Manhattan Beach Pier, California
I stare into the Pacific Ocean. There's something about water that makes me think of home. I don't know why since I'm from the El Paso desert, where mirages are the only things that look like bodies of water.
Here, on a cool and cloudy morning on the first of May, people play volleyball and surf and walk their dog on the shoreline as water washes over their feet.
Because that doesn't exist in the desert, it also makes me think of home.
Grand Olympic Auditorium, Los Angeles
In the parking lot of a large building next to Interstate 10, on 18th and Grand, a security guard tells me something I can't understand.
"Can I go inside?" I ask.
From the way he looks at me, it's clear he doesn't understand me either.
"I work for ESPN," I say as I show him my badge and camera. "Can I go inside to take photos?"
I want to explain I'm here because it's been said boxing is dead. I know that isn't true since it's always been a part of my life. For as long as I can remember, family and friends gathered to watch Mexicans fight. My mother didn't understand this country's language but felt connected when cameras captured those fighters speaking Spanish.
But I also know boxing is not what it once was, so I want to see what's left and there's no better place to begin than here. This large building beside us was once home to roller derbies and wrestling and, more importantly, boxing. I want to tell the security guard it was the Grand Olympic Auditorium but because of the events it hosted, it was called The Bucket of Blood and considered the Madison Square Garden of the West.
"This is where Mexico's national hero, Julio César Chávez, won his first world title. And this is where parts of 'Requiem for a Heavyweight,' 'The Champ,' 'Raging Bull' and 'Rocky' were filmed. Decades ago, this was the hub of West Coast boxing, in part because Dodger Stadium didn't host any fights after Davey Moore died there in 1963. Have you heard that song from Bob Dylan? That's the Davey Moore he's singing about."
That's what I'd tell him if we understood each other. But to avoid more confusion I simply say, "I'm a writer. There used to be boxing here."
He'd know this if the big block letters on the side of the building that once read, "BOXING EVERY THURSDAY" hadn't been covered -- "JESUS IS THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE," it now says. And if the mural of an unknown boxer painted above the main entrance hadn't been painted over. "IN GOD WE TRUST," it says above where the boxer once was.
The security guard looks at me, and my badge, and the camera I'm holding.
"Inside, no photo. Outside, yes," says the man guarding the building that's now a Korean church.
Benavidez vs. Ramirez at T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas
Some of my best nights of sleep have come after big Mexican fights.
Like that night in 1990 when Julio César Chávez miraculously knocked out Meldrick Taylor in the last two seconds of Round 12.
Or when Andy Ruiz Jr. knocked out Anthony Joshua in 2019 and destroyed what was supposed to be boxing's future. I celebrated in my living room as quietly as possible because my wife and daughter were asleep. I thought about waking up my daughter because even if she wouldn't remember it, she could still claim to have seen the fight when, for the first time, a fighter of Mexican descent became boxing's heavyweight champion.
Like when I covered my first one. Canelo Alvarez beat Gennadiy Golovkin in their rematch in September 2018. It was at the same T-Mobile Arena where I sit and write this now, the night of the fight between David "The Mexican Monster" Benavidez and Gilberto "Zurdo" Ramirez on Cinco de Mayo weekend.
Partly because I watched Mexican boxers do the impossible, I believed I could do this kind of work long before 2018. But that night, after Canelo beat Golovkin, I slept well because the credential and money I got to write about it were proof I hadn't been lying to myself.
Mexican Monsters
An incomplete list of bad Mexican monsters:
1. Maxi Rodriguez, who scored a goal for Argentina against Mexico in the 2006 World Cup. It was so improbable it made my friend a believer. "That's when I knew God existed," my friend told me years later, when the pain had faded a bit. "And that he hated Mexicans."
2. Arjen Robben, who threw himself on the pitch against Mexico in the 2014 World Cup. The phantom penalty for the Netherlands made Mexicans cry and yell, "NO ERA PENAL!" ("It wasn't a penalty"). It reaffirmed my friend's belief.
3. The handsome and mysterious man at a Mexican dance who disappears as soon as someone sees he has the feet of a goat.
4. The ones who work for La Migra, especially if they have names like ours.
An incomplete list of good Mexican monsters:
1. David Benavidez who was given his nickname -- The Mexican Monster -- by none other than Mike Tyson. Tonight at T-Mobile Arena, as he beats Zurdo Ramirez to ugly in the fifth round, the chants of "MONSTRUO!" begin. That same round a lonely voice from the stands begs for the impossible when he yells, "VAMOS ZURDO!"
A round later, the Mexican Monster celebrates as Zurdo kneels down on his left knee because he doesn't want to fight anymore.
Arizona, the most bittersweet state
Driving sometimes makes me think of all the places I could have been. The friendships and relationships that ended. Some of them gone naturally and others that I forced myself to end. Some of them were easy to leave and others I still think about on nights when I can't sleep.
Drive a little longer and I think of the times when I got punched. The unexpected ones to the face always hurt. But not as much as those to the gut. The ones I saw coming and did nothing to protect myself against.
During my longest drives, especially through Arizona, the most bittersweet state, is when I think about my cousin. He was like an older brother. I've visited hundreds of graves of people I never knew but never his. We still talk even though he's been gone for years.
"Remember how great we felt when we moved into that apartment in Phoenix? I can still see you smoking next to the stairwell."
"Remember that night when they robbed Oscar De La Hoya? The only person at that party who thought Tito Trinidad won was the guy everyone disliked."
"Remember El Charlie, who let us stay when we didn't have anywhere to go? I saw him and he isn't doing well. I gave him money and my number, told him to call but he hasn't yet."
"Remember that night when you said I was wasting my life? Back then, pride didn't let me admit you were right. I haven't come to visit and I'm sorry. But it's too soon to see you aren't here anymore."
Johnny Tapia's mural, Albuquerque, New Mexico
In the part of Albuquerque that isn't so nice, there's a mural of a fighter. It's Johnny Tapia, complete with all the scar tissue that comes from 66 professional fights and everything else that earned him the nickname Mi Vida Loca -- My Crazy Life.
"I was raised as a pit bull," he wrote in his 2006 autobiography. "Raised to fight to the death."
That's why a city like Albuquerque loves him.
Because it's where he was born and raised, battled addiction, and still became a five-time world champion and member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Because Albuquerque is the sort of city where everyone must fight. He did that better than most, and on the day of his memorial service, thousands walked past his coffin placed inside a boxing ring.
He was just 45 when he died. That was 14 years ago. But there's a mural of Johnny Tapia because Albuquerque still remembers him.
Rock Steady Boxing Gym, Albuquerque
"There's no better place to be than here on a Monday," Patrick Strosnider says as he stands in the middle of his gym where everyone calls him Coach. He wants to keep things as simple as possible, so no one here uses his name. "It's one less thing for them to have to worry about remembering," he explains.
He has run Albuquerque's Rock Steady Boxing since 2016. The gym uses boxing to help those living with Parkinson's stay active. The fighters punch bags, move around, break a sweat and support each other.
"We call them fighters," Coach says of those -- about 100 in total -- who attend one of his three weekly classes offered at four different times. "They fight to get out of bed. They fight to remember their medication schedule. They fight to tie their shoes. They fight to carry a bag of groceries from the garage to the kitchen without tripping. They fight 24/7."
Coach knows that fight better than most since his father lived with Parkinson's for 20 years. This gym was supposed to help him, but age and Parkinson's were too much. He never got to train where his son now helps others with their daily fights.
"Ten seconds," Coach says loud enough his voice carries over the grunts from his fighters trying to loosen their stiff muscles. "And that's time," he adds before his fighters, 15 of them in the 9 a.m. session, move to the next station.
That's when Rebecca Chavez, who everyone calls Beck, starts to hit the speedbag. It's her favorite exercise. When she was a little girl, she watched her father hit the speedbag in their home. He was a boxing fan, so they always watched fights together.
"August of last year is when I was diagnosed," says Beck, 60, the youngest fighter here and the newest member of the gym. She'd been feeling stiff, her right leg dragged when she walked. After various tests, the doctor told her it was Parkinson's. "It was hard," she explains. "I just couldn't believe it."
Beck thought the worst. She wondered if she'd be in a wheelchair within a year. Then she learned exercise slows Parkinson's. About a month after her diagnosis, she walked into Rock Steady Boxing and was overcome by emotion.
Since then, she has been here twice a week and sometimes more. She is helped physically and emotionally by boxing, surrounded by other fighters who know what she's dealing with. "They become your family," Beck says.
"And that's time," Coach says. The hourlong session ends. "I know you guys want to keep going but that's it," he adds before his fighters laugh as they walk slowly toward their water bottles.
"Great workout," Coach says. His fighters drink and catch their breath. Coach tells them he hopes to see all of them again on Wednesday because it's not only good for them, but for their teammates too. Before they end another day at the gym, Coach says he'll have another quick exercise station for those who want a little extra work.
Beck is one of the five fighters who stays.
The Geographic Center of the Contiguous U.S., Lebanon, Kansas
I hadn't realized how far I was away from home until I got to the middle of the country. But now, in Lebanon, Kansas, on May 4, I'm surrounded by roads and alone with my thoughts. It's cold, and windy, and raining as I stand in front of an obelisk made of rock. The Geographic Center of the United States, the plaque says.
I'm fortunate and grateful to see the sort of places I never imagined. But I can't help but notice how desolate these roads and their surrounding acres of land feel when everything I love is so far away. And tonight's the first school night I won't kiss my daughter before she goes to sleep.
The last old building on Cass Street, Omaha, Nebraska
There's a set of double doors that leads to the back door of CW Boxing Club. They don't lock. The only thing that keeps them closed is a two-by-four laid across their pull handles.
"Let me open them," Carl Washington says as he removes that piece of wood inside the gym bearing his initials. He takes a couple of steps into the darkness of a small room. Then the light shines as soon as he opens the back door.
"These buildings were taken away," he says while pointing at something that isn't there anymore. They were old, just like the building that's been home to Carl's gym since 1993. Back then he'd been looking for a place to relocate the gym he has now run for 48 years. At 79 years old, he has owned it for over half his life.
Carl estimates 80,000 people have spent time in all the places CW Boxing Club has been. The first was in the basement of his North Omaha house where he still lives with his wife. From there it was at the Fontenelle Pavilion, then at the children's museum until the building sold. With no place to call home, CW Boxing Club was at the park until Carl found this old building on Cass Street.
"We bought it for $30,000," Carl says. It was affordable because the building that's now over a century old was downtown, in a neglected part of Omaha. In the early 1990s, CW Boxing Club was considered the city's Black gym. Today, the fighting instructions are given in Spanish as often as in English.
"There used to be a lot of older buildings," Carl says of the neighborhood where his gym is located. "Most of them are gone now."
Born and raised in Omaha, he can see how much the city has changed. How the new shiny buildings have altered the downtown skyline. How Kiewit Corporation has bought most of the land around him and now they want his. "They came by three times already," Carl says of the Fortune 500 construction company. "We're the last on the block."
Gentrification, or revitalization, or whatever other word is used to soften its blow, has reached Carl's back door. He's now squeezed between the new buildings and the Gerald Ford Freeway at his front door. He, and his gym, and everyone inside, are so close to it they can see construction workers all around them. The workers are tearing down old buildings like the one that houses Carl's gym.
At best, Carl says the gym has a couple of years left in its current location. He says his property taxes have tripled in the past decade. And since he doesn't charge anyone to train there, it can survive for only so long before he must sell. He knows that despite the thousands of kids his gym has kept out of trouble, and despite this being where Terence Crawford -- the best American boxer of the generation -- learned to fight, and despite the sentimentality of having built all this with his hands, the land beneath it is more valuable than what sits on top.
"You can see it coming," Carl says, still holding the piece of two-by-four that functions as a lock. It keeps the doors closed so no one sees the parking garage being built directly behind them.
Harold Brazier Boulevard, South Bend, Indiana
It's Wednesday, May 6, my sixth day on the road and the odometer on the rental says I've gone 2,416 miles. Been in that car so long, I've even given it a name.
From the West Coast to the Southwest and its deserts, from the Great Plains to the Midwest, I'll soon be in the East Coast. I've driven across all four time zones, losing hours when I had my eyes on the road. Through highways, state and farm roads, I've passed several places that call themselves World Famous. So many of them, I've started to doubt anyone outside of there even knows they exist.
I've driven in the big-city traffic that makes fun of time. I've driven through small towns, always careful not to go past the speed limit, that look like they'll never recover from getting sucker punched. I've driven past what feels like a thousand streets with a thousand forgettable names. Except for one: Harold Brazier Boulevard in South Bend.
Brazier was a boxer who is easy to forget. He fought in the shadows of Notre Dame football and in boxing's long history, which only remembers a few. He had 124 fights -- one of the few modern boxers with that many -- including twice for the world championship he never won. But because he made them proud in that unique way that boxers do, those losses didn't stop his hometown from naming a street after him.
Harold Brazier Boulevard.
Of the thousands of streets that The War Elephant and I have driven past, that's been my favorite one.
The blue-colored photo of Jack Johnson, South Bend
There's a photo, inside of a scrapbook, inside an archival box in the Joyce Sports Research Collection that's inside of the University of Notre Dame's Hesburgh Libraries. The photo is of Jack Johnson. Back when boxing had a greater social relevance and the title meant something mythic, he was boxing's first Black heavyweight champion. His victories led to race riots, calls to ban the sport, and a countrywide search for The Great White Hope.
Johnson defeated them. Then the law did what no one could do inside the ring. Because he married white women, the courts said Johnson violated the White Slave Traffic Act. They sentenced him to prison.
The photo is blue and I don't know why. It contrasts against the yellowed and brittle paper inside the scrapbook, so delicate archivists had me wash my hands before I could touch it. So sensitive I could only take photos without any flash.
Johnson self-exiled instead of going to prison. For seven years he lived across Europe and Latin America, fighting in France, Cuba, Spain and Mexico. He was away until he couldn't be anymore. In 1920 he surrendered to authorities at the United States' southern border and 98 years passed before Johnson was pardoned.
In the photo, Johnson is inside a boxing ring, along with five other men. Three of them -- two white, one Black -- are wearing suits. The other two, both Black, are wearing gloves. The three men in suits will watch. The two men in gloves will fight Johnson.
Taken on Thanksgiving 1920, it's a photo of Jack Johnson fighting as an inmate of Leavenworth Penitentiary.
Muhammad Ali's grave, Louisville, Kentucky
There's something odd about standing at a place previously known to you only through a stranger's photos. It feels new but also familiar. Like discovering something even though you knew where to look. That's Muhammad Ali's grave and it's fitting. Because no other presence looms over boxing the way his does.
In 26 days from when I write this, it'll be a decade since he left. And yet he's still there. A shadow so large it occupies both sides of the spectrum.
On one side is Ali.
He's everything poetic about boxing.
On the other side is Ali.
Look at the damage boxing can do.
When Davey Moore died, Springfield, Ohio
Four days before he died, Davey Moore was a world champion. He won that title in the Grand Olympic Auditorium. Then on March 25, 1963, he lost his life in that same city: Los Angeles. His opponent, Sugar Ramos, waited outside his hospital room, crying as he prayed for Moore.
For the rest of his life Ramos apologized for what happened. And Pope John XXIII called for boxing to be banned. And Bob Dylan wrote a song asking who killed Davey Moore. And Walter O'Malley said there'd never be boxing at Dodger Stadium again. All of that happened when Davey Moore died.
He was just 29 years old. Had a wife, Geraldine, and five children. In Springfield, Ohio, where he was from, 10,000 people attended his funeral service. Then a half-century later, that same city honored him with a statue.
Geraldine and her children were at the unveiling. Sugar Ramos was there too. He was an old man by then, still carrying the weight of the night Davey Moore died. "I'm always thinking about what happened and what I did," he said.
It haunted him. Even after Geraldine told him it wasn't his fault.
Buster Douglas, the World's Heavyweight Champion, Columbus, Ohio
"I'm trying not to get emotional," James "Buster" Douglas says when I ask him what it meant to be boxing's world heavyweight champion.
In 1990, Douglas -- a 42 to 1 underdog -- knocked out Mike Tyson back when he was still "The Baddest Man on the Planet."
"It meant a lot," Buster says, explaining that because his father was Billy "Dynamite" Douglas, a former fighter, he grew up in a boxing home. He learned to fight from his father and was surrounded by boxing magazines with centerfolds that were posters of world champions. That's what young Buster imagined for himself, except even bigger. He was a heavyweight. And to be champion in that division was something close to magical.
"I wanted to be that guy," Buster says. "And then I ended up becoming that guy," he adds, dabbing his eyes with a napkin. It almost doesn't matter that he lost the title to Evander Holyfield eight months later and after that, didn't fight again for close to six years. Or that, before he returned to boxing's structure and discipline, he nearly died when he fell into a diabetic coma.
"You know, becoming world champion, it was like we became world champions," he says, talking about his father again.
"How often are you asked about the Tyson fight," I ask.
"Quite a bit," he says. "It's part of my life. It happened. I can't deny that."
As he talks, he looks across the gym at the Thompson Community Center in Columbus, Ohio, where he's been coaching for the past eight years. Occasionally someone will join the gym and be surprised to see Buster there. "You're that guy," they say.
At 66 years old, Buster -- with the help of assistant coaches -- teaches young boxers everything he knows from a life fighting, falling and standing back up. Everything from how to wrap their own hands, to how to deal with the shock of getting punched in the face. From how to throw a double jab, to how to believe in yourself when others don't.
The young boxers listen, especially when he talks about the last one. Because on the walls of their gym, there's a framed photograph of Buster from 36 years ago. He has connected on a punch and is watching Tyson fall back to mortality. A man in the background holds his head in disbelief.
It was taken about 10 seconds before Buster became the world's heavyweight champion.
Crosses
There are crosses on the road that mark the place where someone has died. They remind me that lately I've been writing a lot about memories of what's gone and things that are fading away. I used to blame it on being Mexican, but I'm not sure anymore.
Blame. Because in every one of our neighborhoods across the country, there's a reminder of something that isn't there. A framed photograph of a revolutionary who died of betrayal a century ago. A mural of a landscape from thousands of miles away. An old song in a restaurant about a love that's gone. A young child with a name their grandparents can't pronounce.
"I noticed I've been writing a lot about old people," I tell one of my editors.
"I can tell you why," he says with a laugh.
He isn't Mexican. That's why I think I should blame something else.
Bare Knuckle Boxing Hall of Fame, Belfast, New York
For the past hour-and-a-half, Scott Burt has shown me how most of his days are dedicated to saving the history of bare-knuckle boxing. The centerpiece of it, and of the Bare Knuckle Boxing Hall of Fame he founded, is a barn in Belfast, New York, where John L. Sullivan once trained.
"He was the last bare-knuckle champion and the first gloved champion," Burt says of Sullivan who in the late 1800s, as the country's first superstar athlete, was so beloved they wrote songs about him. That's where the history of modern boxing starts. If you worked your way back from Oleksandr Usyk, the current heavyweight champion, the lineage begins with Sullivan.
"It all started here," Burt says as he stands inside the barn from 1889 that was once in terrible shape. It needed a new roof, some of its wood had rotted, and its floors were covered in mud several feet high. But the barn was also full of more-than-a-century-old equipment -- bags, weights, medicine balls and gloves -- that Sullivan used. It even had the boxing ring where he trained. After years of work, Burt brought it back to life. There's still more work to do, but he proudly shows what he has done.
"Why was this worth preserving?" I ask Burt.
"Because once it's gone, it's gone," he says. "We all like to have something here for once we are dead, some kind of legacy. That we made the world a little bit better somehow."
Because the history remains, fighters visit, especially during the Bare Knuckle Hall of Fame's annual celebration. Burt will show them the ring and tell them to step inside. But first he advises they take a quiet moment to think of how they're connected to that past.
"They just get very emotional," Burt says of those fighters, most of whom come from the forgotten places that lead someone to fight for a living.
Burt tells me a couple of months ago someone asked him, "How would you describe all of this in one word?"
"Americana," Burt says.
10 most common questions during my road trip
*In no particular order
Can I make it to the next gas station?
Should I keep listening to this boring audiobook?
Did I miss my exit?
Why is there a Buc-ee's in Ohio?
Why is it still cold here?
Did the Cowboys finally fix their defense?
Is that the sound of the road or did I get a flat?
Will the next hotel be worse than the one in South Bend?
Should I do laundry or buy more underwear?
Did I leave my passport at the last hotel?
Bruce Silverglade, Brooklyn, New York
The walls of Gleason's Gym are covered with the history of the sport and, since you can trace the movement of people by who boxes, the history of the country. There are black-and-white photos that look like they're from the 1930s when Jewish boxers dominated the sport. In the decades before, it was the Irish, German and Italians. In the decades after, it was African Americans who were part of The Great Migration. After that, and to this day, it's Latinos.
"We started in 1937 in the Bronx," Bruce Silverglade says of Gleason's Gym. It's the country's oldest active boxing gym. "From the Bronx to Manhattan," Silverglade continues. "From Manhattan to here, and we've been in this area for 40 years."
Since 1994, he's been the sole owner of Gleason's. Long enough to see the sport change along with everything around it.
"My membership has gone from 99% fighters to maybe 20%," Silverglade says. Now, most people who train at the same place where some of the greatest boxers once did -- LaMotta, Ali, Frazier, Hagler, Tyson and Chávez -- are businessmen, businesswomen and children.
The neighborhood changed and so did his gym. The area went from warehouses and a working-class neighborhood by the Brooklyn waterfront to DUMBO, one of the wealthiest in New York City.
"I'm a goddamn boxing gym," Silverglade says, his voice rising as he tells me his rent is now 10 times what it once was. "I have a big reputation," he adds since there's always someone visiting from all over the world, taking photos and buying a souvenir. "But when it gets down to it, I'm a boxing gym."
As we talk, a fighter walks into his office holding a new pair of gloves that Silverglade sells. He needs them to train but doesn't have the $119 they cost. He promises to pay at the end of the month.
"How much are you gonna put down?" Silverglade asks.
"I don't got nothing today," the fighter responds with a Spanish accent.
"I don't want to wait three weeks. Why don't you pay a little bit each week?" Silverglade suggests.
"I don't got money," the fighter says. "I'm not working right now."
Silverglade goes quiet, as if working out some math in his head. Perhaps he remembers this is how it used to be when most of his gym were boxers. When Gleason's was a different gym, he constantly had to remind fighters to pay their dues. If they were preparing to fight and get paid, he let them slide for a few weeks. Silverglade doesn't do much of that anymore. His new clientele's credit cards are on file and every month the charges always go through.
"All right," Silverglade says after a few seconds of silence. "You're a boxer, what am I going to do?"
The boxer laughs and then thanks him before he's off to hit the heavy bag with his new gloves.
"You have a soft spot for boxers?" I ask Silverglade when it's just us two again.
"I love them," he says.
Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Atlantic City, New Jersey
I'm looking for something I know isn't here. I've walked for about 10 minutes along the Atlantic City Boardwalk, on this cold, windy and wet Monday morning, a day after Mother's Day. I can count on one hand the number of people I've seen. Each of them looked surprised to see me.
I had expected to find something like what I saw at the California beach where this road trip started. People surfing, playing volleyball, walking their dogs, or just sitting near the shoreline for a quiet moment. But what I find at the side of the Atlantic Ocean feels dystopian. An empty beach that looks like the type of place where you'd find the broken base of an emperor's statue.
"Security!" someone yells as I walk past an abandoned building that was once an 800-room hotel. I turn around, and a man flashes something he wants me to believe is a badge. "Security!" he says again, even though it's not true.
How do I know he's lying? Because his badge is something else and because he isn't wearing any sort of security uniform and because he has no shirt beneath his dirty jacket. Because his hands look dirty and his face older than what he probably is. And because I've only made it this far by completely trusting myself.
He asks why I'm taking pictures. I tell him and he doesn't believe me, but that's what sometimes happens when I explain what I do.
"I'm doing a project about boxing," I say as I show him my own work badge and the photos I've taken from my road trip. "I came here because Atlantic City was once as important to boxing as Las Vegas."
"Boxing?" he asks. He sounds surprised but also convinced because why would anyone lie about that.
"Do you know where Trump Plaza and Casino used to be?" I ask. "I can't find it."
"Yea, but there's nothing left except for a tower," he says.
He then gives me directions so bad I have to ask someone who's just standing around on the street. They also look surprised to see me there. They tell me to go up Pacific then turn right on Mississippi. That's where I find an empty lot surrounded by a fence.
The place where Mike Tyson fought and looked unbeatable before a man from Columbus destroyed the myth, is gone. As if it's not even worth standing as a ruin. Imploded in 2021 because maybe it was too painful a reminder that not even boxing could survive here.
Just a kid from El Paso, Texas
It's been a couple of weeks since I returned home and four days since Moises Rodriguez has too.
I returned wondering why I drove cross-country to find what's left of boxing and why it mattered. Rodriguez, a 19-year-old boxer with bright eyes, returned from Colombia with his second gold medal in as many tournaments, fighting for Team USA.
Sitting on the edge of a boxing ring at a local gym, he talks with the confidence of someone whose dreams are within reach. Someone who, in 11 years, has over 200 amateur fights, won 10 national tournaments, and was the 2025 Golden Gloves national champ.
"How did it feel that first time you wore that Team USA uniform?" I ask.
"It felt amazing," Rodriguez says.
The sacrifice -- hunger, running alone, cross-country drives to fight -- had paid off. He'd been trying to fight for the U.S. national team for years. So long that when the call finally came, his father and trainer, also named Moises, celebrated but also wondered what took so long. Then from home, on break from his landscaping job, the father watched his son fight in Colombia, shouting advice to the other side of the world.
"I go back July 5," Rodriguez says of returning to Team USA's training camp. "I'm just a kid from El Paso, Texas, trying to make the Olympics."
"I know. And that's why I'm here," I want to say. Instead, I just nod my head.
Because I know somewhere there's a 9-year-old kid who may get from Rodgriguez what Julio César Chávez gave to me. A kid who, decades from now, will remember when boxing created some of the best moments of their life, a kid who will never forget the smell of their father's deodorant from the times they hugged celebrating those moments.
Rodriguez can also be someone I point to when I tell my daughter that we can pursue what makes us feel alive even if we're from the forgotten places. A boxer as an example since, despite her 9-year-old innocence, I'll soon have to teach her how to fight.
Perhaps it's unfair to ask so much of Rodriguez. To force a connection to a stranger because they come from where we live, speak like us, or have a name like ours, and by extension, feel as if they fight for us. But more than any other athlete, the boxer has always carried the burden of representing something bigger. Of evoking something so visceral that it could only be born from something so wonderful and terrible.
Maps by Christopher Delisle. Postcard design by Don Jolovich. Photo illustrations and editing by Robert Booth, Jason Potterton and Tony Spinelli. Copy edited by Kate Howley. Research by Dana Lee, Gueorgui Milkov and Alonzo Olmedo. Social media execution by Bryan Antos and Christian Gardner. Edited by Susie Arth and Scott Burton.