december-2009

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 2009
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.
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