Paty Juárez rises before dawn each day and heads for the park near her house. There, she runs several miles of hills and dirt trails before coming home, cooking breakfast for her family and dropping her kids off at school.
That’s just Juárez’s warm-up — the first step in a routine that’s turned the fearless 42-year-old into a lightweight world champion in bare-knuckle boxing.
Following her morning work, she often attends a circuit class where she sweats alongside fellow middle-aged women who are training for life, not fights. After that, she works out with her coach in a two-car residential garage converted into a makeshift boxing gym. Then, after attending to her kids’ post-school needs, she trains some more in the evenings.
And when she’s not training or running her household, she’s working on a construction site, where she uses a skilsaw to cut materials for building projects around Denver.
“Nothing stops her,” Juárez’s friend Sonia Lemos explained.
Not fatigue. Not the limitation of hours in a day. And not the personal setbacks that might derail other fighters.
“She has a (relentless) work ethic,” Lemos said. “She’s determined to win. She’s going to keep growing in bare-knuckle, and she’s going to keep going in the sport until she can’t anymore. The way she (balances her life), it shows (fellow immigrants) that nothing is impossible. She shows you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.”
Ascent in bare-knuckle
Juárez knows better than most how to turn her pain into progress and sacrifice into success — especially in a sport that requires her to take fists to the face.
A native of Mexico City, the Aurora resident battled through personal hardship and the odds of age to win the BYB Extreme Fighting Series and regain her title belts in December. In the process, she matched the feats of her sisters’ storied boxing careers.
“She went through a lot of times where she was crying at night, but in the morning, she would always wake up determined and go try her best at everything she could — training, taking care of her family, chasing her dreams in the trigon while working her job,” said her 21-year-old son Jorge Araluce, who just joined the Air Force. “It took everything she had — but she accomplished her dream.
“She’s a self-made champion.”
Juárez was originally a regular boxer, but could never find her groove with the gloves on.
She had a 4-3 record in the ring but wasn’t more than a B-list competitor in the women’s boxing sphere — someone matchmakers scheduled with the anticipation of her getting beat. After a 4-0 start, the 5-foot-6 Juárez started taking on higher-tier boxers and spiraled, losing three straight bouts by unanimous decision over a 15-month span in 2018-19. Her inability to gain traction in her boxing career made her discouraged.
But when she turned to bare-knuckle in 2021, she quickly ascended the ranks.
She began her BYB career by challenging Christine “Knuckles” Stanley, a fight in which Juárez was an enormous underdog. At the time, Stanley was the No. 1-ranked pound-for-pound female bare-knuckle fighter in the world. But Juárez won that fight in Hollywood, Fla., by unanimous decision. It proved to be an omen for Juárez, who captured the BYB belt with the win in a sport that her family initially didn’t want her to pursue.
Even now, her brother Jorge Juárez admits he’s “not very happy about her doing bare-knuckle.” Her husband, carpenter Beto Araluce, says it’s “stressful” and that his wife is “a good kind of crazy” for dedicating herself to such a dangerous sport on the other side of 40. The couple have four kids together ranging in age from 16 to 21.
“Her family originally told her that she’s too old, she has children, and that she probably shouldn’t be doing that,” explained friend Lilia Mendoza. “But I told her if it was her dream, and if she was in 100 percent, she should go for it and her family would end up supporting her. They did.”
Juárez’s boxing family
Boxing is not new to the Juárez family, even if Paty’s bare-knuckle exploits are. Both of Juárez’s sisters are boxing world champions and celebrities in Mexico, where they still live.
Her older sister, Mariana “Barby” Juárez, held the IFBA super flyweight title in 2005-06, the WBC flyweight title in 2011-12 and the WBC bantamweight title from 2017 to ’20. She’s appeared on the cover of Playboy Mexico, was a contestant on a Mexican reality TV show and has an extensive social media following. Paty’s younger sister, Lourdes “Little LuLu” Juárez, held the WBC super flyweight belt from 2020 to ’22 and is currently the classification’s second-ranked boxer.
“When we were kids, we would scrap on the soccer fields with other kids, and somebody suggested that we get involved in boxing,” Paty Juárez said. “I was 19 when I started boxing, so I started a bit late. But I’ve always dreamed of being a world champion. I’ve seen my sisters do it, and I’ve always had that dream for myself. Their success motivated me.”
Even from afar — Paty moved to the U.S. with her husband in 2000, when she visited Denver and decided to make it her home — Paty’s sisters struggled with her inability to equal their boxing accomplishments.
“At first, we were sorry that Paty’s boxing career wasn’t going as well as ours,” Mariana Juárez said. “And at first, Paty said she was just going to do the one bare-knuckle fight. That fight against Christine Stanley, nobody wanted to fight her. She was like the devil — nobody wanted any piece of her.
“But Paty fought her, and Paty retired her. Now, we’re just so happy she found her niche in combat sports. … The most important thing that Paty proved is that if you set your mind to it, you can do it. Age is just a number.”
Overcoming personal hardship
Before Juárez could equal her sisters, she had to overcome two traumatic events that still shape her today: Her son getting shot, and the death of her mother, a highly influential person on her career.
Together, they were a pair of life-altering events occurring a few years apart that underscored her motivation to step into the trigon.
“Both those things showed me that life is short, and precious,” Juárez said. “They were both reminders to make the most of the time I have left to live, the time I have left to fight. They were both (wake-up calls).”
In 2015, Juárez’s youngest son Luis was shot in the head when he was seven years old. He and his brother Jorge were at a friend’s house in Denver when their friend got out his father’s gun. The friend was playing with the gun and dropped it, causing it to discharge. The bullet skimmed through Luis’ right eyebrow.
“The gun went off, and my brother just dropped to the ground,” Jorge Araluce recalled. “I went to go hold him and blood was spilling all over the place. My friend went to go get a rag and I put it on my brother’s head. … I had so much blood all over my clothes. I thought I was going to lose him right there.”
The boys’ grandfather soon arrived and saved the boy’s life with CPR he learned while serving in the Mexican army. Luis’ heart stopped twice on the ambulance ride to the hospital, where he spent over a month. For weeks, the family lived on edge, not knowing if he was going to be okay. But he ended up making a full recovery, and is currently a sophomore at Overland High School.
“I prayed for a miracle,” Paty Juárez said. “After he recovered, he went on to lead a normal life. That was a big weight off our shoulders. That has also had to do with my success — it showed me that anything can be done, even when the odds are against it, and that prayer is powerful.”
While Juárez remains grateful for her son’s health, she concurrently misses her mom, who died from cancer about three weeks before one of her boxing matches in 2018. Juárez went on to fight anyway, and has carried her mom’s memory with her ever since.
“We were very close,” Juárez said. “But I know she’s with me in every fight. She watches over me. She protects me.”
Trilogy vs. Monica Medina
Juárez cemented herself in bare-knuckle boxing with a trilogy fight against Monica Medina — three fierce, bloody bouts that revealed the former’s skill and determination to be a champion.
In the first fight against Medina in May 2022 in Biloxi, Mississippi, Juárez won by split decision to defend her BYB belt and earn a separate title from the Police Gazette Boxing Corporation, another governing body in the sport.
But Juárez then lost both belts in the second fight to Medina last September back in Biloxi, when Medina outslugged Juárez to earn a unanimous decision. Juárez was coming off cartilage reconstruction and meniscus surgery on her right knee prior to the fight and admits she wasn’t 100%. Her stamina wasn’t where it needed to be, and neither was her mind.
“I was going through problems at the time (with my former coach), and that weighed heavily on me when I was in the trigon,” Juárez said. “But I knew what I had to do to correct that. After the fight I changed coaches and he taught me different movements, different angles. I left all of that emotional baggage behind and I knew those belts were going to come home to me. I never doubted that.”
Her new coach, boxer Milton Roque, had never trained a fighter before. But he was up to the task. He shifted Juárez’s focus to become more of a technical fighter and put an emphasis on taking less damage than she did in the second fight to Medina.
“Instead of trying to make it a straight-up street-fight, I was trying to make her the smarter person in the fight,” Roque explained. “We started working more with her hands, more repetition. We went back to the basics from Day 1. We did a lot of head movement, to come out safer in the fight. Out-pointing her opponent was the best way to go.
“One thing about Paty, she hits so hard, so sometimes she just gets in the rhythm of throwing all hard punches. But we changed that up a lot from trying to go for the kill each time, to hurting her opponent bit by bit. … I wanted to work more on her combinations and let her hands go more. Once we started working together, we didn’t stop. We trained the whole camp, for months, and didn’t take any days off.”
Recollecting her belts
The night of the third fight, on Dec. 2, Juárez relaxed in her hotel room with her two daughters and her niece. They spent about 90 minutes trying to decide where to order food from, then ended up eating leftovers from Olive Garden instead. They watched hours of The Simpsons before Juárez caught the last shuttle over to the Stockyards Event Center, where the fight was held. She was calm and collected, confident the work she put in would pay off in a win.
It did.
Juárez beat Medina by majority decision and got her belts back in the process. The raucous home crowd held up signs and chanted “Pa-ty! Pa-ty!” continuously as the fighters bloodied each other, with Juárez winning by the judges’ narrow score of 57-57, 58-56, 59-55. After the final bell dinged, Roque climbed into the trigon and lifted Juárez up; she held her fist in the air and screamed.
The fighters hugged multiple times, both before and after the referee raised Juárez’s hand.
“We brought out the best in each other,” Juárez says of Medina. “I knew I had to have my best fight to beat her. I did.”
The victory brought her son Jorge to tears. Afterward, she and her family and her fight camp went out to celebrate at Mariscos El Rey in Aurora. Juárez drank beers with her supporters late into the night. With her face puffed up and her eyes swollen, she took photographs with random fans after the bar announced her feat.
“Not many people in the sport are able to bounce back from a defeat like the one she took in the second fight to Medina,” said Lourdes Juárez, who came up from Mexico with Mariana to attend the fight. “But she earned it — she was able to put it all together after all the training she did, the sacrifices she made, the changes (with her new coach). She never stopped believing in herself.”
Juárez’s ultimate dream
Juárez is determined to keep fighting for as long as she can. She’s already got another bout in the works this spring to defend her titles, the exact date and opponent to be determined, but likely back at the Stockyards.
Her husband hoped she would retire after her last win, “but she doesn’t listen,” Beto remarked with a laugh.
A primary motivation for Juárez to keep fighting is to win more money and open her own boxing gym in Aurora where she would have the opportunity to help train young fighters and run classes. She earned $25,000 in total prize money from her trilogy against Medina, and with a couple more bouts, she’ll likely have the cash to accomplish that dream.
“Every fight is a learning experience,” Juárez said. “I would love another boxing match or two at some point. I love fighting big names like (former WBC world champion) Kali Reis, because being able to hang with boxers like that, and the satisfaction that brings me, is everything. I know I’m able to fight the top fighters in the world. And I’ve proven that. But for right now, my love is bare-knuckle, with my (sights set) on opening my gym in the next two years.”
As Roque explained, the hard-headed Juárez “has a fighter in her that is really hard to stop.”
“Especially coming from her boxing family, she doesn’t want to quit,” Roque said. “She wants to be right where her sisters are at — at the top. A world champion. That mentality that she has, and it keeps her young, it’s gotten her this far. And now she wants more. She wants to keep going and keep showing everyone the work ethic and determination that got her here. She wants to prove herself again.”
Matchmaker Mel Valenzuela translated interviews for this report.
