Boxing at the jail

Friday 9: 00 AM, the appointment was at Marco Antonio Barrera’s gym in Iztacalco CDMX, two of my teammates, my trainer and I set off to go boxing at the prision, a former champion is in charge of training the inmates, they are in preparation for the prison tournament that takes place every year, my friend invited me to box with the inmates and obviously I said yes, as an amateur boxer you always look for ways to measure your level with other boxers, in other gyms and in this case with prisoners who found in boxing an escape from solitary confinement.

It seems to me that if you can boxing against someone who has nothing to lose you can boxing against anyone.

The prison was an hour and a half away from our starting point, the mood on the way was of uncertainty, we didn’t really know what we were going to find, none of the 4 of us had entered the prison to boxing, but we were still excited to live a different experience as boxing lovers.

Upon arrival the filters for access can be tedious but, to my surprise we entered the prison in a relatively simple way, the former champion who invited us knows the way to perfection, we arrived at a two-story dormitory with a similar aspect to a high school with its playground, courtyard where inmates wash their blankets, play fronton and a group that stands out from the others trains boxing, they are distinguished because they are men between 35 and 40 years, muscular and no less than 1. 85 meters tall, I have to accept that when I saw them I could only think “I don’t want to boxing with these guys, they are really big”, suddenly another inmate approaches me, thinner, military haircut and close to 1.75 meters, he smiles me and tells me “I just pick up the equipment and we go to the gym” I understood that the sparring would not be with the gigantic inmates we saw when we arrived.

The former champion who invited us shouts “Partner, come” I went with him and we climb a staircase that connects to a 10 meter hallway, we are in the bowels of the dormitory, right in the cells, we walk to the end of the hallway where he introduces me to a couple of inmates who promote boxing inside the prison, they invite me to breakfast and I tell them that I prefer to do it after the sparring, They tell me that they will gladly wait for us to eat after boxing, it feels like when you go to visit an acquaintance’s house and they have that cordiality to invite you to eat, only that all this happened in the same cell where the inmates are confined, we go down again to the courtyard and start walking in a group, the military style inmate walks next to me and begins to talk to me:

“I was training “the bosses” I train them from early in the morning, I finish with them and I go to the gym to train, I am preparing for the inmate tournament and I feel good, I think I can win”. “The bosses” are inmates with a very respected reputation inside and outside the prison, I didn’t want to ask why but it seemed obvious, we continued talking about the tournament and we arrived to a gigantic theater, on the floor there were meters of craft paper that is usually used for school presentations, the paper was being decorated by the inmates for their Day of the Dead celebration, we went down the stairs of the theater to the stage and walked behind it, the sensation was very strange, we were in the bowels of the prison walking through a labyrinth, in the distance of the tangled corridors we could see the sunlight, we arrived at that point and to my surprise I found a boxing ring, a first level one, behind the theater there is only more prison, more dormitories, more patios, more fences and in the middle of all that a roofed patio, with official sizes ring, the posts were green and the canvas was white, at one side of the ring a yellow metal structure that helps as a support for the boxing bags.

The former champion greeted all the inmates who were training, there were approximately 25 of them, some extremely muscular, others in complete malnutrition but all bandaged, sweaty, excited to hit the bag and bewildered to see us.

The former champion tells them that we come from “the street” as they call freedom, with a smile from ear to ear they all greet us and thank us for being there, something that surprises me is the warmth with which they receive us, they are extremely polite with us, they offer us their training space and quickly an intern arrives with a jug full of water “here is water carnales” he tells us.
My team and I started to warm up and get ready to box, it was evident that not everyone could do sparring, but the former champion appointed our opponents, there were 7 opponents for us 4, they seemed to be very excited, we were not, we were rather nervous, I can say that even fearful, but the reality is that this is boxing, you have to face the person they put in front of you, no matter who it is, nothing really matters, it is part of taking on the challenge.

My trainer, who was also a professional fighter is the first one to go up, his opponent is the intern who was training “the bosses” to my surprise his boxing level was very high, he knew what he was doing, he had technique and a very good physical condition, he did 4 rounds of sparring and got out of the ring.

Another intern put on his gloves, headgear and got into the ring, when the round started I realized that his boxing style was very complicated, he was jumping all the time, throwing the same punches over and over again, this made him a predictable fighter, but his punch was impressive, despite being very thin he had a very powerful punch.

At this point a group of approximately 50 inmates had positioned themselves in a hallway that was behind a fence a little higher than the ring. They were shouting and celebrating the blows that the boxers connected, they were enjoying the boxing, not as main participants but as spectators.

As the sparring continued the intern who trained “los jefes” approached me to talk, he started by thanking me for the visit, he introduced himself, now he was “el chato”.

“El chato” has 9 years inside the prison, he was just 11 months away from completing his sentence and did not want to leave without winning the annual boxing tournament, his quality on the ring was noticeable, but more noticeable was the opportunity that boxing had given him, I did not ask anything about his sentence, I asked everything about boxing. He told me that it was what helped him to wake up every day, run an hour and a half without stopping, train “los jefes” and then start with his daily boxing routine, when he finished boxing he would go to work in his craft workshop and finish the day with two hours of “barra”, the “barra” is nothing more than a pair of parallel metal bars, this exercise is very common in the slums of Mexico, it gives you incredible strength and a physical condition of the best, that’s what I attribute his tremendous punch and his tireless boxing.

“El Chato” tells me that boxing has also given him another way of thinking, other inmates look for him to fight inside the prison and he does not accept, he knows that boxing is a serious discipline and he will not use it to hurt other people, but he tells me that if necessary he would have to fight.

The gratitude on his face was notorious, he told me that there were not many inmates with whom he could spar, he was happy to box with us, the reality is that I could notice that boxing made the 25 inmates who were practicing that morning very happy, some with more experience than others, some with previous training, a group of inmates tell me that they started boxing when “el profe” (the former champion) arrived and that this has helped them to find a healthy distraction inside the prison.

It surprises me and I can only confirm that boxing can save lives, no matter where you are, boxing offers you a different way of thinking and mainly a better life.

I want to highlight something, the ring, the 8 bags, the 6 headgears and the 8 pairs of gloves that took turns to train had been bought by an inmate of the prison, an inmate who had enough resources to roof an area of the prison and set up a boxing gym so that his fellow inmates could train, that seemed incredible to me, because the ring was of the highest quality, I expected to find something a little more modest.

It’s my turn to get into the ring, two of my friends have already boxed and the first thing they tell me when they get out of the ring is “they hit very hard” in a few minutes I would confirm it.

To be continued…