Casaca’s energy, smarts make a formidable opponent
Jonathan Casaca may not have necessarily stirred images of
Eric
”
Butterbean
”
Esch, the former super-heavyweight champion who was known for
his scowl in the ring, his American-flag fighting trunks and his
round 5-foot-11, 416-pound frame.
But after taking a year and a half off from boxing, the
previously 95-pound Casaca returned to the ring with a little more
than just a scowl.
Casaca’s energy, smarts make a formidable opponent
Jonathan Casaca may not have necessarily stirred images of Eric “Butterbean” Esch, the former super-heavyweight champion who was known for his scowl in the ring, his American-flag fighting trunks and his round 5-foot-11, 416-pound frame.
But after taking a year and a half off from boxing, the previously 95-pound Casaca returned to the ring with a little more than just a scowl.
Standing at 5-foot-1, Casaca returned at 160 pounds.
The nickname “Butterbean” was only natural at that point.
“I stopped (training) for a year and a half and I went up a lot (in weight),” said Casaca, an eighth-grader at Maze Middle School in Hollister. Not a huge fan of “Butterbean,” and for good reason, Casaca set out to change the nickname that he felt didn’t stick.
He trained. He trained every day until the pounds melted away.
Casaca, 14, started with the jump rope, then ran for 30 minutes, then went back to the jump rope. From there, he hopped into the ring and sparred for 10 to 12 rounds. Then it was off to the punching bags – three rounds each on the water bag, the heavy bag, the speed bag and the double-end bag.
He finally finished his five-days-a-week regimen with 100 to 200 pushups and sit-ups.
Now, at 114 pounds, they just call him “Butter.”
“I like it,” Casaca said. “Now everybody at every tournament I go to knows me as “Butter.”
Owner and trainer Rudy Puga of the Backyard Boxing Club in Salinas, where Casaca trains every day, felt the shortened nickname was far more appropriate for this up-and-coming Hollister fighter.
“He’s so slippery to catch,” Puga said. “He has good leg movement. He is what you would call a ‘pure boxer.’ He can out-smart you … He can out-think you and he has real good condition. He’s really in shape.
“But what’s got him all these victories is that he thinks in there. He just doesn’t go in there and be a 14-year-old and throw punches all over. He’ll out-smart you. He’ll make sure to get inside your mind and make you so mad that you want to knock his head off and lose focus, and that’s where he comes in.”
Last year was a very good year for “Butter.” After beating the weight, Casaca took a silver medal at the Desert Showdown Invitational Amateur Boxing Championship in Coachella in June. He then went on to win another silver at July’s National Junior Golden Gloves in Las Vegas, only falling 3-2 to Ricardo Gallegos, the 2008 Silver Gloves champ.
In August, Casaca collected medals of a different color when he won gold at the California State Police Athletic League Championships, then another gold at the National PAL Championships in Oxnard.
“He worked hard,” Puga said. “He got his weight down and everything paid off. He’s faster and he’s able to move and that’s why I think he won all those fights.”
Casaca’s two-fight run in Oxnard was perhaps the most rewarding, though. Having previously lost to fighter Brian Bazan 3-2 at a local show in San Francisco, Casaca found himself in a rematch fight with the Bay Area boxer in the finals at the National PAL Championships.
“He was telling me how we was gonna knock me out, this and that,” said Casaca, who responded to Bazan’s trash talk by remaining quiet. “In the ring, I was just running and punching. He couldn’t see nothing.”
Casaca won the gold-medal match, 5-0.
Before putting on the weight, Casaca boxed for nearly three years at Hollister’s Bull Dog Boxing Gym, and even went to the National Silver Gloves in 2006, only to lose in the final.
It was partly his uncle and partly his uneasiness in the classroom that led Casaca to boxing, though. His uncle in Mexico was an amateur fighter, while Casaca’s energy level kept him moving around at all times.
“I would always walk all over the classroom, get in trouble,” Casaca said. “I had too much energy.”
Why boxing then?
“Boxing is better,” he said. “I was thinking I was getting chubby, so I went back to boxing.
“It’s staying out of trouble. Some kids like to be in gangs. I would like to tell all the kids that are in gangs to get into sports so they can be more healthy.”
Casaca is now training toward the Junior Olympics in April, as well as a chance to qualify for Team Mexico, which will be heading to Puerto Rico in June in a country-against-country international tournament.
Until then, though, Butter – not Butterbean – will be in training, upping the workload just a little bit more than his opponents.
“I tell them, ‘The harder you work in life, you’re gonna be successful in anything you do in life,'” Puga said. “But you’ve got to work hard. Things aren’t going to be handed to you on a silver platter.
“If you’re doing 100 pushups, that kid in Chicago might be doing 300.”
