“Ladies and gentlemen and boxing fans around the world, it’s show time!”
Watching Saturday night boxing with my father was a ritual since I was 6 years old. I not only enjoyed hanging out with him as buddies, but I actually enjoyed watching the fights. Julio Cesar Chavez, Frankie Randal, El “maromero” Paez, Salvador Sanchez were some of my favorites. “Which fighter are you betting on?” I would ask my father, that was the first thing on the agenda before the fights began. I enjoy watching boxing fights and I enjoy practicing it.
For me boxing is a little bit more than work out. The first time I tried it, was on my return to Mexico after living 7 years in Europe. When I learnt by experience what reverse culture shock is and has also been my own treatment against depression.
There I was, in the downtown of one of the three most important cities of Mexico, I was going to exchange my Euros for Pesos, someone drove me there and said “OK, go on I will pick you up in a little bit” I was standing there, speechless looking around like the characters of French film “Les visiteurs” as if I had been dropped in an unknown place in another era, incapable to cross the street. “What is going on? This is my country!” My boxing sessions with an amateur professional boxer helped me release and channel all these strange feelings I was going through. It wasn’t easy, but boxing helped me to face my fears, organize my ideas, fight and overcome obstacles.
Later, upon my arrival to California, a place that was familiar for me as I had studied High School there, and where I had had great learning experiences, but where somehow, I did not belong to anymore. Feeling totally out of my element and depressed, I had to do something, so I looked for a boxing class, I saw a couple of gyms on internet. I did a try-out class in one, it was good, but I wanted to pass by the other place before enrolling. I walked down the stairs to a basement level, people punching the bags and amateurs fighting on the ring. This place had something, this was the place.
Eddie was showing the moves, slapping uncovered faces that had guards down and giving a mischievous smile afterwards.
Technique, discipline and motivation, this is what my boxing instructor means to me and what are the odds that I get to train with professional fighter Eddie Croft, that I might have even seen in one of the Saturday night fights on TV contending against figures like “El terrible” Morales.
It is proven that exercise benefits physical and mental health and helps against anxiety and depression, providing a rush of endorphins. When I am boxing, I am present and even if my mind sometimes wonders I focus again on my moves, when I am punching the bag, I am punching my worries and my fears. I’m a life fighter knocking out depression.
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Name: Eddie Croft
Eddie Croft is committed to the sport of boxing, and strives to provide his trainees with a forum to succeed physically, academically and spiritually, through the sport of boxing. As an amateur, Eddie Croft won three San Francisco Golden Gloves championships. Upon turning to the world of professional boxing, he made a rapid ascent in the world rankings and captured the World Boxing Council's Continental America's Super-Bantamweight Title. He then contended for the World Championships against recent boxing legends, Tom "Boom Boom" Johnson, Erik "El Terrible" Morales, and Marco Antonio-Barrera.
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