His Second Chance May Be Fighter’s Last
Gabriel Bracero built an impressive professional boxing record: five victories and no losses.
He also built an ugly criminal record: attempted murder, aggravated assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
As a price, he spent almost six years in prison. Since his release in January 2009, he has improved his record to 16-0.
“I’m not proud of my past,” Bracero said, “but it’s something I have to live with.”
From Jake LaMotta and Sonny Liston to Mike Tyson and Bernard Hopkins, boxing has always attracted, and often forgiven, a criminal element. Some, like Liston, appear to show no remorse. Some offer their later boxing careers as redemption tales.
“The guy was miserable, just angry and ignorant,” said Bracero, a 30-year-old junior welterweight from Brooklyn, as he described his younger self. “He was always running with the wrong crowd. I’m glad that guy is dead.”
Credible or not, embraceable or not, Bracero will have to be reckoned with in the ring. His trainer hopes he will get a title shot next year.
Last Saturday morning in Gleason’s Gym, the boxing cathedral beneath the Brooklyn Bridge where Tyson unleashed fistfuls of demonic rage, Bracero leaned on the ropes and flashed a choirboy smile at the gym rats scurrying past him, many of whom called him Champ, although he has never won a professional title.
“Many of these people have known me since I was a little kid, they know my story, they know the hell I’ve been through,” Bracero said. “By calling me Champ, I think they are acknowledging the fact that I have had to overcome many obstacles just to get to where I am today.”
Bracero will face Guillermo Valdes at Roseland in Manhattan on Saturday, the second half of a two-day card that begins Friday and features mostly Puerto Rican fighters.
“Gabe is a crowd-pleasing brawler with a huge Puerto Rican following,” said Lou DiBella, the promoter who represents Bracero. “Since he’s come out of prison, he has resonated with many people in the community, especially fellow Puerto Ricans, who see him as the underdog.”Bracero was 8 when he began training as a boxer in a gym in the hardscrabble Sunset Park neighborhood where he grew up and now lives with his wife, Iris, and four children. He was introduced to the sport by his father, Hilergio Bracero, who fought in the Golden Gloves boxing tournament in the 1970s.
(Luis Del Valle, Gabriel “Tito” Bracero and Jonathan Gonzalez/photo by Keisha Morrisey)
“We could see early on that Gabe just had this special gift,” said Elsa Centeno, Bracero’s mother. “My three other sons gave boxing a try, but Gabe, it was like he was born to do this.”
At age 11, Bracero won a Junior Olympic championship, and he capped his amateur career by twice winning the Golden Gloves at 139 pounds, first as a 17-year-old novice in 1998, and a year later in the open division.
“The most important thing I saw in him was that he was fearless,” said the veteran trainer Tommy Gallagher, who began training and managing Bracero after his second Golden Gloves title.
“I saw in him a champion’s attitude,” Gallagher said of the 5-foot-7 ½ Bracero. “If you look into his little black eyes, he has that you-have-to-kill-me-to-beat-me attitude. I was impressed with that attitude.”
But Bracero often took his attitude to the streets, becoming every bit the brawler outside the ring.
“I loved to fight, especially with the guys who were bullies,” Bracero said. “I was loyal to a lot of people who I thought were my friends. Whenever trouble started, I’d always jump in to defend them.”
(Bob Duffy and Tommy Gallagher (photo by Keisha Morrisey)
On an early summer morning in 2001, Bracero said, he and a friend drove to Bayonne, N.J., to settle a score. Bracero said his friend fired the bullets that left two men injured, one of them paralyzed. They fled to Brooklyn, but were caught and arrested a short time later. Bracero was initially charged with attempted murder and released on $250,000 bail.
While awaiting trial, he returned to boxing, and to an undisciplined life.
“I started robbing drug dealers,” he said. “I’d point a gun at them, take their money and resell their drugs. I figured, these are horrible people anyway, and they would never turn me in to the police because they would get in trouble themselves.”
But Bracero’s promising career was interrupted in July 2003, in broad daylight, at the corner of 55th Street and Fifth Avenue in Sunset Park.
“I put my gun in this dude’s face, robbed him and started running,” Bracero said. “He started chasing me, so I turned and fired a shot into the ground to slow him down, but he kept coming. I looked back and thought I saw him holding a gun, so I fired again and hit him in the leg.
The guy went to the police. I couldn’t believe it.”
Bracero was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and sent to Rikers Island.
“You have no idea how disappointed I was,” Hilergio Bracero said. “Here was my son, who had what it took to become a world champion, and now he was going to prison. It was a terrible waste.”
While Gabriel Bracero was at Rikers Island, Gallagher sent him a photo taken two weeks before his arrest. The photo showed Bracero at a black-tie event with Luis Collazo, Paulie Malignaggi and Yuri Foreman, up-and-coming fighters who each went on to win a title.
“It was an attempt to motivate the kid,” Gallagher said. “In Gabe’s world, the street thugs were the superstars, the only ones who got respect. I tried to get it through his head that there was still a life beyond that world, that there was still something to strive for.”
When Bracero saw the photo, he said, he curled up in a ball and cried.
“These were the guys I grew up with, guys I sparred with, guys I was better than,” Bracero said. “I wanted to be out there doing what they were doing. I prayed to God every night for a second chance.”
In April 2005, Bracero was transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y.
“Boxing has always been my therapy, so I did anything I could to keep in shape,” Bracero said. “I braided my bed sheets in my cell, watered them down to give them enough weight, and used them as a jump rope.”
In July 2006, Bracero was moved to the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, N.Y., which has a boxing program for inmates.
“I knew that was a sign that I was destined to continue my career,” Bracero said. “I worked out in the ring and sparred every chance I got. A lot of guys who were doing life would come watch me work out. They would say things like, ‘You’re going to get out of here one day and become champion of the world.’ ”
In March 2008, Bracero was sent to Sing Sing in Ossining, N.Y., for one month, then was transferred to a prison in Annandale, N.J., to serve time for the Bayonne shooting. He accepted a plea bargain, reducing the attempted murder charges to aggravated assault. He was paroled in January 2009 and immediately reported to Gallagher to resume his career.
Since then, Bracero has reeled off 11 victories. Gallagher said that his plan was to “keep him as active as possible, and hopefully, he’ll be in line for a title shot early next year.”
DiBella said that he shared Gallagher’s vision for Bracero, and that he thinks Bracero “has what it takes to be a champion.”
“The kid has made some big mistakes, but I’d like to think he learned from them,” DiBella said. “After everything he’s been through, he’s never going to be afraid of whoever is waiting for him inside the ring.”
Before walking out of Gleason’s last Saturday, Bracero bounced off the ropes and walked to a rusty locker upon which he had taped the photo that Gallagher sent him in prison.
“I’ve lost a lot of time,” Bracero said, “but I’m still young enough to prove that I really do belong in the same class as those guys.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/sports/for-gabriel-bracero-a-long-road-back-to-the-boxing-ring.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=sportsBracero returns to the ring Saturday night from the Roseland Ballroom in Times Square as part of Boricua Invasion II. Highlights of Bracero’s bout with Guillermo Valdes (15-3, 3 KOs) will be shown on the Showtime series ShoBox: The New Generation, which will air the event’s top two bouts as part of their broadcast. In the main event, featherweights Luis Del Valle (12-0, 10 KOs) battles Dat Nguyen (17-1, 6 KOs) in an NABA title fight. Bracero is scheduled to be in the ring at 9pm.
In Bracero’s last bout, he won an 8-round unanimous decision over previously unbeaten Danny O’Connor on ShoBox.
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