One has a boxing record that looks like the New England Patriots’ record the last 10 years, and the other has been boxing competitively for only four months.
Yet amateur veteran Ricky Rodriguez of Evans and newcomer Hilario Ramirez-Medina of Longmont are occasional sparring partners who have the same goal: Represent Colorado at the USA Boxing National Championships beginning June 8 at the Denver Coliseum.
Ramirez-Medina, a freshman at Niwot High School, had been in and out of gyms since he was a little kid chasing older brother Juan Figueroa, also an amateur boxer. But after Figueroa quit and the family moved to Longmont when Ramirez-Medina was 10, their mother worked two jobs and couldn’t take him to the gym.
Instead, he played basketball, football, wrestling, track, even lacrosse. However, boxing never left his blood.
“Boxing is actually the only sport I could get real good conditioning in,” Ramirez-Medina said Friday at a news conference to announce the nationals, “and where I could feel real comfortable around the people.”
He’s 4-2 and already won a state championship. He won his first fight but better remembers that moment when he stepped into that ring in Colorado Springs.
“It was scary,” he said. “I’m not used to being in front of lots of people. I got the gloves on and looked around and saw the crowd was really big and I went, ‘Wow!’ I had that in my head until I started getting hit. Then the voice from my mother said, ‘If you’re getting hit, you’d better fight back.’ ”
Rodriguez, a sophomore at Greeley West High, has learned a few lessons, too, in compiling a 95-14 record, particularly a year ago when he lost the national title to Jose Ramirez, a Californian he beat twice earlier in the year.
“I was too confident,” Rodriguez said. “I didn’t fight my fight. I fought his fight.”
Since then he’s put in five more hours a week training under his older brother, Robert, a three-time national champion. Ricky will likely again face Ramirez, ranked No. 1 in the country, next month if Ricky, like Ramirez-Medina, get through the Four Corners Championships on May 15-16 in Pueblo.
And what advice has Rodriguez given Ramirez-Medina?
“Keep your hands up!” he said.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
