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Gabriel Ruelas and The Fighter’s Life
 by Thomas Gerbasi (March 13, 2003)
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You’ve heard all the clichés, from “The fighter is the last to know” to “There are no happy endings in boxing”. They’re all true, too; otherwise they wouldn’t be clichés.
Gabriel Ruelas wants to shatter those old adages. Whether he can is an entirely different story, because even though he lives a stone’s throw away, boxing in the real world doesn’t go by a Hollywood script.
This Saturday, Ruelas was scheduled to fight junior lightweight champion Acelino Freitas in a nationally televised Showtime title bout in Chicago. The contracts were signed, camps were getting ready to begin, and the press releases were readied and sent out. But then something interesting happened – boxing developed a conscience.
Railing against the supposed mismatch of the veteran Ruelas and the young power puncher Freitas, media pressure forced the hand of Showtime’s Jay Larkin, and the plug was pulled on the 32-year-old Californian. There would be no title shot for Ruelas and no big payday. The show will go on as scheduled, with Freitas now battling Juan Carlos Ramirez.
Ruelas’ show will go on as well, only this time he will fight on March 24 in Louisiana against Courtney Burton. The disappointment still lingers.
“I can’t say I’m over it but who knows, maybe it’s for the best,” said Ruelas. “It will bother me when I see Freitas walk in with some other fighter, but it’s part of life. I’ve had a lot of fights where I thought I had seen everything, but this is something else.”
Doing everything asked of him medically to prove his fitness to fight Freitas, Ruelas is rightfully bitter about losing his chance at a substantial payday.
“I had to do a lot of medical tests to show that I was fine physically and mentally, and that I was ready, willing and able to go at fight time,” said Ruelas. “I passed all those tests and then they announced the fight. If they thought this guy was a terror that I shouldn’t face, they should have thought of that before considering me to fight him.”
Unlike some fighters his age or older who have started to show signs of taking too many shots to the head, Ruelas shows no signs of the 55 fights on his ledger (49-6, 26 KOs), and appears to be as clear minded as when he first burst on the scene in 1988 at the age of 18.
But he wasn’t going to beat Freitas – not now, probably not ever.
Not that Ramirez has that much of a better shot against the Brazilian bomber, but with only three fights since 2001 (one eight round and two six round decision wins), the fact that Ruelas was even considered for a world title shot is ludicrous, even by boxing standards.
Ruelas disagrees, but what else would he say? This is his livelihood, and it’s tough to tell anyone that his career is over, especially a young man of just 32.
“People are entitled to their opinions,” said Ruelas. “That’s why we’re all here in this country. It’s freedom of speech and they can say whatever they want, but yet, those are the same people that are always paying or tuning in to watch fights. Whenever they talk about Mike Tyson fighting a so-called bum, or whatever, they still watch the fight. They can keep pointing fingers, but maybe they should be pointing them at themselves.”
Not surprisingly, the older of the fighting Ruelas brothers (brother Rafael was an IBF lightweight champ) still has plenty of fight left in him. He’s hoping that someone looking for an easy mark will give him a chance – and then he’ll surprise them.
“My motivation is to fight the top fighters out there,” said Ruelas. “This was going to be a test for me, and even though the fight with Freitas didn’t happen, it opened my eyes to make me believe that someone out there will give me a chance, thinking that maybe I’m like most people think I am. That I’m slow, already past my prime, and all that stuff. Sometimes that can work for the better, just like it did for Corrie Sanders (who upset heavily favored Wladimir Klitschko last weekend).”
Ruelas talks like he’s got something up his sleeve. He knows what people are saying about him, and he knows about the skeptics, not only among the media, but also among his peers. He moves forward undaunted, listening to only one person when it comes to his career – his wife.
“I’m going to sound like most fighters, that I’ll know when (to quit), but in this case, I talked to my wife before I started fighting again, and I told her that she can tell me when to quit,” said Ruelas. “I told her that if she didn’t want me to fight anymore I won’t. She said that if she didn’t see me training like I used to when I first fought for the world title - that if I wasn’t that determined and willing to work - then she’s going to say forget it, regardless of the opponent. That was my agreement with her. She really didn’t want me to come back, but when she saw that I was at the gym every day and how much I wanted to come back, she said fine. But she also said, don’t tell me, show me. She’s seen me working, and I told her that I will respect her decision. If she tells me to stop today or tomorrow, I’ll do that.”
Maybe that would be the wisest course of action for Ruelas, but there’s more to the story than that.
A native of Jalisco, Mexico, Ruelas and his brother and sister came to the United States, settling in California. After meeting up with Joe Goossen, the two brothers nicknamed “The Candy Kids” started to make their way up the amateur boxing ladder.
Gabe turned pro in 1988 and won his first 21 bouts before a broken elbow suffered during a fight with Jeff Franklin in 1990 caused a seventh round stoppage. It was one of the worst injuries you will ever see in the ring, and even today, Ruelas sighs when he thinks about it. “I thought that was it for my career,” he said.
Amazingly, Ruelas returned to the ring a year later, and remained unbeaten until a 1993 title shot against the legendary Azumah Nelson. Ruelas dropped a decision to Nelson but made good on his second title shot when he decisioned Jesse James Leija on September 17, 1994. Nothing before or since surpassed that moment in his career. And even if he could snag a second world title, he suspects it wouldn’t feel as good as the first.
“I have thought about what it would feel like to win another world title,” admits Ruelas. “I don’t think it would feel the same as when I first won it. It’s like having kids. When you have that first one, it’s like a feeling you can’t explain. When you have the second one, your wife probably gets mad if you don’t tell her that it feels the same or better, but it doesn’t. The first one, it’s like you never had it before. In this case, if I were to win the world championship, even though people are talking about me and expectations are very low for me, I really don’t think it would be as big as the first one.”
But Ruelas only managed to defend his WBC super featherweight title twice, with the second defense, an 11th round stoppage of Jimmy Garcia, leading to the Colombian’s tragic death days later. Ruelas was never the same fighter again, though today he has come to grips with the tragedy and has learned to put it behind him.
“It was something unfortunate that happened to me in my life, something I wouldn’t wish on anyone else,” said Ruelas of Jimmy Garcia’s death. “It sounds pretty bad, but it’s part of life. You’ve got to move on, whatever it is. If you let it stay with you, it’s only going to kill you. I think time heals everything. After it happened it bothered me for a while, and I stayed out of the eyes of the people, but now I’m back and I feel good about myself.”
The record turned spotty after that - 8-4 since Garcia’s death. Most memorable to boxing fans was his five round 1997 war with Arturo Gatti, who outlasted Ruelas after taking hellacious amounts of punishment. But while that fight was ultra-competitive, a 1999 decision loss to unknown Manuel Garnica had Ruelas written off by anyone and everyone.
He’s won those three decisions over more unknowns since then, fighting once in 2001 and twice last year. “Some people think I’m retired because I don’t fight that often,” Ruelas chuckles.
He’s not retired, whatever anyone with a promoter’s license, television contract or keyboard has to say. And that’s the crux of the matter. For a fighter, boxing is not a 9 to 5 job. It’s a lifestyle. Fighters just don’t wake up one day and say, ‘hey, I think I’ll dump boxing and start a dot.com.’ It’s just not realistic.
It’s even worse for fighters like Gabe Ruelas, whose very identity is tied up in the sport referred to as ‘The Sweet Science.’
“Boxing really is my life,” said Ruelas. “Boxing made me what I am and made me believe in myself. Before I started boxing, when I was a kid, even people in the family told me that I was good for nothing. And even though I was a kid, kids never forget when you tell them something. That’s why now that I have kids, I’m very careful about what I tell them. I was always told that I wouldn’t be good at anything, especially when I started fighting. People told me that I would never go anywhere. That motivated me more. I wanted to show people that if I wasn’t good at school or at any other jobs that I had, that this I could excel in. I showed everyone. When I started winning fights, I thought that maybe I can be a world champion; maybe I can win fights. And it was just a matter of time.”
Think it’s easy to drop something that means so much?
It would be a lot easier to let Ruelas fight if he was a surly, combative slug. But he’s not. Like a lot of fighters that stay around past their prime years, Ruelas is one of the good guys, just looking to make a living, compete, and maybe, just maybe, get a big payday before he goes.
But we wouldn’t understand. We’re not fighters.
Gabriel Ruelas is.
“Before you turn pro, before you even step in the ring, it’s like a yes or no answer,” he said. “Once you get in there, you know you can get hurt. You want to minimize the chance of that happening to you by working hard and trying to do the best you can do. That’s not only in sports, but in anything you do in life.”
E-Mail Thomas Gerbasi at tgerbasi@mindspring.com
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