Troubled youth finds his way into a boxing gym and turns his life around. Yes, that is a story that has been told before, but there are reasons why it never gets old. There is something captivating about what boxing has done and can do to so drastically change lives for the better. Former amateur standout Paul Cano, who turns pro this Friday at the Woodland Community & Senior Center in Woodland, California, is yet another example of the positive impact the sport can have.
Before he found boxing at the age of fifteen, Cano, who grew up and resides in Clovis, California, was headed down a dangerous path. “I was a troubled kid,” recalls Cano. “I was getting in a lot of trouble in school and with my parents. I was stealing, gangbanging, doing a lot of drugs.”
First it was Cano’s brother Roman that took to boxing, at the behest of his parents. “They were getting into some trouble, and their dad kind of showed up at my PAL center,” recalls Pete Lopes, who ran the boxing program for the Clovis Police Athletic League and would go on to train both Cano brothers. “Me and Roman started working, and things started going well with him. Paul kind of figured it was working for his brother, so he decided to check out this Coach Pete guy and see what could happen.”
Almost right away Lopes could recognize qualities in Paul Cano that gave him the idea he had a fighter with potential on his hands. “At first I didn’t know what to make of him, because he was really quiet and didn’t say much,” remembers Lopes. “But I knew his brother had a lot of moxy, so I just kind of figured he was not too far off from his brother. And him being the youngest, he’s probably learned a lot from them. The minute we put him in the ring, he was really tough. He was raw and chunky and out of breath, but he was a tough, tough kid.”
When Cano first came to the boxing gym, he was a troubled kid that played lineman at about 220-pounds. Soon everything would change. “What boxing did for me was teach me a lot of discipline and also made a lot of my energy go from doing all those bad things to spending all my energy at the gym. So by the time I got home from the gym, I didn’t have time or energy to sneak out or do those other things. The whole change in my life was huge, everything from my relationship with my parents getting better, to me going back to church.”
With his new found discipline, Cano quickly got into shape and started to have success in the ring. “Within a couple months, he was sparring everyone in the gym and I noticed he was real addictive as far as the training was concerned,” says Lopes. “He worked really hard and lost a lot of weight quick. His first amateur fight was at 178-pounds and he stopped the guy.” By his eighth fight, Cano had won the California state tournament to advance to the 2008 Junior Olympics in Michigan, where he advanced to the quarterfinals at 138-pounds.
In 2010, Cano would take trips to Little Rock, Arkansas for the National Golden Gloves and Colorado Springs, Colorado for the USA Boxing National Championships, where he made it to the quarterfinals, losing to USA Boxing #1 ranked 141-pounder Pedro Sosa. “It was big for me, to see that boxing could take me not just around Fresno County, but to where I could go on a plane to another state where I had never been before,” says Cano. “It was huge for me to be over there and get that experience and to represent California. That was another big eye opener to be blessed to do something like that.”
Despite his success as an amateur, Cano and his team have always felt his style was much better suited for the pros. In addition, as Cano carved out his reputation in the amateurs, it became increasingly difficult to find willing opponents, so over the course of the last year especially Cano’s focus shifted more towards preparing himself for his debut and becoming a more experienced and technically sound fighter.
“We’ve definitely been in the gym for a long time,” says Cano. “We haven’t been traveling for competition as much, but we have been traveling to get good sparring and for training. We have had our minds set on the pros and becoming the best pro. We’ve been going up and down California getting the best sparring with champs.” In the last year Cano has shared the ring with world ranked contenders Eloy Perez and John Molina Jr. among others.
For his first pro bout, a four-rounder contested at 145-pounds, Cano is doing something most former national level amateur fighters never do and that is fight a 3-0 fighter, in this case Jonathan Chicas of San Francisco, California. The move is just one step in a larger plan for Cano and his team.
“We want to change the way boxing is a little bit,” explains Lopes. “We want to be the ones that will step up and say we will come to your backyard and fight you. I know who I have as a fighter. I know his reputation and I appreciate Jonathan Chicas in taking the fight, for stepping up, because it is a risk on his part. We really have nothing to lose. He has a 3-0 record and it would be really hard to find a 0-1 guy or a 1-0 guy that would be willing to fight Cano. We would literally have to get someone from another country, because everyone else knows him. We feel like we are between a rock and a hard place, but we also feel like we can win this fight and win this fight in convincing fashion.”
Cano is very much onboard with Lopes’ plan. “We are ready for anything,” says Cano. “My team and I, we’ve been training so hard. We know who we can beat and we know that we can beat Chicas. It was a surprise to us that he took the fight, but now that we know he is going to take the fight, we want to show boxing and the world that I am coming out. I am not ducking anybody. We are here to fight anybody at any time. We are here to come up and let everyone know we are the best. We are here to do the quick. We don’t want to fight any bums. We want to fight the best and let everybody know that we are the best.”
While success in the ring may be expected of Cano as he ventures into the pros, nothing in this sport is ever guaranteed. However, Cano has already succeeded in transforming his life, no matter how many wins or losses he amasses. “I am very proud of him and the professionalism he’s shown in his work ethic,” says his trainer Lopes. “He is just a quality individual and it makes me happy. It makes me hopeful that he is going to be a great example for other kids who have a life just like him, or have a life worse than him. That they can fall in love with something and people will help them, and help them evolve to be a good person and a professional. And that’s the most important thing, a professional.”
Tickets for Friday’s event, promoted by Don Chargin Productions, Paco Presents, Jorge Marron Productions and Golden Boy Promotions, are available by calling Paco’s Mexican Restaurant in Woodland at 530-669-7946, Taqueria Guadalajara #1 in Woodland at 530-668-0628 or Travis Credit Union in Woodland at 530-668-0573.
Mario Ortega Jr. can be reached at ortega15rds@lycos.com.
