Ask Zeke Lopez if he wants his fighters to compete in a boxing
match or a tournament in Southern California. Chances are he’ll
respond,
”
Why bother?
”
LONG BEACH
Ask Zeke Lopez if he wants his fighters to compete in a boxing match or a tournament in Southern California. Chances are he’ll respond, “Why bother?”
Lopez, owner and trainer of Bull Dog Boxing Gym in Hollister, brought 137-pounder Jorge Hernandez to Long Beach for the Silver Gloves State Championships last weekend.
With only three boxers total in the 139-pound weight division, Hernandez needed only a pair of wins to be crowned champ.
But he didn’t even get past the first fight.
Hernandez fought Victor Altamirano of Los Angeles in the opening round but lost by decision, despite Hernandez “messing him up.”
Hernandez said on Tuesday that although he feels he lost the first round to Altamirano, he certainly did not lose the last two rounds and felt he should have won by decision.
“I really felt bad because I went down there for nothing and I trained real hard for nothing,” he said. “I really wanted to win.”
Hernandez, 14, thought the decision would be close, but felt there was no doubt that he wouldn’t be competing in Sunday’s title bout.
“It was terrible. It was blatant … It was unreal,” Lopez said. “I don’t know about going over there (anymore). They’re the most crookedest people I’ve ever seen.”
The fight comes nearly two months after the 33rd Annual Police Activity League (PAL) Boxing Championships in Oxnard, where Hernandez’ Bull Dog partner was involved in a fight that members of the local gym deemed shady.
There, Bull Dog’s Eric Delgado fought Carlos Arce of Los Angeles. Delgado gave his 132-pound opponent a pair of standing eight-counts, but didn’t receive any points on the scorecard.
“It’s ridiculous. It’s frustrating,” Delgado said at the time. “I was thinking that I was winning. To go back to your corner and see that you score zero points, it’s frustrating.”
Lopez called it “blunt favoritism” at the time, and he is now seeing a problem of boxing in Southern California.
“They usually always do that. They do that to a lot of people,” Hernandez said on Tuesday night. “They give it to the hometown people.”
According to Lopez, of the 19 champions crowned at the Silver Gloves tournament, only two of them were from outside SoCal.
Hernandez feels if he competes in another tournament in the southern end of the state, he’ll need to knock his opponent out, otherwise leave the decision up to the judges.
“For me, if I lose, and I think I lose, I don’t care,” Hernandez said. “But if I know I win, then I get mad.
“I thought I won.”
