By TIM TROWER
We have a nice local-kid-makes-good story in Saturday’s paper. It’s about Javier Torres, a former South Medford High student who recently made the Mexico Olympic boxing team. Torres has dual citizenship because both his parents were born in Mexico.
During some background checking, I found stories by the late Randy Hammericksen and the retired Don Hunt about a pre-teenage Torres whose dream was to be in the Olympics.
A couple other things didn’t make it into the story.
One was a recollection by his coach, Jim Pedrojetti, whose father, Joe, founded the Bulldog Boxing Club.
When Torres was 12 or so, says Jim, “My dad almost ran him out of the gym because he didn’t want to run. My dad goes, ‘If you don’t want to run, then get out of here.’”
Torres’ work ethic hasn’t been questioned since.
Torres was a favorite of Jim Pedrojetti’s from the get-go. The coach would often take the youngster to out-of-area fights involving the gym’s older boxers.
“He has a passion for boxing,” says Pedrojetti. “His face would light up whenever we’d talk about boxing, so I just took him.”
Torres, he adds, is a fighter the people of Mexico shouldn’t have any trouble getting behind in the coming months because he’s a good looking kid, speaks Spanish well and is a versatile fighter who can box skillfully as well as slug it out — the traditional style of Mexican pugilists, says Pedrojetti.
There will be a couple of exhibition bouts, followed by an Olympic qualifier in March in Trinidad and Tobago. A top-four finish at the latter earns a boxer a spot in the Beijing Olympics in 2008. For those who don’t qualify, there’s another chance in April in Venezuela.
If you want to see Torres in action, go to the following link. It’s a YouTube post of the Medford product in action in Southern California this past fall. Torres, wearing the white headgear, is sparring with an unidentified fighter who has a half-dozen professional fights under his belt, says Pedrojetti.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j65RvoGx7g
