FORGET THE PAST
Zepeda gets his chance to banish the demons of his first world title attempt
IT WAS THE WORST TRIP OF MY LIFE. I WENT THERE WITH A LOT OF DESIRE AND A LOT OF DREAMS AND I CAME BACK WITH NOTHING”
Jose Zepeda had never felt pain like the agony he experienced in Manchester when he dislocated his shoulder against Terry Flanagan. It’s been a gruelling three-year recovery but here, in conversation with John Evans, he takes us inside the astonishing mind of a fighter who refuses to lose again
JOSE ZEPEDA has been fighting since he was 10 years old. He has spent thousands of hours rehearsing feints and counters. He has worn grooves into heavy bags and boxed countless draws with the man facing him in the mirror. Every training session designed to hone his reactions to the point that, when called upon, his responses would be automatic. The 29-yearold has found out that a fighter’s career is often defined by the way they respond in moments that are impossible to prepare for.
Zepeda lives in La Puente, a city 20 miles east of Downtown Los Angeles. Unsurprisingly for a modern Hispanic fighter from East L.A, Oscar De La Hoya played a pivotal role in his introduction to the sport, although not in the way you might imagine. Just months after he was born in Long Beach, California, Zepeda’s family moved to the Mexican border town of Mexicali. Sometimes, the close proximity to another country can dilute the identity of a border town but while Zepeda could probably see his homeland from his bedroom window, culturally he was fully immersed in the Mexican psyche.
When De La Hoya re-matched Julio César Chávez back in 1998, Zepeda and his adopted countrymen circled the wagons around Chávez in an attempt to prevent the sport’s latest glamour boy from snatching away the torch ‘El Gran Campeón Mexicano’ had carried for so long.
“I like to go to Mexico a lot when I’m not training. I go back to Mexicali. It isn’t far from here at all and I have lots of family there,” Zepeda, 30-1 (25), told Boxing News. “I was about 10 years old and I watched that fight. I told my mum there and then that I wanted to be a boxer. She didn’t like that and put me into wrestling. I went to a tournament or two and told her I didn’t enjoy it and that it was time for boxing.
“Everybody in Mexico, and I mean everybody, was for Chávez. I didn’t know a single person who was pulling for De La Hoya. It was all Chávez. “Actually, I got to see a lot of Oscar’s fights after he fought Chávez purely because I wanted to see him lose. I would keep watching him and watching him but he kept winning until he fought Felix Trinidad. Trinidad became my favourite boxer after that.
“Now that I’m older I see exactly what Oscar De La Hoya did. Especially because my former trainer, Robert Alcazar, used to be Oscar’s trainer. Now I see that he was one of the few boxers who took boxing to another level.”
The “Golden Boy” reached almost unprecedented heights but Zepeda’s early career also followed a skyward trajectory. Young and personable with an exciting style and strong links to both American and Mexican markets, by the time he arrived in Manchester, England in July 2015 for a vacant WBO lightweight title fight with Terry Flanagan, Zepeda had scored 20 knockouts in 23 straight victories. The building blocks for a successful career were in place. ➤
The treatment he ended up undergoing in an unfamiliar emergency room proved far more brutal than anything either man dished out in the ring that night. With the fight barely five minutes old, Zepeda emerged from an innocuous looking exchange with his left arm contorted and a grimace across his face. Rather than returning to California for a series of public appearances and civic receptions with a brand new world title belt, the only official appointment Zepeda had to keep was with a shoulder specialist. He wouldn’t know it at the time, but his rehabilitation would take almost three years.
“I have to be honest, it was the worst trip of my life. I went there with a lot of desire and a lot of dreams and I came back with nothing,” the southpaw remembered. “I came back home with a loss and I wasn’t even able to show what I had.
“I’d broken my hand before during a fight but I was able to throw the hand and feel it. The pain of a dislocated shoulder isn’t even close to the pain of a broken hand. It’s three times as bad. In the second round I wanted to carry on but I was fighting with my dislocated shoulder for around half a round. I don’t even know if Flanagan saw it. I was trying to move it but it was just too painful and I couldn’t continue. I went back to the hospital and even they couldn’t put it back in place. They had to put me to sleep so that they could put it back. I can’t remember much because I was really dizzy! I’m not sure what they gave me but I know that, at first, the plan was to just put it back but my shoulder was so out of place that my muscles wouldn’t let them do it.”
His smooth and spectacular ride to the top over, Zepeda had to quickly learn how to grind out success. Two fights ended abruptly due to head clashes and a lack of confidence in both himself and his shoulder resulted in some uninspiring performances. It may be a nagging, gnawing pain compared to the instant agony of dislocated joints and bonedeep cuts, but the fact that after nine years as a professional Zepeda is yet to find out just how good he is still hurts.
“I totally agree. After the Flanagan fight, man, it was a nightmare. I believe the very next fight after Flanagan was a no contest after a head clash and a cut. Not long after I went to Mexico City and although I won the fight, it was a terrible performance. Then another head clash. I’ve had a nightmare. The shoulder injury had a lot to do with it. I never got surgery; it was all done by rehabilitation. Thank God I got through those bad situations and my last two fights were pretty good. I’m on the right track again,” Zepeda said.
“I just like to let everything flow but I’ll be honest, at one point I forgot about titles and I didn’t think about people calling out my name for fights. I thought to myself that I could just do it for the money. Just keep going for a couple more fights. My ego went down and I didn’t think I’d be able to get back on track again. I figured I could do it for a couple of bucks and the next time I lost badly, I could just retire. I didn’t have any dreams for two or three fights after the Flanagan fight.
“It’s been tough. I don’t know what kept me going but I was able to do it. I’m not going to lie, it was tough.” Zepeda may be well on the way to losing the mental baggage that has weighed him down but last June the rampaging Carlos Diaz Ramirez gave him his toughest physical test since Flanagan. Clearly seeing Zepeda as a vulnerable target, the previously unbeaten Diaz Ramirez set about him, dropping Zepeda for the first time in his career in the fourth round with a heavy body shot.
Disturbing thoughts raced through Zepeda’s mind while he knelt on the canvas but they were overpowered by the determination and enthusiasm for the sport that first showed itself when he sat down to will Chávez on against De La Hoya. The true Mexican warrior spirit that seeped into him during his childhood in Mexicali came to the fore and he found some of the self-confidence which flowed through him during his early career. When he answered the bell for the fifth, Zepeda trusted the instincts that he has spent years refining and turned the tables to stop Diaz Ramirez. For the first time since before his fight with Flanagan, everything seems to be coming together for Zepeda.
“That showed the people - and myself - exactly what I’m capable of. I have more about me than people think. I believe that I have more than I know. I’m really motivated right now. It showed to me just how strong I am physically and mentally.
“You know what taught me a lot during my fights and has kept me going, especially when Diaz Ramirez dropped me to the body? I’ve sparred Floyd Mayweather, Jesse Vargas, Timothy Bradley, Chris Algieri and I did well. My whole team knows it and those champions all told me that at some point I would be a world champion and that I was good. Every time I thought about retiring or every time something went bad, I would go back to those sparring sessions. These guys that were champions, they told me that I’m good and that I’m capable. When Diaz Ramirez dropped me, I thought about that. A lot of things went through my mind while I was down. One of those was that I was hurt and I should stay down. Then I remembered that I have sparred with the best and that I’m talented. This guy shouldn’t be able to keep me from going on. I got myself up and finished the job.”
Zepeda may have finished the job but the close call crystallised some thoughts. After almost a decade spent working with Alcazar, he decided the time was right for a change. From hereon in Zepeda will train out of the Wild Card gym in Hollywood. Although it is a stones throw in terms of distance, it is a big leap for a fighter who had shared such a history with his previous team.
“I’d been with my old coach [Alcazar] for about eight years. That’s a long time. I just believed that I needed something new in my career,” Zepeda said. “I’m 30 minutes away from Hollywood so I just started going to the Wildcard. Eventually I asked Freddie Roach if he would be interested in training me, and he was.
“I was thinking about leaving for a while, maybe the last two, three or four fights. It’s nothing bad, Robert is a great coach and he’s one of the best I still believe. Everybody has new techniques to show and I just felt like I needed to learn new tricks and new stuff and I believe it’s helping me a lot.”
Without a dream to cling to, boxing becomes a dangerous, painful grind. No amount of sparring or roadwork can prepare a fighter for the challenges that Jose Zepeda has had to face and though he has had support from those around him, it takes a special type of character to wake up from a nightmare and re-establish old ambitions. On Saturday night, Zepeda gets the chance to finally realise those ambitions when he fights Jose Carlos Ramirez for the WBC superlightweight title.
“I never told anybody. I would do everything without a goal. I would go to the gym without any dreams, just like it was a job. I guess when I went over my career and whenever I got sad or depressed, the fact that people believed in me kept me going. Many friends and family still believe in me. I think everything is coming together now. Soon, I’m going to be able to fight for a title and hopefully my name will be being talked about again. Hopefully it is for a good performance this time.”
AFTER SPARRING MAYWEATHER AND BRADLEY THEY TOLD ME AT SOME POINT I WOULD BE A WORLD CHAMPION”