UTRGV graduate student Eduardo Guerra works on his head movement and speed with head coach Omar Figueroa Nov. 21 at the Panteritas Boxing Gym in Weslaco. Ramiro Castro Jr./THE RIDER PHOTOS
Graduate student Eduardo Guerra will compete in his first televised professional boxing bout, a rematch against his last opponent, Nick Molina, at 6:30 p.m. Friday in the Payne Arena in Hidalgo.
Their first bout was Sept. 10 and resulted in a draw, 38-38.
“They called me a few weeks ago, and they’re like, ‘Do you want the rematch?’” Guerra said. “And I’m like, ‘Yes.’ And then, like, it’s gonna be on ESPN. It’s gonna be on TV. Yes, I don’t care, I don’t care about the weight. Nothing. Just give me the fight. I want the rematch because I know I can beat him. I stayed too close and just did little punches. I didn’t want to hurt him. So I was like, ‘No. I want the rematch because I know I can beat him.’”
Guerra, 24, said he started boxing at the age of 20 after wanting to lose weight.
“So when I was in high school, I was always an athlete and in college I was working full time at the Jack in the Box across from [UTRGV],” Guerra said. “I was eating a lot of junk food. When I graduated high school, I was 180 [pounds], and then two years later, I was like 240 or 260. I was always like, ‘You know what, I’m gonna try boxing.’
“I went to the gym … and they were like, ‘You just pay this coach $20 a week.’ So I went, and he wasn’t doing anything. I noticed the people he was paying attention to are the kids or the people who are really thin.”
The Elsa native said he trained with the help of YouTube videos.
“I would watch Mike Tyson videos and Roberto Duran videos,” Guerra said. “Those are the two people who inspired me to box.”
Guerra, while also being a boxer, is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts and writing a book about his experiences as an athlete.
“So, right now, I’m currently working on my first book, which is called ‘Fight,’ and I’m working on that for the master’s and I want to have [it] as my thesis,” Guerra said. “I remember I got in the ring and I was like, ‘Do I have to do this? I’m in college. Do I have to do this? I mean, I could just focus on college and when I graduate, I’ll be a teacher, and I don’t [have to] get punched in the head.’ That was the first time I was like, ‘Do I need to do this?’
“I started thinking about self-doubt. And one of the things that I told myself after that was fear disguises itself as the voice of reason. When you’re scared of something, you will find all these reasons to not do it and there’s all these plausible logical reasons to not go through it. That whole idea kind of inspired the poem, which inspired the book I’m writing.”
Emmy Perez, a creative writing professor, said Guerra excels in writing as much as he does in the ring.
“He’s taking my graduate poetry workshop in the MFA in creative writing program and he likes to write in multiple genres,” Perez said. “In my class, his writing is really performative. On the page and also out loud, he likes to use a lot of wordplay in his poetry, which I find to be very engaging. He writes about boxing and life and sometimes how the two are related. That’s only in some of his poems. He also writes about other topics, like relationships. And, as a student in the class, he helps other students because it’s a workshop class.
“He’s really encouraging to other students and offers really good feedback in the class to others. I already told several people about his upcoming bout and I hope to watch it, too. I … admire anyone who is a professional athlete. I think it takes a lot of perseverance. The fact that he’s attending graduate school, working and boxing, I think that’s an amazing feat. So I’m cheering him on.”
For more information on Guerra’s upcoming super middleweight class bout, visit hidalgoarena.com.
