By Ryan Maquinana
Tonight in San Manuel Casino, the place so close to LAX that Manny Pacquiao proclaims it on a massive banner before you head to Baggage Claim, fellow Filipino Bernabe Concepcion hopes to mend the broken pieces of a once-promising career.
Meanwhile, two hours south in San Diego, his opponent is taking the trip to Highland with his own personal redemption in mind. Like Concepcion, Aaron Garcia was a hot commodity many moons ago. Armed with an accomplished amateur career and a bonus baby contract from Golden Boy Promotions, somehow “El Gavilán” let it all slip away.
Now rejuvenated in his third return to the professional ring, the 29-year-old Garcia (10-2-2, 2 KOs) has upset on the brain, and his last two outings indicate that he’s going to be a pretty tough out for Concepcion (28-5-1, 15 KOs), a former two-time world title challenger.
“It feels good to be back,” Garcia said after upsetting Alejandro Lopez in February and a controversial decision loss to Abraham Lopez two months later. “I’m excited and I’m ready for tonight.”
Garcia’s boxing biography begins in Vista, Calif., when he took up the sport around the age of seven. In contrast to his brothers who one by one would bow out and pursue other interests, he became enamored with boxing.
“I loved it because I learned that it’s not just about hitting or brawls,” he said. “It’s the science. While my brothers ended up not liking it, to me it was very easy to pick up.”
The interest developed into a passion, and the passion germinated into an obsession with winning. By the time Garcia’s amateur days were over, he had gone roughly 130-20, rising to the top of the USA Boxing rankings at both the 119 and 125-pound divisions.
“With Jorge Padilla training me, I won the Junior Golden Gloves, the U.S. Nationals, National Golden Gloves, you name it,” he recalled. “I was 16, 17 years old fighting all these grown men in the Open Division. After winning the National Golden Gloves in Syracuse at 119 pounds, I felt like I could do anything.”
Soon, Golden Boy came calling and Garcia was quick to sign on the dotted line. However, after starting 7-0, a jarring third-round stoppage loss to Saul Ochoa meant the end of his stint with the promotional juggernaut.
“They dropped me right after the loss to Ochoa,” he remembered. “Honestly, I had a headbutt so I couldn’t see. Then Ochoa started throwing flurries. Joe Cortez waved off the fight with blood coming from my face.”
Unable to cope with the defeat, Garcia began to fall out of love with boxing, and it led to his first two-year stretch away from the sport.
“I started struggling after that,” he said. “I had problems finding fights. It was depressing. I stopped training at times. I had a lot of distractions and outside the ring. I took the loss really bad. I was used to winning all my life. I had to think about what I would do, so I stepped away for awhile.”
When he finally gathered enough desire to lace up his gloves again, he found himself in Coachella with renowned brothers Antonio and Joel Diaz, who is also the current trainer of pound-for-pounder Tim Bradley.
However, after two consecutive draws with Jesus Hernandez, an unhappy Garcia shelved his career a second time in 2009.
“I got with the Diaz brothers but I really wasn’t pleased with my work,” Garcia stated. “They’re good coaches but I just couldn’t find myself.”
As a result, Garcia began to wonder if he should have followed his brothers’ example of making the exodus from boxing into construction with their father, so he gave it a try.
“I started working construction since high school with my dad, but now that I didn’t box anymore, I did it full-time,” he said. “My brothers and I were doing it, and it seemed cool, but eventually I realized this isn’t what I wanted to do. I was missing the sport.”
The pugilistic prodigal son remembered an old friend who could possibly help him get his career back on track.
“I’ve known Aaron from being around the San Diego boxing scene because we both amateurs at the same time, but he was on a different planet as far as his skill level,” said trainer Vince Parra. “Then about seven to eight months ago, he called me out of the blue.”
Garcia gave his side of the story.
“I called him and asked him if you remember me,” he recollected. “I’m Aaron Garcia, and I’m looking for a little help. It clicked right away. I’ve never felt that way. He brings out the best in me. One thing I learned is that everybody’s got balls. It’s not about hitting power, but it’s about being smarter.”
Parra broke down the technical aspects of reconstructing Garcia’s game.
“When I saw him fight, he just had a lot of amateur tendencies,” Parra analyzed. “There was a lot of hype with the Golden Boy contract. He just seemed not to have that big of a punch. He kind of got labeled as a guy who couldn’t break out of the mold of being an amateur.
“The Diaz brothers had so many champions and Vicente Escobedo, and it seems like Aaron never really got on track there. I brought in my dad Bumpy who worked with [former WBO bantamweight champ] Cruz Carbajal. Bumpy is more an old school philosopher and focused on Aaron’s tendency to slap not with the knuckle but moreso the inside of the hand.”
Another aspect of Garcia’s repertoire involved making the transition from the amateurs to the pros.
“In the amateurs, you’re fast and you want to hit guys with as many as you can. It’s like a drag race and he was a drag racer, but you kind of want to be more of a distance runner. You kind of want to think, not just react. You want to be able to stop wasting punches, and being able to fight in the pocket and make people miss.
“Now I call him, ‘El Gavilán,” which is Spanish for ‘The Hawk,’ because he kind of fights a little like Aaron Pryor, starting from the bottom and then swooping up top to swarm you with punches.”
Maybe most essential was calibrating Garcia’s mental approach toward boxing.
“Reminding him of who he is was important,” Parra shared. “He’s only as good as who he puts himself in there. Once upon a time he went two years as the top amateur in America. You need to put yourself in that cloth. He beat [Yuriorkis] Gamboa’s roommate in the Pan-Am Games.
“Everyone told him he’d be the next this and that. He had a big-time manager in Gary Gittelsohn, and they kind of dropped him like a bad habit. If you start reading your own stories, they can work both ways. You’re either the next best thing or you’re done.”
Of course, there’s only so much improvement that can be done in the gym before the lessons must be applied in the arena, and the pair soon scrambled for an opponent. They ended up looking no further than the telephone one afternoon in February.
“We thought about getting him a couple easy opponents with the two-year layoff,” Parra said. “We were supposed to fight in San Francisco, and then we got a call from [Top Rank CEO] Bob Arum to fight a tough kid. It turned out to be Alejandro Lopez.”
Lopez came into the fight 20-1 and heavily favored, but Garcia and his trainer were undeterred.
“At the time, the only people who believed in me were my family and Vince,” Garcia said when they took the fight. “We went in there, and all the things we finally worked on happened. They thought I was the opponent because he was 21-1, but they didn’t know who I am.”
Parra even gave him a prefight pep talk.
“I think I was more excited than him because I had been really giving him a hard time. I just said, ‘Look, you need to fight this guy. You’re 28. You’re a man. You need to man up now. All the guys in your era are Olympians and world champions. You need to start thinking about your family.’ I think he thought, ‘O.K., this guy isn’t full of sh*t.’ “
When the smoke cleared, Garcia had pulled off the upset via majority decision.
“I thought I won all the rounds between us,” Garcia recalled. “My mentality was going in there to win. I started throwing to the body hard. I got to his body early, kept moving my head on the inside when I did, and I think that wore him down as the fight went on.”
The next text would come two months later against Frank Espinoza-managed Abraham Lopez. Unbeaten and entering the ring as a house fighter, Garcia would again have his back against the wall.
“With Abraham Lopez I knew we were rolling the dice,” Parra admitted. “But it showed me whether Aaron could really hang in there with a real top prospect on a Thompson Boxing card in their hometown.”
Over eight grueling rounds, the competitive scrap could have tilted either way, but this time, a fighter named Lopez would get the better of Garcia on the cards by way of majority decision.
“I knew I wasn’t going to get the benefit from the judges,” Garcia acknowledged. “I thought I won six rounds. I was working the body and the head and he wouldn’t go. I think that didn’t leave me bitter because I knew I beat a hot prospect. I looked good and this time, and compared with the past when I lost, I just wanted to get back in the gym.”
He wouldn’t have to wait long for another bout. In a twist of irony, while Alejandro Lopez ended up receiving a spot in an Atlantic City main event versus Teon Kennedy in August, Garcia would be offered a slot in the co-feature against Matt Remillard.
Unfortunately, shortly after signing the contract, Remillard pulled out of the bout, and Garcia was forced to watch the card from home as Lopez pulled an upset of his own by beating Kennedy.
“That’s boxing for you,” said Garcia at the time. “We have a couple of offers for the next one, and I’m ready and in shape, so whatever comes our way, we’ll go for it.”
One of those proposed bouts came to fruition, and now Garcia stands on the cusp of his biggest name opponent yet in Concepcion, once hailed as the next Pinoy world champion before losing three of his last four.
This disappointing run includes a disqualification against then-WBO featherweight boss Steven Luevano, a second-round blowout versus Juan Manuel Lopez for the same belt, and most recently, a disheartening split decision against Juan Carlos Martinez.
Team Garcia feels they can take advantage of this vulnerability.
“Still no one knows who Aaron is, and that’s what he’s got going for him, but after this fight, he won’t be able to sneak up on guys like Bernabe anymore,” said Parra. “After that I only want tougher. For Aaron, there’s no time. He’s worked with Mercito Gesta, Roger Gonzales, Jose Roman, Efrain Esquivias, and he even tried to get rounds with Jorge Linares at Wild Card when we were there. The seasoning is done.”
Thus, in a sense, it might be now or never for both fighters, and Garcia wants to ensure that his name remains the one being mentioned in the present following tonight’s clash.
“I’m very happy with this opportunity,” Garcia told Esteban Walters of MyBoxingFans. “I’m expecting the best Bernabe. He’s in a desperate situation. For sure I’m coming with my best, so I know it will be a great fight.”
Ryan Maquiñana is the boxing correspondent at Comcast SportsNet Bay Area, a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, and Ring Magazine’s Ratings Advisory Panel. E-mail him at rmaquinana@gmail.com, check out his blog at www.maqdown.com or follow him on Twitter: @RMaq28.