Visit a boxing gym in Mexico and you will soon discover that only the equipment and the décor is the same as anywhere else. The rest, including the smells, the feel, and the heat, will be slightly different from anything you have experienced in any other country and any other gym.
In 2016, when entering Raul Hirales’ gym by the Malecón in La Paz, I sensed the differences immediately. Although there were punch bags, seven of them, and although there was a ring in which boxers sparred, there were enough things unique to that gym, the Azteca, to make it not only memorable but go a way to explaining the success of Mexican fighters.
For one, the heat was different. In keeping with the Mexican style of fighting, it was aggressive, unrelenting, and dangerous. It was so hot inside the gym, in fact, that boxers had to step outside between rounds, or circuits, just to feel the breeze or the wind from a passing car. Inside the gym there was no such respite. There were fans, six of them, but only five of them worked and even the five that worked moved at a pace best described as pedestrian. It was as though the fans themselves were tired of being kept on and having to move.
As for the impact of the heat, that was more evident on the bodies of the boxers than in their actions. The veins on their arms and legs, for example, resembled subway maps, while the contours of six-packs poked through sodden T-shirts the second they set foot inside the gym. “It is suffocating,” said one of the boxers, Raul Garcia, as he wrung out his T-shirt and watched the sweat pool at his feet. He then put his hands around his neck in case the message was lost in translation. He also smiled, a gesture one rarely associates with the act of strangulation.
Though he meant the heat, the gesture was applicable to the action in the ring as well. There you would find three or four boxers shadowboxing at once, each trying to find space in the tiniest of rings, 14 feet by 14 feet. It had to be small, Hirales said, because it was impossible to fit a larger one in such a restricted space. It also worked, he said, because “Mexican boxers are warriors” and were accustomed to doing a lot with very little. All it meant was that they had to prioritise moving their head and upper body over moving their feet. They call it the “Mexican style” and for most of the boxers inside the Azteca the demands and mechanics were now second nature: moving their head; twisting their body; finding room in an enclosed space; not running; making adjustments and the odd sacrifice. Hirales, for instance, first entered the gym – a different one – at the age of eight and knew how to do nothing else. It was an “addiction”, he said.
In truth, there could be no other explanation; no other explanation, that is, for why these men congregated inside a garage next to a sushi shack in what was essentially a beach town – this was not Mexico City, much less Tijuana – on a day like that. It certainly couldn’t be mistaken for a hobby. Or relaxation. Or even fun. Instead, these half a dozen Mexicans were melting inside the gym and celebrating the prospect of loss – the more extreme the better – because suffering was, to them, now a lifestyle. “Lost five pounds already,” said Hirales, a featherweight, at one stage. “This is good. I am happy. We can eat now.”
Half an hour later, Hirales and the other boxers rewarded their hard work by sitting down to eat clams in tomato juice served in a plastic cup at the aforementioned sushi shack. Given the suffering, and the fact that some would return to the Azteca in the evening, the lunch seemed a little light, I felt.
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It could be argued that it is the hunger that drives them. It could be hunger that drives Mexican fighters to show up every morning at the gym and then take whatever opportunity is presented to them, be it at home or, as if more often the case, overseas. See them in the gym, shrinking before your eyes, and you come to understand this mentality a little better. You understand the extent of the hunger, for one, but you also get a much greater sense of why these Mexican fighters are so comfortable regardless of the situation in which they find themselves. Truly acclimated, they have been in hotter gyms and smaller rings, so they carry no fear wherever they go. If it’s to America, it is just a short trip, and if it’s to Great Britain, where they have had so much recent success, it is a longer trip but often an easier night’s work.
In Britain, especially, the temperature tends to be cooler. It is both cooler on the streets and it is cooler in the ring. Also, boxers in Britain are usually building towards fighting a Mexican, as a test, rather than familiar and comfortable with them, either as opponents or sparring partners. This jolt, which is what it is, can sometimes prove critical when the time comes for them to finally meet a Mexican; this fighter, typically unheralded, who has spent years sweating in unbearable heat and learning how to fight in a manner alien to those blessed with the privilege of space, working fans, and bigger rings.
On Saturday, we saw another example of this when Francisco Rodriguez Jnr, a 32-year-old from Monterrey, dirtied the unbeaten record of Galal Yafai, an Olympic gold medallist, by winning a 12-round decision. In his previous fight, Yafai, also 32, had impressed a great deal when stalking and stopping Sunny Edwards, his countryman, in six rounds, but that, it turned out, was no preparation for Rodriguez.
If against Edwards, a back-foot counterpuncher, he had time and space, Yafai now found those things at a premium with Rodriguez, someone built to suffocate. There was a difference, too, in the aggression and the power, both of which Yafai sampled in the very first round, when rocked by a Rodriguez uppercut inside. In fact, it was often there, on the inside, that Yafai was frequently found wanting; reminded that fighting inside against Sunny Edwards is not the same as trying to fight inside with a Mexican.
Even the mere act of trying to fight inside with a Mexican was to Yafai’s detriment on Saturday. Brave though it was, it led only to Yafai being hurt and put in his place early and then almost stopped in the final round. In the process he was taught new angles from which to punch, new ways of throwing combinations, and the true art of finding short punches on the inside. Worse than just being outboxed, Yafai, a pressure fighter, was both beaten at his own game and shown that the game he had been previously playing was played differently in Mexico. Was it even the same game? he wondered.
Perhaps, in the end, Yafai should have known, expected it. Rodriguez, after all, was hardly a mystery man. He had in fact competed at world level on numerous occasions and given the likes of Kazuto Ioka and Junto Nakatani tough fights, as well as beaten Katsunari Takayama in a 2014 thriller. He was also a former world champion, albeit at minimumweight, and carried into the Yafai fight the kind of hunger synonymous with Mexicans still having to search for food in away corners.
It wasn’t just that, either. For signs of danger Yafai need only have studied the recent history of Mexican boxers who have travelled to Britain to remember that his country is currently seen as a bit of a feed zone. The ground there, for a Mexican, has never been so fertile; full of opportunity, money, and upset potential. It is for this reason their eyes light up when the contract and the flight ticket come through. It is for this reason British promoters tend to prefer, say, Argentineans or Italians when looking for opponents to make their prospects and contenders shine.
Whether coincidence or tradition, the recent run started with Mauricio Lara, who arrived from Mexico City to stop Leeds’ Josh Warrington in nine rounds in 2021. Warrington, at the time unbeaten, was quick to realize he had no answer to Lara’s ferocity and punch power and was dropped in both the fourth round and the ninth. Like Yafai, Warrington preferred a physical, up-close battle, yet soon came to understand there are different strands of a physical, up-close battle and that he was ill-equipped for the one Lara forced him to taste at Wembley Arena.
Still, if it’s any consolation, Warrington was not the only Brit shocked by Lara’s unique flavour. Leigh Wood, too, found the Mexican more than a handful when they locked horns in 2023, this time in Nottingham. He, like Warrington, believed he could extinguish the Lara fire by meeting it head on, only to find himself overwhelmed by the heat and eventually stopped in round seven.
The good news, for both Wood and Warrington, is that they managed to get rematches with Lara, albeit with varying degrees of success. In the case of Warrington, a rematch at Leeds’ Headingley Stadium proved anticlimactic when an accidental headbutt and cut meant the fight had to be stopped after just two rounds, resulting in a technical draw. Wood, on the other hand, fared better. He too was able to drag Lara back for an immediate rematch and next time resisted the urge to give Lara what he wanted and simply outboxed him. He dropped him in round two and almost whitewashed him on the cards.
With Lara now exorcised, it was then the turn of Luis Alberto Lopez from Mexicali, Baja California. As with Lara, “El Venado” had two trips to Britain in close succession and came away with the victory both times. In 2022, he outpointed Warrington to win the IBF featherweight title and after that, the following year, Lopez went one better and stopped Michael Conlan in the fifth round of his first defense. Both performances were special, but what made them even more impressive was the fact that Lopez slayed the pair in their respective hometowns – Warrington in Leeds, Conlan in Belfast – and played his part in continuing a trend.
If you want proof, look beyond the main events and you’ll find there have been other recent upsets engineered by Mexicans in the UK and Ireland. In 2021 alone, you had Gabriel Gollaz Valenzuela travelling to London from Jalisco to outpoint Robbie Davies Jnr over 10 rounds and you had Jovanni Staffron, from Veracruz, knocking out James Tennyson inside the first round of a fight in Manchester. Both those fights went dramatically off-piste from a British point of view and neither of the Brits were ever the same again. Tennyson, in fact, decided to call it a day.
In 2023, meanwhile, another puncher unravelled at the hands of a Mexican, this time in Dublin, Ireland. Caught cold and unawares, Gary Cully wouldn’t have fully appreciated the danger of Jose Felix until he became an example of it and only once that had happened did their fight become a cautionary tale.
Beforehand, Cully was being hyped as Ireland’s next big thing, with plenty of nice words said about him and plenty of attention given to him. Yet not enough attention was paid, it seemed, to the man from Los Mochis he was set to fight. As a result, Cully came unstuck, stopped by Felix in round three. With that, his run of five knockout wins reached its end and his record lost its zero. Worse, any momentum he was gathering ground to a halt and any ambitions he may have had were poisoned by a newfound perspective.
Because that’s the other thing about this sudden spate of Mexican wins over Brits: Wood aside, few of the humbled have been able to properly bounce back from their loss, or even come to terms with it and just move on. The truth is, most have found themselves stuck right where they were left, with the nature of the defeat often so punishing it takes something away from them and leaves them questioning their hunger.
Whether that will be the case with Yafai, the latest, remains to be seen. However, most observers would agree that his defeat to Rodriguez on Saturday fell into the category of “damaging” and that any show of machismo, ersatz or otherwise, ultimately meant Yafai stuck around longer than was probably good for him. He gave it his all, and for that should be commended, yet at what cost? Has Yafai, by giving it his all, now been left with nothing else to give? Will he too be remembered more for the night he crossed paths with a rogue Mexican than any other night in his career?
History would suggest that he might. After all, such is the hunger of the Mexican import, they have a tendency to not only beat British boxers when invited to dinner, but also take from them. They take titles. They take zeros. They take futures.