'Watch me fight,'
says Chris Arreola, proud son of Mexicans
By Geoff Calkins

Friday, June 20, 2008
He crossed into this country in the morning, on foot, picking his way through the Mexican scrub with his father.
"It was no big deal," said Chris Arreola, with a shrug.
He knows this will enrage some of you. He knows some of you think this is exactly what is wrong with America today.

Too many illegals. Too many Mexicans.
Too many people like him.

So he asks one thing: Just come and watch him fight Saturday. Watch how he handles himself; watch how he works.

"When you watch me fight, you will see the Mexican work ethic," he said. "We may not get paid the most money, but we will give you everything that we have."
What if the next great American heavyweight is a Mexican-American heavyweight? What would this country think of that?

Would we celebrate him? Would we embrace him as our own?
Would we listen to his story, and the story of his parents, and would we see the world a little differently then?

Chris Arreola, 27, cannot give himself over to such thoughts these days.
But all the experts seem to say that the winner of this fight will emerge as a legitimate heavyweight contender.

Lou DiBella, the promoter of Saturday's event at FedExForum, said the winner will "probably get a shot at the heavyweight championship in the next 12 months."
So within a year, Arreola (23-0 with 21 KOs) could be the first heavyweight champion of Mexican descent. And who wouldn't listen to his story then?

"My story is like a lot of Mexicans," he said, which is exactly why the rest of us should listen in.
His mother and father, Agustin and Lucy, crossed into the United States illegally. Agustin worked in construction. Lucy cleaned houses and assembled mattresses.

"She got paid by what she did," Arreola said. "It's what you call 'piece work.'"
Arreola had five brothers and sisters. One of them, Carlos Juan, he recently met for the first time.
"My mother gave him to the people whose house she cleaned to adopt," Arreola said. "That way, he could have a better life."

Even then, there weren't enough beds to go around. Arreola slept on a couch until he was 15. He used to position the couch so that the door to his mother's bedroom -- the one bedroom in the house -- would bang into it when his mother went off to work.

"It was 4 in the morning," he said. "I felt better if I woke up to see her go."
Arreola would get himself ready for school. He understood the rules of his life.
His parents were doing this so he could grow up and live differently, like centuries of parents had before.

Agustin and Lucy would bring the kids back to Mexico to visit family from time to time. When they returned, they walked though the Mexican scrub to get back.

"They couldn't do anything to me, I was born in America," said Arreola. "But my parents were not."
In time, Arreola started boxing. He fought wherever he could find a fight.
"My first pro fight in a tent next to a casino," he said. "I won $400 dollars."
Thrilled, Arreola treated everyone to the casino's $1.99 buffet.
"It was one of the best nights of my life," he said.

The first win led to another, and to another, and to another.
But the big promoters passed the kid up. He was too raw, too crude.
"I had a chance, but I didn't sign him," said DiBella. "It was a mistake on my part."
Arreola was unfinished, certainly. But he fought with a fierce kind of pride.
"Nobody will ever say they did not see me work," Arreola said. "I pride myself on being relentless in there."

The mother cleaned houses and assembled mattresses; the son throws a hundred punches a round.
"We do the dirty work," he said. "We do the jobs nobody else wants to do."
Arreola shrugs again. He is not the slightest bit bitter about any of this.
If Mexicans have to work harder to earn their place in American society, Mexicans have to work harder to earn their place in American society. If those are the rules, then those are the rules.
Besides, doesn't it make it that much sweeter when the work is done? That much more of an accomplishment?

Arreola points to his right forearm, to a particularly striking tattoo.
"It's the Statue of Liberty," he said.
And so it is, too, beckoning another generation of people to its flame.
Once it was Irish and Italians and Poles, traveling across an ocean. Now it is Mexicans, traveling through the scrub.

Some will be doctors. Some will be laborers.
One just might be the next heavyweight champion of the world.

Contact:

Craig Goossen
Goossen Tutor Promotions, LLC
15300 Ventura Blvd. Suite #400
Sherman Oaks, CA 91403
PH: 818-817-8001
Fax:818-817-8005