00 UNITED.COM DECEMBER <strong>2009</strong>
AT FOUR FEET, 11 INCHES, Tiff any Perez is tiny, but that’s not her greatest obstacle. She was diagnosed with severe asthma at the age of four, around the same time she fi rst started watching Puerto Rican superstar boxers Felix Trinidad and, later, Miguel Cotto fi ghting on TV. Her fascination grew. Still, when she fi rst stepped into the ring at 13, no one fi gured she had the fortitude to jog around the block twice, much less make a serious run at Olympic gold. “My parents thought I would quit the very fi rst time I got hit square in the face,” says Perez, who’s now a pre-med student at Purdue University. “They would tell me, ‘You don’t want to fi ght,’ or say, ‘Why would you want to mess up your face?’ They were surprised when I told them I could handle it—again and again and again.” “We always say her head moves are straight out of The Matrix,” says her father, Jimmy, a former tae kwon do instructor who works 12-hour shifts at a local manufacturing plant. “You don’t tell Tiff any what to do. She just does it.” Perez travels an hour into Chicago from her home in the middle-class suburb of Hammond, Indiana, to train with her coach, Rick Furnuto. At home, she works out in the basement gym that her father built for her in the family’s house. She wears a necklace with a gold pendant of a boxing glove and competes in a shorts-skirt combo embroidered with the Puerto Rican fl ag. “When I am training, I don’t have a life,” explains Perez, who is the Chicago Golden Gloves Champion three years running. “Boxing is my life.” That’s a sentiment shared by her fellow boxers. You don’t “play” boxing. “It kind of sucks that I didn’t go to prom or my homecoming,” says Guzman, whose perfect teeth and fi ne features should make her a sought-after date. “I’ve lost a lot of friends and missed all kinds of trips to McDonald’s.” Perez and Guzman know each other well, though they’re not the closest of friends. They travel the same circuit of regional and national bouts, and spend a lot of time in the same locker rooms. As Guzman once confi ded to a local reporter, “I’ve never been a team player.” But they share an obsession. It’s like a sisterhood. HEMISPHERES.COM DECEMBER <strong>2009</strong> ALICIA GUTIERREZ IS READY TO RUMBLE. “We boxers are a diff erent breed of human,” Perez says. “No one quite understands us or where we come from.” IT TOOK A FEW YEARS for the mother of 15-year-old Alicia Gutierrez to fi gure it out. Longtime Chicagoan Christina Gutierrez’s daughter fi rst came to her at seven years old asking to take boxing lessons. “I never took her seriously,” says the elder Gutierrez. “When she was in second grade, I signed her up for everything—ballet, T-ball, basketball, everything in the parks deparment brochure. She played basketball and ended up on a national championship team. But when she turned twelve, she started asking about boxing again. I had to give in.” Gutierrez, a Maine South High School sophomore, is taller than Perez and Guzman. She is learning always to go into a match with a plan neatly worked out in her head of how the match will unfold. “First round, I feel them out to see what kind of style they have,” she explains. “The second round, I fi gure out what I need to work on to beat her. The third round, I go for it.” Fights don’t always go according to plan. Like all boxers, male or female, her education has been, at times, brutal. “We were in Colorado last year for the national tournament, and in the fi rst round my opponent came at me with an uppercut that hit me right under the ribs,” Gutierrez says. “I froze. My eyes started to water, and I couldn’t breathe. But I never got scared. Being scared would keep me from going back in the ring.” “I’ve been ready to quit plenty of times,” says Guzman, who’d like to go pro. But she’s realistic. “I’m a small girl, and I’m not stupid. I know my body wasn’t built for this kind of wear and tear. I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Now there is a chance to compete in the Olympics. There is no way I’m going out without a fi ght.” Chicago writer TRICIA DESPRES is still uncomfortable with women hitting each other. 81