids. In boxing, you fight to eat.
Enter the gym and you’ll note the diversity of people piling in. Even if most of the students are Hispanic, their stories and stations are varied. You’ll find Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, Central and South Americans. Some students are Black. Others are Korean, And still others, Polish and Chinese. Filipino, too. You’ll find a lawyer, a bouncer, a former San Gabriel Valley Mayor. Women and children. And even as all those distinctions serve to differentiate gym goers, it’s all but erased when they enter the ring. There isn’t a degree or strand of DNA that can block an overhand right. The ring is the great equalizer.
As for me, I’m pulled towards environments where people volunteer to suffer together in pursuit of a higher goal…or lighter weight. I make my way into the gym 4 mornings a week. I’m there for an hour or two, jumping rope, shadow boxing, hitting the pads and the bags and on Fridays, other students. That’s when we spar. There’s often a palpable sense of adrenaline and dread on those days. I rely on the adrenaline to get me over the ropes and into the ring. The adrenaline keeps my hands up and my head moving. And if things go according to plan, I’ll be punched several times by a grown man training to throw punches.
You can understand the dread.
But while there is ferocity in the ring there is also charity. I often face off against students with more experience and skills. They punch faster and harder than me. But we share a coach. We share a gym. We share an objective. So there’s an implicit agreement that teaching and learning is more important than hurling and hurting. Nevertheless, I’ve been hit. I’ve been hurt. I’ve been back.
At Valverde Boxing Gym, I’m reminded there’s much to celebrate. Our ambition, courage, and persistence are on display, not only in gyms across the USA and not only during Hispanic Heritage Month, but always, everywhere.
Carlos Aguilar lives in Covina and is Editorial Director at Quantasy and Associates, a full service advertising agency in downtown Los Angeles.
This article is part of a series in partnership with Lalo, an ad-free social media app for family and friends. Share your memories in a safe and private space.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It has all the splendor of Christmas with (almost) none of the disappointment. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure I’ll wear those Daffy Duck boxers sooner or later, kids but the way this Candied Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie is hitting right now, it’s a no-brainer. Color me team turkey.
.It’s not that we need to go about the business of comparing holidays. It’s just that the last quarter of each year is filled with so much action for Big Brown Fambam, with back to school, flag football, tall flags, two birthdays and five holidays, we have to prioritize and minimize, rank then file.
Each Thanksgiving, we go BIG. And by we, I mean my aunt Missy. She doesn’t play.
Having been the thankful recipient of high quality Thanksgivings, allow me to offer a few ways to elevate your Thanksgivings moving forward.
Thanksgiving is for family…photos.
If there’s food there’s photos and video, too. Help yourself by getting a haircut, trimming the facials and putting on Thursday’s best. It’s Fall. Pull out the faux cashmere and lone pair of brown dress shoes.
Turkey takes the cake.
I’m as American as they come. Born in California, I’ve pledged allegiance to the flag (up until 3rd grade) and treat football as my religion. While proud of our Mexican heritage, you won’t find a lick of Mexican food on our table (notwithstanding the fact that turkeys are native to North America. Probably pumpkins, too. And corn). We save tamales and menudo for Christmas and New Year. On this high holiday, though, color me pilgrim.
Also, fuck the pilgrims.
Pray for the prayer.
Fun. Games. Gossip. We’re having a blast. But when it’s time for the prayer, I suggest exercising discernment. If the person praying is most familiar with Grace and Mercy because they dance at Spearmint Rhino, have them step aside. Similarly, if the person praying hasn’t confessed their sin in the last year, they’ll be tempted to do so during this prayer, so please have them step away, too.
Your best bet is to let one of the kids pray, even if they’re most thankful for Xbox.
Look. I’ve seen the photos from Thanksgiving dinners from across the country. Many of them violate the principles laid out above. Haircuts that weren’t. Weird beards. Foul food. And some straight hood activities, including stepping outside before family prayer to smoke another blunt with your primo because you still have 9 minutes before the turkey hits the table.
Some of these moments are best kept within a tight circle. That’s why I recommend Lalo, an app where you can keep memories in a secure, private, ad-free environment. You can add family and friends to the memory capsule and enjoy the excuses about why you and your cousin smelled like a Christmas tree while at the Thanksgiving table.
This article is part of a series in partnership with Lalo, an ad-free social media app for family and friends. Share your memories in a safe and private space.
I just finished the last of my kids’ Halloween candy, almost two weeks after trotting around the neighborhood in army green makeup.
While this is our thirteenth consecutive family Halloween costume ensemble, it’s the first time I’ve lathered my face with $13 worth of shmear. And why not? We enjoy Halloween because we can hide in plain sight. And because of the free Peanut M&Ms.
When you start a family you soon realize each partner comes with their own Halloween baggage. Halloween was a blast when I was a lad but alas my enthusiasm didn’t hold. It was a lower-tier holiday, an anticlimactic punctuation to my birthday month. So I was reluctant when Big Brown Mom suggested we dive headfirst into the holiday after the birth of our daughter, Maya. And even more when Joaquin came along.
Big Brown Mom didn’t do much Halloweening as a kid. But she wanted to change that for Maya and Woks. She has skills and determination and a growth mindset. She’s worked her magic on cloth and lace, corduroy and denim. She’s sowed, even hemmed. But never, ever hawed. We’ve been mutant turtles and cereal box characters, The Flintstones, the cast of Scooby Doo and the 4 faces of Michael Jackson (see: no blackface). This year, after floating a dozen or so options and then voting, we went with classic monsters.
Sure enough, we hit thrift stores and halloween stores and makeup stores and convenience stores and candy stores to get everything we needed for the getting. And then the good news came that we were going to be able to wear our costumes twice! We got invited to a Halloween Party!
This also meant that our costumes would be under closer scrutiny. So Big Brown Mom was determined there’d be no slacking or lacking. And I can’t front, we looked pretty fly. Sure, showing up in a well executed costume is a statement. But showing up as a family ensemble is a moment. Indeed, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
But I have to tell you my favorite part each year is looking back at the photos from years prior. They’re time capsules. They’re treasures. They’re fucking hilarious, too. I take videos of the process. I capture Big Brown Mom transforming into Big Brown Stage Mom, nipping, tucking and preening her work.
Some of these photos and videos are meant for public consumption. But not all of them. That’s one reason I value Lalo. It’s a private but social space for my family and loved ones to preserve and share personal memories.
So while you might see select pictures and videos of Big Brown Family on the gram, you’ll never see the footage of me wrestling the last bag of Peanut M&M’s from Maya’s hands because the tears were too embarrassing. But I couldn’t help it. She pulled my hair.
Only a mile from my house, the gym is tucked into the corner of a sagging strip mall, squeezed in between a medical clinic and dance studio, and only only three doors from a sub par panaderia with weak-ass pumpkin empanadas.
I get my ass up early Monday through Friday, drink Mestizo and Athletic Greens and some protein and some collagen and some green tea extract and some Vitamin D-3 and alpha lipoic acid, so that I’m punching air and leather by 7am with the rest of the morning crew. By my estimations, 95% of the nearly 100 students who attend the gym have no aspirations of becoming a professional boxer. Like me, they practice for the sake of fitness and for an appreciation of the art and science of the sport. And to kick some ass, of course.
Earlier this year, a new face joined us in the morning. I overheard he was a boxer from Brazil. And by the looks of it, he ran from San Paolo to Azusa…that morning.
As it turned out, the boxer was Sidney King Rosa, a professional fighter who’d come to California to train with Daniel Valerde, in pursuit of bigger fights against better opponents . Rosa (5-0-0) will have his chance this Friday, May 13th in Detroit, Michigan when he faces off for the NABF Jr. Super Welter title against defending champ Ermal Hadribeaj.
Mestizo had the opportunity to serve as a sponsor for this match. You’ll see Mestizo on Rosa’s shorts.
I sent the Ring King a few questions in advance of the fight.
Q+A
What have you heard about Detroit? Nothing. I’m excited to go there, it’s new for me. [editor note: I sent Rosa and Valverde a link to Dilla’s Welcome to Detroit)
How are you preparing for this fight? We’ve training hard everyday and smart, but now we’re focused in losing weight.
What does your training schedule look like? My days are really the same, only gym and home, no distractions. I don’t know the city because there’s no time to chill out. We workout 2x a day, but it include the rest time and restricted diet.
4. How do you think this fight will go? We’re going to win, the goals are working on taking advantage of his mistakes and keeping my rhythm.
5. Tell me about your relationship with your trainer. The relationship with Danny is amazing. We really understand each other, he’s increasing in my technique and we’re working a lot of fundamentals. We talk about everything, boxing and life, stuff that I’ll bring for the rest of my life. I’m even learn Spanish with him 😅.
6. How’s the boxing community in Los Angeles? This is one of the things that surprise me a lot. There’s a lot of gym around and they take it to the other level. We were sparring at some gyms and the sparring looks like fight. They take it so serious, it’s helped me a lot. I’m not the same fighter after that.
7. Why do you fight? I I fell in love with the beauty of the science of boxing, it’s something incredible, self knowledge, self improvement, boxing speaks a lot about who practices it, we will never be good enough and that’s why we are always learning and practicing everyday in gym.
As Big Frugal Brown Parents, we cherish free play–as in free free–as in, no money required–as in, Disneyland gets no love.
Our kids are getting older (10 and 7) but they still love a good park.
And it just so happens they love a good taco, too. So, after we hit the King of all Tacos in Baldwin Park, we walked across the street to Bolen’s crowned jewel, Morgan Park.
In case you haven’t heard, the Eagles are not going to the Super Bowl this year.
This means that while many of you are posted up watching sub-par teams work their way towards a rinky-dink trophy, Big Brown Family is out making the most of our Sundays.
With our beloved Philadelphia Eagles out of the playoffs, our Sundays have opened up for more activities outside of the crib. This past Sunday morning, we decided to head out to The Claremont Village for some food and family fun.
On your mark, get set, lesssgooo!
First, we grabbed a bite at 42nd St Bagel, a family favorite. Their bagels are fresh and their Iced T has some zing.
