SANTA ANA — Alexis Rocha’s days were simple, as are most roads to nowhere.
“I’d get up. Eat. Go to school,” Rocha said. “Come home. Eat. Play video games for a while. Eat again. Then have a snack before I went to bed. And then do it all over again.”
“He was 13 and he wasn’t quite 5 feet tall and he weighed over 200 pounds,” said Hector Lopez, now Rocha’s trainer at the TKO Boxing Club. “And he was getting bullied.”
So Rocha showed up, because his brother Ronny Rios was already there, crafting a title-caliber boxing career.
Rocha told Lopez he was only there to leave a good chunk of himself on the sweaty floor. No boxing.
“The first workout, I had to run four miles,” Rocha said. “That was tough. My oldest brother Salvador was cheering me on. I nearly threw up, I’m not going to lie. I was really sore, but I came back.”
One day Lopez needed someone to spar. “Lex, get your ass in the ring,” he said.
Before Rocha could say, “Who, me?” he was staring at another guy with gloves, who was staring back.
“Lex knocked him down in the first round,” Lopez said, proudly, as Rocha and Rios got ready for a workout last week, speaking into tape recorders, posing for pictures.
“We said, wow. He had all this talent and didn’t even know it. We got him his amateur license. In a year he was winning a national championship.”
Rocha had lost 40 pounds in four months and 60 in six. Now 24, he is a 17-1 welterweight with 11 knockouts.
On Nov. 13 he will fight Jeovanis Barrera at Honda Center, on the undercard of the duel between Jaime Munguia and Gabe Rosado.
Six days later, Rios (33-3) reaches for his own stars. In Manchester, N.H. he meets Murodjon “MJ” Akhmadaliev, who holds the IBF and WBC championships at super-bantamweight.
This will be Rios’ second try for a world title and his fifth fight since a damaging loss to Azat “Crazy A” Hovhanisyan at the Hangar in Costa Mesa three years ago. Rocha had already won that night. When he watched Rios go through this particular wringer, Lopez saw tears in his eyes.
“If Lex had fought after Ronny, he would have been a mess,” Lopez said. “They have different fathers so they’re technically half-brothers, but they’ve always lived together.”
“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after that fight,” Rios said. “But Lex had a lot to do with my coming back. He said, ‘Look, I don’t want to see you get hurt. If you come back, do it because you want to.’ It stuck with me big time.”
“Since then, my attitude is, hey, I’ve lost three fights now. I’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose.”
Rios, 31, has been a 4-0 wrecking ball ever since, with a knockout of previously unbeaten Diego De La Hoya and a virtual shutout of Oscar Negrete.
“After the loss to Azat I didn’t really think he’d come back,” Lopez said. “I said, look, I don’t want you to get hurt. But he showed all of us.”
“We got through the COVID-19 year,” Rios said. “We didn’t stop working. Lex and I turned our garage into a gym. I’m capable of doing a lot of things in life, but I kept asking myself if I’d be happy if I wasn’t boxing. I’ll quote Sugar Ray Leonard: The greatest words any boxer can hear is after the fight when they say, ‘And the NEW…’ That keeps me going.”
So does Rocha. He has lost once, to Rashidi Ellis last year in an empty Las Vegas room, where Rocha could hear the cameras clicking. Disoriented by that and Ellis’ speed, Rocha couldn’t unlock his hands.
He told Lopez he didn’t want to feel that way again and he hasn’t. He’s in a long line of ambitious welterweights but he has the wallop to move up.
“The power can’t be taught,” Lopez said. “He has sparred with Canelo, Josh Taylor, Manny Pacquiao, Mikey Garcia. There is a lot of upside.”
For his part, Rocha remembers his head snapping back during an early session. Things got dark for an instant.
“I caught a right hand,” he said. “I was looking at the ceiling. It scared the crap out of me. Hector started yelling, ‘The lights are fine. I don’t know why you’re looking at them.’
“But you don’t lose that much weight unless you’re driven at an early age. Then I look at the way Ronny works. He’s the real warrior.”
Sometimes the old can borrow from the new.
