Ivan Calderon – A 108-Pounder’s Heavyweight Heart The Glassjaw Chronicles by Thomas Gerbasi (Aug 26, 2008) Send this page to friend Give us your feedback When you think of heart in the context of a professional boxing match, certain images immediately come to mind – Arturo Gatti fighting with one eye closed en route to a knockout of Wilson Rodriguez, Diego Corrales rising from two knockdowns to stop Jose Luis Castillo, Jake LaMotta pinned on the ropes, defeated, but not beaten by Sugar Ray Robinson in 1951. The name Ivan Calderon probably wouldn’t be the first to come to your mind, but consider this: when Gatti and Corrales fought, they each had the punching power to turn fights around in a split second; LaMotta had a head like a granite block, able to absorb all kinds of punishment while he marched forward. Ivan Calderon is five feet tall and 108 pounds – well, at least that’s the weight he is contracted for when he defends his WBO light flyweight title. For argument’s sake, let’s say that Calderon enters the ring on fight night at his natural walk around weight of 115 pounds. His opponents, like Mexico’s Hugo Cazares, are a lot bigger. Cazares, who will face Calderon in a highly-anticipated rematch this Saturday at Ruben Rodriguez Coliseum in Bayamon, Puerto Rico (PPV 9pm ET / 6pm PT), has fought at the junior bantamweight limit of 115 pounds before, and Calderon estimates that the 5-5 battler from Los Mochis was around 130 pounds when the bell rang for their first bout in August of 2007. Even a pre-fight weigh-in last Friday saw Cazares come in at 118 pounds. Calderon was 109. So now you’re Ivan Calderon. You’re giving up five inches in height and who knows how much in weight when the bell rings. Your 31 wins include a whopping six knockouts, and the last time you didn’t go 12 rounds was in April of 2006. You’re also 33 years old in a weight class that usually eats anyone over 30 up for breakfast. But Calderon doesn’t falter, and he doesn’t blink. He enters every fight knowing that the odds are that the only way that he won’t be fighting for 36 minutes is if he gets knocked out. Every fight becomes a chess match, a war of nerves, one where his opponent can make a number of mistakes and still be competitive, while one mistake from his side of the ledger could mean the end of his unbeaten record. That’s heart. That’s Ivan Calderon. And when you ask him about being in the midst of modern warfare with nothing but a slingshot, he laughs. “I know that every one in Puerto Rico thinks that this is gonna be the hardest fight for me because the first time we fought he (Cazares) dropped me in the eighth round and they’re scared that this is gonna be my first defeat,” Calderon told MaxBoxing. “So I’m training the hardest that I can to keep all those people waiting for that loss that I’m not gonna give to them.” Dubbed ‘The Iron Boy’, Calderon carries himself with a confidence that only years of proving people wrong can give you. A 2000 Olympian for Puerto Rico, Calderon didn’t turn pro with the fanfare afforded his teammate Miguel Cotto, but boxing aficionados paid attention to the young man who is now considered to be perhaps the best pure boxer in the game today. Funny, considering that he never dreamed of following in the footsteps of the island’s fistic greats while growing up. “I’ll tell you the truth – I never liked boxing,” he said. “I don’t know how I’m boxing. (Laughs) I used to fight in school a lot, but the first time I saw boxing on TV was when Mike Tyson lost (to Buster Douglas in 1990). Then I started watching it, and when people started talking to me about boxing, they talked about Wilfredo Gomez and started giving me tape on him. I saw how he fought, how he moved, and they told me that he was the best in the world.” Calderon listened and learned, but not just about what happened between the ropes. He listened to the darker stories about the sport and about what could happen when you started believing the press clippings and when the money that came in produced more problems than it solved. “I saw the mistakes that they made when they started to get the fame and a lot of money,” said Calderon, who had more than enough of his own problems in his youth, something that led him to not only live a peaceful life with his wife and two children, but to take care of the money he’s made and to give back to those who grew up the way he did. “It’s important because I want to show kids that it doesn’t matter what happened in your life when you were small,” he said. “Me, I had a lot of problems – foster homes, I saw a lot of drugs, saw a lot of abuse against my mom – and that’s not an excuse to be a bad kid. You still can show people and show your family that it don’t matter what you pass through, you can still be a good man with your life.” Calderon did just that, rising above his surroundings to make it big (well, as big as you can as a 108-pounder) in the fight game. It’s been a surprise to a lot of people, including the fighter himself. “It’s a surprise for me and a surprise for a lot of people, especially for the company when I turned pro,” said Calderon of a run in the pros that has seen him go 33-0 while winning world titles in two weight classes. “They maybe thought that I was never going to be a champion, and with 12 fights they put me in to fight for the title, and right now I already have 14 defenses.” At 105 pounds, Calderon was untouchable, dazzling as he boxed his way to 12 title defenses over a reign that lasted from 2002 to 2007. The mainstream fans here in the States didn’t know who that little guy was on the major Top Rank pay-per-view shows, but the diehards appreciated what the ‘Iron Boy’ could do in the ring with speed, smarts, and savvy. Unfortunately for Calderon though, it’s the mainstream fans who can help you command the mega-fights and mega-paydays, both of which eluded him. Even at home, he faced an uphill battle early as Felix Trinidad and then Cotto commanded the island’s attention. “I believe that when I started, the people in Puerto Rico didn’t really like my style – they liked the knockouts,” said Calderon. “But then they started watching my boxing, how I proved it was a science, and how I was never boring because I was always in action. People who really know boxing understand and they give me the credit because I’m in that ring the whole 12 rounds without getting hit by that lucky punch. And in Puerto Rico now, they’re used to my style, and every time they talk to me they say ‘I don’t want you to fight with this guy – I want you to box. Don’t be stupid and stop and fight with him.’” Calderon seems to be amused by the change in the perception of him in Puerto Rico, especially since he hasn’t changed a thing since he began boxing. Some may call it stubborn, but he’s simply doing the best he can with the physical tools he’s been given. The rest is a mix of technique and a steely intellect that allows him to stay focused for every minute of every fight. And though he can make it look like child’s play at times, he admits that it’s not easy to be the hunted, night in and night out. “Every time you get a new opponent, they’ve seen every video of you, they’ve been studying you, and you don’t know how they’re gonna come at you,” he said. “And it’s hard. People think that because I do a lot, and because my fights go 12 rounds and I’m not tired that it’s easy. But it’s hard to maintain 40 minutes so that I don’t get hit with that lucky punch.” He talks a lot about the ‘lucky punch’, and again, it goes back to that confidence he has in himself and in his boxing ability. When you’ve been this good for this long, it’s easy to believe that the only thing that can take you down is pure, dumb luck. At least that’s what he chalks his eighth round knockdown by Cazares to. But in reality, Cazares’ pressure, size and power makes this Saturday’s rematch an intriguing one, and many will tune in to see if he can be the second Mexican this year to end the unbeaten run of a Puerto Rican superstar. More telling, fans want to know whether Father Time has finally crept up on Calderon. “I always said that the day I retire will come not because of my age, but because the feeling I have for boxing is gone,” he said. “When you have a lot of years in this, waking up in the morning, doing the same thing, dieting, leaving your family, you get more tired of that than getting punches. But I do it because I still love it, my fans still want me to be here, and of course, the money. I don’t feel tired in the sport though.” If he emerges with victory number 32 this weekend, the dream – as always – for Calderon is to unify, something that has been impossible for him throughout his career. “I want to unify the title and they don’t want to unify with me,” he says, and if the rest of the champions at 108 pounds don’t want to match wits and fists with him, the gutsiest warrior in the game doesn’t rule out a jump to 112 pounds to take on the best the flyweight division has to offer. “It could be too much,” he muses for a second, “but I still think I could do it because when I started my career, I was fighting guys who would weigh 112, but on the day of the fight they would be 119 or 120. With my boxing skill, it don’t matter.” He’s right, and that’s the great thing about Ivan Calderon, someone who shows that boxing doesn’t always have to be a fight; that it can be an art. Then again, it also makes you shake your head a bit, thinking about what could have been for him if genetics didn’t keep him from the big money and the fame enjoyed by fighters a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier. It’s a fact of life Calderon has come to accept with grace. “We’ve got to show that we’re better than the bigger weights, that we do better fights than they do, and that we deserve to get paid the same way they do,” he said. “People tell me when I fight, ‘man, if you were 147 pounds, not even Tito Trinidad, not even Miguel Cotto would be in your place.’ Well, I gotta do what I gotta do at 108 pounds, and keep showing people that it don’t matter the weight, you can keep on being one of the best in the world.” And when it’s all said and done, fight fans are going to remember the ‘Iron Boy’. “I want people to say that I was always there for the fans,” said Calderon, “that the money or fame never changed me and that I was always the same Ivan I was before I was a champ, and that I was a good boxer. The best Puerto Rican small boxer that they had – hit and don’t get hit.” Don’t forget his heavyweight heart. Now available, Thomas Gerbasi’s latest boxing compilation: Fightin’ to Writin’ – More Ring Ramblings. For more information, click here http://www.amazon.com/Fightin-Writin-More-Ring-Ramblings/dp/0595486665/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF 8&s=books&qid=1202272469&sr=8-12 Discuss this Topic - Go to the forums E-Mail Thomas Gerbasi at tgerbasi@mindspring.com or visit www.myspace.com/gerbasi