He Made Boxing Bloom in the Desert

Who could have imagined it? That little Lee Espinoza, who used to pick peanuts with his grandpa in the hardscrabble fields of provincial Michoacan, would one day stand in the spotlight of boxing rings in Atlantic City and Las Vegas and San Juan, Puerto Rico, as the manager and trainer of fighters battling for world titles. That the ninos of Coachella, Calif., whose population is predominantly Mexican American, would flock to this pugilistic Pied Piper of Hamelin to be mentored in the “sweet science,” as writer A.J. Liebling called it.

The Coachella Valley Boxing Club, in the remote low desert of Southern California, is his home turf. It’s probably the only boxing club in the United States that has flowers bordering the walk to the front door. Espinoza, who did menial landscape work for a living for most of his adulthood, planted them himself.

Boxing clubs conjure up the mingled smells of sweat and liniment and stale cigars in crowded inner-city gyms such as fabled old Stillman’s on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, the Main Street Gym in downtown Los Angeles, Kronk in Detroit, Miami’s Fifth Street Gym, and Champs in Philadelphia, where famous ring warriors from Joe Louis to Muhammad Ali trained, oblivious to the seedy milieus.

All you’ll ever inhale at the Coachella Valley Boxing Club is the dust of the arid landscape or the scent of Medjool dates on the fruit-bearing palms. Every weekday around 5 p.m., a flurry of activity pervades a modern tiled-roof building at the end of Bagdad Avenue. In and out of two full-sized rings, up to 80 boys and girls--yes, with ponytails streaming out of their headgear--ply the art of boxing. They spar in 14-ounce gloves and skip rope and shadow box and punch the light and heavy bags. They wrap and tape their own wrists and industriously run on treadmills or lift weights. “You see the real bad boys in town staying out of trouble here,” says Espinoza, the club director. “When they leave, they ain’t going nowhere. They’re going to bed.”

In the early afternoon, the world-ranked professionals in Espinoza’s stable of fighters--the Diaz brothers, Antonio and Julio, Steve Quinonez, Rudy Dominguez--work out in the spacious, air-conditioned gym. They have appeared on HBO, Fox, ESPN2 and USA Network boxing shows, and collectively have fought five times for recognized world titles. Oscar De La Hoya, the Golden Boy of boxing, has sparred there, with Antonio Diaz.

So how did this emigre gardener who had never laced a pair of gloves on his own hands acquire the expertise to guide all these fighters?

“I can go in the ring and look and tell you what they do wrong,” he says. “I never done it myself, but I can teach it. Learn the basics. If you want to do the wall, you lay down the cement first. Put up one block at a time. I know the basics. The left jab is the key to everything. If you got a good mind, everything will follow.”

In his daily uniform of black t-shirt and cross-trainer shoes, lee (short for Librado) Espinoza sits in a memorabilia-filled office with a glass partition, looking out at the gym as he traces the personal history that led to a life in boxing. He speaks Spanish-tinged colloquial English that’s quite articulate, but he can’t write it. So he calls in Antonio Diaz, who has been punching the big bag, to spell out La Piedad, the town west of Mexico City where he was born 54 years ago, and begins:

My father was a farmer. I can still remember the peanuts because we used to pick ‘em in bunches, like carrots. I remember when I was 5, they killed my father and his brother at the same time. Some guy, a millionaire, did it. My dad owned the land, and this guy wanted to take it over. He had so much money he could do anything he wanted.

My mom came over to El Paso for a better life, making tortillas and selling them to the stores. I was 8 or 9 when I came over--it took us two years to get the papers. She moved to Coachella and got married. I was legal because the guy was from here.

I never went to school in Mexico. I went to school one year in Thermal [another desert community that’s south of Coachella]. I didn’t speak English. My mom followed the grapes. To Selma, near Fresno, and she met these people who used to live in Tulare, so we stayed there. She got a good job, like a foreman, picking the grapes and cotton. I used to pick the cotton. I went to school, from the fifth to the 10th grade, in Tulare. You just had to be there and you passed. And we came back to here. I quit school when I was a sophomore, at 17 or 18, in Coachella.

Espinoza went to work as a gardener and, self-taught, became a sprinkler man “because you make a lot more money.” He rose to foreman, installing irrigation systems at many of the country clubs in the Palm Springs area. “I tried going on my own,” he admits, “but you need a lot of reading and writing, and I didn’t have the knowledge to do it.” He was married at 19 to June Moreno, who lived next door, and they raised three sons and a daughter (all have gone on to college and secured degrees). Their first home was on a small ranch in Thermal across from the high school. One of the coaches there, Eddie Dominguez, put on an amateur boxing card in the gym.

Some little kids, about 6 years old, were fighting, and one of them got a big trophy for winning. My youngest son Ruben, also 6, was with me and goes like, “Dad, they gonna give him this big trophy to take home? I went one year on the soccer team; it took me a whole year to win one little trophy. You know what? I can beat those guys and get a big trophy.”

So I took him to the Indio Boys and Girls Club that had a boxing program run by Lalo Gutierrez. In two weeks, he took Ruben to Colton to fight and, sure enough, he won a big trophy. I took my son up there every day. I did it in the afternoon after work, at 5 o’clock, and started helping Lalo. I never was a boxer. I got into a lot of street fights around Tulare. They used to call me the Wrestler from Mexico. I used to throw them down and win. Until I met my match and that was it. Lalo showed me how to train the kids for boxing. He showed me all the moves and the tricks. I took over from Lalo when he had a son in the hospital, and he turned to religion.

Ruben Espinoza was a natural in the ring--smart, aggressive, quick, with all the moves and power in both fists. Over the next 10 years, with his dad in his corner, he won 178 amateur bouts, was victorious in the Junior Olympic Nationals in Marquette, Mich., and was ranked second nationally at 112 pounds.

One morning at his home in Indio, Lee Espinoza flipped on a VCR above the 60-inch screen in his living room, and a homemade videotape shows Ruben advancing against a very young Oscar De La Hoya; Oscar was 14 and Ruben was 15.

Ruben’s the aggressor, throwing piston-like jabs. Oscar dances sideways, arms swinging low in his inimitable style. “See,” Lee points out, “he was fighting the same way back then.” After three rounds, the two boys stand on either side of the referee, waiting for the decision. Lee grins broadly as the tape shows the referee raising Ruben’s arm. He has probably seen it several hundred times.

Ruben defeated De La Hoya the two times they fought as young teenagers, beat Shane Mosley in three of their four amateur bouts and Rafael Ruelas twice--all three opponents went on to become world champions. Lee envisioned the same future for his son.

But Ruben, a fine all-around athlete, persuaded his father to let him go out for football his junior year at Coachella High School. Ruben came up to make a tackle. The runner, going down, kicked him in the left arm, dislocating the elbow and shattering several bones. After two operations, his elbow was frozen in a bent position. Two more surgeries restored only 30% movement to the arm. He was 16 years old, ostensibly finished as a fighter.

Epilogue for Ruben Espinoza:

After the injury aborted his boxing career, he concentrated on education. “Mom and Dad always pushed for college,” he says. He went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and majored in construction management. After a five-year layoff, Ruben starting working out in the ring whenever he came home and decided he’d like to fight again despite the maimed elbow.

His father took him to De La Hoya’s training camp at Big Bear and said to Oscar, “Hey, Ruben wants to turn pro. Can you spar with him?” He also told the reigning world champ to test his son, “go after him.” They traded punches for an intense minute and a half. Oscar put his arms down and said, “Ruben, you still got it.”

Espinoza secured a state boxing license for Ruben and booked a couple of bouts. Ruben, now 21, had grown to 5-foot-8 and filled out to 151 pounds. He could only throw feeble hooks with his crooked left arm. He couldn’t jab. He had to lead with an overhand right. He knocked out both opponents in the first round. But Ruben had to make a choice. Graduation from Cal Poly was approaching, and he had an attractive offer to become a project engineer for a large construction management firm. He reluctantly quit boxing again and, a decade later, is a rising young project manager for the firm. Any regrets?

“I’m a boxer true and blue,” he answers. “I was at home in the ring. That’s me.”

Lee could have given up the sport, too, but he saw what the boxing club meant to the kids. “We’re a little town that can’t win a football or a baseball game,” he says. “Coachella don’t win nothing. But in boxing we got a name. I take my kids everywhere, and they win.” They competed successfully against other clubs in such places as Yuma, Ariz.; Henderson, Nev.; San Bernardino, Chino, Azusa, Pasadena, El Monte, Riverside and Hemet in California; even as far away as Albuquerque, N.M. Under Espinoza’s tutelage, exceptional talent was being discovered in the desert. Case in point: Francisco “Pancho” Segura.

Pancho Segura was 14 years old when he came in here, a real tough kid with a real bad attitude. He started hitting the bag and looked good. His first fight, he was disqualified. So I started talking to him. All his cousins, they’re in jail for life. Or overdosed. Pancho, if he wouldn’t have been here, he would have killed somebody or be killed. Because he was not going to make it in this world with his attitude.

Pancho went to the 1984 Olympic tryouts. Segura was my first professional fighter. He fought twice for the IBF [International Boxing Federation] world featherweight title, first against John John Molina in Puerto Rico, then Boom Boom Johnson in Atlantic City. He lost both fights and quit when he was 29 years old. His wife told him it was the fighting or her. He had all the future in the world. Bob Arum [one of the most influential boxing promoters, head of Las Vegas-based Top Rank] told him, “Kid, I’ll make you a world champion. I like the way you fight.”

But when I wanted to take him to Las Vegas, his wife said, “He ain’t going nowhere.” I got him a job with an electrical contractor in Palm Desert. Pancho became a certified electrician. Once he learned the trade, he got his own company. He’s 36 now and busy with his electrical work, building houses. He has a son, 16, and he’s after him to go to college.

In 1985, the boxing club was moved from a cramped single room in Indio to an abandoned fire station next to City Hall in Coachella. Espinoza lobbied the City Council to secure the space. A Coors beer distributor donated money to fix up the building. Espinoza and his kids installed new sheetrock.

“We started with six kids and soon we had 50 kids and we were training outdoors because we had no more room,” Espinoza says. “We used the inside ring to spar and to work out when it was cold.” There was no running water, so they drew it from a faucet outside. There was no restroom. They had to cross the street to a restaurant where Espinoza had befriended the owner.

A friend brought Sandra (Sandy) Yard to him, saying she was a dealer at a nearby Indian casino. “She’s athletic and wants to fight.” She also was married and had three children, the oldest now 15. At first, Espinoza didn’t want female fighters. He mimicked Tom Hanks in the movie “A League of Their Own,” telling her, “There’s no crying in boxing.” He agreed to a one-week trial and made this assessment: “A 10-year-old has more power than you. But you’re athletic, and everything I tell you to do, you do it right away and you do it good. So let’s give it a try.”

She was 36. Over the next six years, Sandy had 19 bouts and won two International Female Boxing Assn. world titles, first as a featherweight at 126 pounds and then as a junior lightweight at 130 pounds. “When you got Lee in your corner,” she says, “he sees what you’re missing. He’s the greatest.” She retired last November to work full time as a real estate agent in Palm Desert.

The Diaz brothers, who migrated to Coachella from Jiquilpan in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, a half hour from their manager’s hometown, have brought Espinoza both his greatest success and failure. The oldest, Joel, walked into the old firehouse 16 years ago at the age of 13 and started hitting the bag. The next day, he brought his brother Jesus, 12, known as Shaggy. A couple of days later, Joel showed up with Antonio, who was 10. Then, after an interlude, his baby brother, Julio, 6.

“What’s going on?” Espinoza asked. Joel explained, “My dad don’t let me bring them all, only one guy at a time.” After a workout, Espinoza drove to the Diaz home and saw Julio on the floor and brother Antonio kicking him. “If I leave them here alone,” complained the father, “one will push the other into a car.” So Espinoza struck a deal. He would pick up all four every day, take them to the club and bring them back. “They’re yours,” the father said. For four years, Espinoza carted them back and forth daily. He fed them, too. “They never spent a penny,” he says.

Joel Diaz went on to win the IBF American title and traveled to South Africa in 1996 to fight for the world lightweight championship. Espinoza didn’t make the trip. He hates flying, though he takes medication to tolerate trips within the country. Joel was outpointed in 12 rounds by Philip Holiday, who subsequently lost his title to Shane Mosley. Joel retired to become a sheet metal worker at $30 an hour and, on the side, a boxing trainer. He shows up at the club every afternoon at 5 to work with the more advanced fighters and is the official trainer for his younger brothers.

Antonio Diaz has made close to $1 million in the ring, with a 40-4 record, including 32 knockouts. He held the IBA World Junior Welterweight title--the IBA is a minor player in the splintered hierarchy of pro boxing--and defended it a dozen times. He went East to step up in class and impressed the boxing cognoscenti by defeating experienced Micky Ward in a tough brawl at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.

He took his biggest plunge in November 2000 by challenging Mosley, the conqueror of Oscar De La Hoya, for the WBC (World Boxing Council) welterweight title. Antonio took a severe beating and suffered a TKO in the sixth round. A year ago in March, he dueled Antonio Margarito for the WBO title and tired in the late rounds. His corner threw in the towel in the 10th round. Because of the punishment, Espinoza urged the fighter, although still relatively young at 25, to consider retirement. He didn’t want to see him risk permanent damage.

As he does with most of his fighters, Espinoza already had provided a future. “If they don’t become Oscar De La Hoya,” says Espinoza, “I get some sponsors and give the kid a job.” Antonio worked in his sponsor’s jewelry store, La Fuente, in the Indio Fashion Mall. With his ring earnings, he eventually opened his own store, which he operates with family help.

“I didn’t want him to fight anymore,” Espinoza says. But Antonio rededicated himself, and he fights on for good paydays, still a tough, capable threat at any level.

The championship hopes of the Diaz family were passed down to Julio. The youngest of the fighting brothers was trumpeted as a sensation in the amateurs and won his first 22 pro fights. Under the Top Rank banner and just about to hit the big time, Julio lost a controversial decision to veteran Angel Manfredy in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Oct. 6, 2001, and then suffered a stunning first-round knockout by journeyman Juan Valenzuela last April 26. Espinoza shakes his head:

With Julio, we got real close to making millions. That knockout threw us. We’ve got to start all over again. He had a contract with HBO without even being a champion. They said we’ll beat Angel Manfredy and go for the world lightweight title. They showed us a contract from HBO for $3 million a year. Julio’s mind got all mixed up on that Manfredy decision. He was making big money. He took a big break for four or five months and just blew up [in weight]. Next, when they call us [for Valenzuela], they said, “Oh, it’s an easy fight.” This guy has 14 wins and four losses, three by knockouts. We took it for practice.

The other guy came charging out and, wham, he knocked him out. We lost a lot of money. Lots of future. But he has another chance. He’s young, a real smart fighter. Now he’s just focused on boxing. He’s not drinking beer or something with his friends.

When we fight Valenzuela, he was up to 160 pounds at the start of training. He’s in the gym playing racquetball. He’s maintaining his weight; 144 is the most he goes up to.

Julio Diaz, just turned 23, appeared on a Mandalay Bay fight card in Las Vegas on March 22 and stopped dangerous Ernesto Zepeda on a TKO in the seventh round to win the WBC Latin American lightweight title. The decisive victory set him up for a possible world championship bout in that division.

How does a self-taught trainer-manager do business with the shrewd, conniving promoters who historically have controlled boxing? How does barely literate Lee Espinoza dicker with Harvard-educated Bob Arum?

“I don’t do it,” Espinoza says. “I hire an advisor. It’s his job to find talent, get them fights. If I go over there, they say, ‘Lee, get outta here.’ ”

Cameron Dunkin of Las Vegas is his booking agent. He’s closely allied with Top Rank Boxing, handling 15 fighters for Arum’s group, though he’s ostensibly an independent agent and fight manager. “He saw Antonio in the amateurs,” Espinoza explains. “That’s his business, to find fighters. He approached me, and I said to myself, ‘Why would I want him?’ ”

The manager held the agent off for two years while he tried on his own to line up matches for his fighters. “They wouldn’t listen to me. I find out you need an agent in this business. He makes his 10%. That guy’s rich. He doesn’t have only Julio. He has Julio, Antonio, la, la, la--50 guys. What happens, I got the last word. He gives me people: ‘Lee, we got two guys for Julio on this date.’ I choose.”

And Dunkin, who has worked with 14 different world champions, says admiringly, “Lee has done an unbelievable job. It’s an amazing story. His fighters are all extremely tough, in shape and well schooled.”

Boxing managers traditionally slice up a fighter in one of two ways. They either take 50% of the purse, while assuming all expenses, or 33.3%, with the expenses coming out of the fighter’s end. Espinoza is an anomaly in this business. He takes only 10%. He describes how he operates:

Let’s say Julio fights for $12,000. I get $1,000 after some expenses. The promoter pays for the training expenses if it’s a big fight. Otherwise you’re on your own. My biggest payday was $22,000 for one of Antonio’s title fights. Generally, it’s like $1,000, $300, $200, something like that. I don’t take anything until a kid starts making money. Boxing takes advantage of these kids. To tell you the truth, I don’t want to become rich. Lot of people tell me about the lottery. I haven’t bought a ticket. I don’t want to win it. I’m real happy right now with what I got.

If Julio makes it big, a million or 2 million, hey, I would take it. Some people wouldn’t realize how much I suffered to get where I am. I spent a lot of money that people don’t see. Because my son was fighting, it came out of my pocket. It would take me 10 more years to get even.

We used to fight at different clubs all over every week. We’re talking about 100-something dollars that I spent every week. I pick the kids up at their house, buy the gas to take them there, feed them and then bring them back. They never spent a cent. We stayed in motels. When we went to Perris to fight, we even spent one night on Highway 60 on the mountain [between Beaumont and Moreno Valley] in four cars. My wife took some potatoes and chili con carne.

Seven years ago, the old Coachella fire station was leaking and dilapidated and beyond repair. Espinoza’s middle son, Luis, a CPA, got wind of Community Development Block Grants in Riverside County and wrote a proposal that resulted in $170,000 in grants for the city of Coachella toward construction of a new building.

Juan De Lara, in his fourth term as mayor, calls it “really a tribute to Mr. Espinoza. The boxing club is the model for other programs in our city. The most wonderful thing is that he is creating and building champions not only in the ring but as citizens. We get a big bang for our buck.”

The new clubhouse opened on Dec. 6, 1996, and Espinoza retired from landscaping to concentrate full time on boxing. He raised the funds to build an annex three years later that almost doubled its size, to 5,500 square feet, and added a second ring. The city gives $21,000 annually to operate the facility. The charity wing of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic golf tournament has been chipping in $20,000 annually the last six years, augmented by other fund-raising endeavors. A Chrysler Town & Country van awarded to Hope winner Joe Durant in 2001 was donated to the club. Rent is $1 a year, and the city takes care of utilities. Inmates from the Larson Justice Center jail in nearby Indio clean the place.

Espinoza draws a salary of $23,333.33 a year. The only other paid employee is Joel Diaz, who gets $400 a month as part-time trainer. A program is being developed to provide academic scholarships for some of the club’s boxers, such as Julio Miranda, who was once ranked the No. 3 amateur in the country at 106 pounds but was not ticketed for a pro career. Miranda is in his third year at UC Irvine, studying to be a civil engineer.

Rudy Dominguez, 21, was undefeated in his first eight fights as a pro. To hedge his chances, Rudy takes computer drafting courses at College of the Desert.

Espinoza’s care and concern for his young fighters impresses Larry Merchant, the savvy veteran HBO boxing commentator. “You can’t say enough about guys like that who have a calling,” Merchant says. “He’s one of those sweet, unsung heroes in the boxing world you rarely hear about.”

With familial pride, Ruben Espinoza assesses his father’s accomplishments: “It’s pretty miraculous. We’re talking about 25 dedicated years. In the early days, my dad supported the program himself. You know, I envy him. He’s doing exactly what he’s always wanted to do.”

From 1 in the afternoon until 8 at night, Monday through Friday, Espinoza is on the clubhouse floor or inside an elevated ring, wearing big pads on his hands to guide and absorb the punches of bobbing, eager youngsters, on the lookout for that jewel of a kid who could be what he thought Ruben would be.

Anybody can sign up to box without charge. The club provides gloves and headgear. The kids supply their own shoes and hand wraps. Like clockwork every afternoon, Marcos Caballero, a pool man, comes from work with his four boys--Robert, 15; Randy, 11; Ryan, 8; Rommel, 4. Another Diaz dynasty? Robert, a high school sophomore, has the ability, in Espinoza’s estimation, to fulfill the club’s biggest dream--”to win a gold Olympic medal, any medal.” Robert spars with undefeated pro sensation Jose Navarro, imported from Los Angeles for a workout, and never gives ground.

Espinoza’s eyes crinkle with approval as he watches Javier Barragan, 15, move in and out, side to side, while snapping left jabs staccato-like and throwing punches in combination. “He’s like Julio [Diaz], only better at the same age,” Espinoza muses. “He could be another De La Hoya if he don’t be too lazy.”

The anticipation makes him look forward to the next day.

“Boxing,” says Espinoza, “it’s like a drug. You get hooked. My wife says, ‘You don’t ever talk to me. But when somebody calls from the gym, you go la, la, la.’ ”