“You kids matter more to me than anything in this whole world,” he said. “And you have a chance to do more and be better than any Silva in our family, so, God willing, I’m going to help you get there.” He wanted to be with us more without feeling exhausted all the time, and if that meant sacrificing a better job and a good paycheck, so be it. He was tired of being tired.
With more hours of free time, he began to study to get his GED—which stands for General Education Diploma. Basically, because he had never officially graduated from high school, he had to take this test to get his diploma. He spent a few months cramming for the exam, and received his GED! He told me my dream calendar might be rubbing off on him.
Another goal he had was to get us all eating better and living a healthier lifestyle. He didn’t like how often we had takeout or fast food, and said all that was going to have to change. One evening he made us watch a documentary called What the Health, which was about our nation’s pharmaceutical and meat industries and, in the filmmaker’s opinion, how bad processed meats are for your body and the environment. It freaked me out so much that after watching the movie, I said, “Forget it! I’m going to be a vegan!”
From that day on I tried to eat a no-animal-product diet. My father and sometimes my brother did too—but we had our “cheat days” . . . which meant we’d eat pizza with lots of cheese, and ice cream for dessert. My father started preparing all-organic lunches with fruit and beans and rice. Never any meat. And we did more research to find the best balanced diet for our new lifestyle. My poor grandmother rolled her eyes when we’d make meals consisting of quinoa and zucchini noodles. “You need some meat in those growing bodies!” she’d say. My father was used to people judging his decisions; it bounced right off him, but sometimes it stuck to me, and I would think about what I was putting into my body more than I wanted to. Truthfully, the fact that there are so many opinions about how people should eat is very confusing. Animals in the wild don’t seem to have any problems with their diets.
The problem with boxing—and every boxer experiences this—is the obsession with weight and food that comes with the sport. Weighing a certain amount to fit into a division is part of the game. Papi made sure I didn’t obsess about it. He had no intention of raising a girl with an eating disorder. Healthy choices were discussed openly and often in our household. I learned about the benefits of protein, cut the carbs, and made sure I ate plenty of greens and fruits. Thinking about our eating habits was probably the biggest change for our family. A few years earlier we would have had no problem grabbing a quick bite from the McDonald’s drive-thru. What was first a struggle to eat healthier and more consciously became a habit, and now I can’t imagine eating the way I used to.
The more time I spent at the gym, the more I got to know my teammates from the Police Athletic League—PAL—gym. They quickly became an extended family to me. There were nine of us altogether—ranging in age from ten to eighteen. I was the only girl, and the youngest, but it didn’t seem to bother anybody. When one of them had a rough day at school or at home, we’d help them punch it out in the gym. I saw a few of them go down hard in the ring, and a few of them rise to the top. When one teammate won a big match, we all felt like we’d won—same with losses. I was close with all of them, but Brian and Zack were probably the two I felt the closest to. They were five years older and treated me like a little sister. When I had a bad day, they always knew how to make me laugh.
One of my teammates, nicknamed Flash, landed a top spot fighting in New Jersey’s Golden Gloves tournament. Each state had a Golden Gloves tournament, and the winner advanced to nationals. It was a pretty big deal for amateur boxers to advance to that level of fighting. You had to be at least sixteen years old to fight in the Golden Gloves, and no junior-level boxer from our team had ever made it to nationals. Not only was Flash a top boxer representing our team at the national level, but he ended up winning the national title that year! We all felt proud.
But every weekend, as I watched and supported my teammates in match after match, I kept thinking it would be impossible for me to be up there fighting in the Junior Olympics—and definitely not at the Garden—if I didn’t have any girls my age to fight and practice on. So I asked Don again if he could get another match together. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
“You haven’t forgotten that I want to fight in the Junior Olympics, have you?” I said with a big smile.
“I don’t think you’d ever let me forget that,” he said and smiled back.
One day while I was doing speed-bag training, Don said he had great news. He had found a girl for me to fight. He’d gotten a call from a coach in New York. The girl might be a bit more experienced, he said, but he thought I could handle her.
We were set to fight at the PAL Show—an event my gym hosted that featured the best amateur boxers in our tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and I was going to be one of them! A week before the PAL Show, my father, brother, and I handed out fliers for the event around town. We posted them at school, and in restaurants and shops and dry cleaners. I even brought one to the nail salon where I got my nails painted purple, black, and gold to match my boxing outfit. When Papi delivered food orders, he handed out fliers to customers along with their order. “Come watch my daughter box!” he’d say proudly.
At school, kids seemed interested in learning more about the boxing tournament. They knew I’d been training for bigger matches for a while, but had never asked questions beyond that. It was the first time my classmates seemed genuinely curious about my sport. A bunch of girls asked how I got started, and Mackenzie told them how she’d watched me train. I told them to come to the fight and see for themselves.
My second official sanctioned fight was at 7:00 p.m., Saturday, June 11, 2016. I was now ten years old. This time, it wasn’t an away meet like my first match; it was near my hometown at Hackensack High School, and the place was jumping! I admit I was pretty excited to show off a little in front of my friends. Like my first sanctioned fight, it was quite a production: lights, tickets, a photographer, announcers, real referees, and a big boxing ring in the middle of the large gymnasium. I got there early for weigh-in, like all the other fighters.
When I saw the girl I was going to fight, I realized she was much bigger than I’d expected. Her name was Maya, and she was a pretty Puerto Rican with a head of tight braids and defined arm and leg muscles. She was older than me by a year and a half but looked much older.
“Don, how many fights does she have?” I asked.
“Oh, I think eleven or twelve.”
Eleven or twelve?! I had only one sanctioned fight.
“That’s more than ‘a bit more experienced,’ Don,” Papi said anxiously.
“Jess can handle her.”
“How has she found so many girls to fight?” I asked Don.
“She hasn’t. She’s fought the same two girls half a dozen times. So don’t worry.”
“But she’s still got more experience. I don’t know, she might be too strong for Jess.” Papi acted like I wasn’t even there.
“Papi, I don’t care how many fights she has—I want to fight her.”
But my father was concerned that fighting a girl with more experience could backfire and cause me to lose my confidence in the ring. Don assured him I’d be fine. He reminded us that boxing isn’t just about strength and experience, it’s also about agility, stamina, willpower, and smarts. So basically it’s a lot like every day of school. I wasn’t worried about Maya’s experience or her age or her size, because I was going to make up for it with confidence and determination. All I wanted was to achieve my dream of becoming an Olympic gold–winning boxer, and I wasn’t going to let someone with a little more experience intimidate me. Plus, with all my hours of training in the gym and sparring with my teammates, I more than made up a few of those fights—at least I hoped so. Okay, so there was a little twinge o
f doubt, but I pushed it down and didn’t give it any attention after that.
“I can handle her,” I said to my father.
I weighed in at 72 pounds, but Maya was weighed in at 78 pounds. We didn’t need to be exactly the same weight, but we needed to be a few pounds closer before the fight would be allowed to go on. Because it’s harder to lose four pounds in thirty minutes than it is to gain, it meant I had to put on four pounds quickly to fight in her division, the 80-pound division. I ate half a sandwich, even though I really wasn’t hungry, and drank a bottle of water. It went down too fast, and I got a cramp in my side. It still wasn’t enough poundage.
“Get some more water in you. You need more water,” Papi said. “And another bite of sandwich.”
I pushed away the sandwich. “Papi, stop! I’m going to throw up.”
Usually boxers want to lose weight to fight in a lower weight division, but I had been trying to bulk up for this fight for two weeks—while also training hard. The laws of physics, Don had explained to me, apply to boxing: a person who weighs more will land stronger punches. That’s why they have weight divisions: lightweight, middleweight, heavyweight. Even the greatest lightweight boxer will find it challenging to win against a middleweighter. So when a boxer determines his or her weight division, they try to weigh at the top of the category. In this fight, I would be on the low end of weight in my division, and Maya would be on the higher end. That meant the laws of physics were against me from the very beginning. But a boxer can’t go into a fight thinking about the laws of physics or whether she is on the higher or lower end of her weight division or she’ll doom herself. “Someone’s gotta be the smaller boxer,” Don would say. So it might as well be me this time.
“Three more pounds, just three more pounds,” Papi said to me.
“I can’t drink any more. I won’t be able to move!”
So I put on my whole boxing outfit—including my street shoes.
I just made it. Three pounds’ difference. The fight was on!
Before my fight started, I scanned the stands, excited about seeing all my friends from school. I didn’t see any of them. Nobody had showed. Not even Mackenzie. Then I scanned to see if there were any familiar faces from my community—but I saw only my teammates. The only person outside of my boxing crew to come watch me fight was Ms. Nelson, who had been my second-grade teacher. I was glad she had come, but it hurt a little that not one single friend of mine from school made it that day.
Then I saw a group of people waving to me at a VIP table ringside. Papi had purchased special tickets to get that ringside spot to surprise me. Sitting at the table were my uncle and his wife, my brother, and my grandmother. I couldn’t believe they all came to watch. It gave me instant confidence.
Before any sanctioned boxing match, boxers have to get their wraps checked by the officials to make sure they’re not illegally padded. My great-grandfather once told me that in his day, there was a famous cartoon image of a fighter putting a horseshoe in his boxing glove so he’d be able to get a solid whack on his opponent. He said Jack Dempsey, a well-known boxer in his time, supposedly loaded his glove with a railroad spike when he destroyed Jess Willard in a brutal match in 1919. That of course was way back when, and now the rules are much stricter. In fact, boxers are now given official certified-legal boxing gloves—either a red pair or a blue pair, and that’s the color you become for the night. Whenever I’m handed the certified gloves, I think of the image of a horseshoe or a railroad spike tucked away in another boxer’s glove somewhere in history.
Nowadays, several referees check equipment and make sure boxers are fighting in the appropriate weight divisions. There are so many last-minute no-shows and changes that it’s always a crazy scramble until the actual matches begin. Once in a while you’ll hear the announcer say, “Okay, everybody, back to the weigh-in,” which means they’ve had to recalibrate the scales because they were wrong.
It had been seven months since my last sanctioned fight with Carrie in November 2015; I had sparred many boys in between. I was now ten years old, but still fighting in the youth Pee Wee division. I wouldn’t move up to the next division, the Bantam division, until I turned eleven. The night I boxed Maya, I was red gloves. My gold, purple, and black boxing outfit was a little tighter on me this time around, since I was growing like a weed; it would probably be the last time I could wear it. We would fight the usual three rounds, one minute each round. Maya was not only way taller, older, and more experienced than I was, but pretty intimidating. She walked around the ring with confidence—maybe it was even arrogance—and with her strong arms and legs flexed. When she saw me enter the ring, she acted all tough, like the lights had just come on and the camera was rolling and it was “showtime.” I’d seen this move before. It was just a technique to psyche me out—but it was working. She also had a tough walk, another technique, that made her resemble a wild animal ready to pounce. She wiped her mouth as if she were drooling with hunger. Maybe she was, but so was I. I had learned a thing or two since my first fight, and I had my own set of intimidation tactics. The moment I entered the ring, I was in fighter mode, but I stayed chill. I stared at her hard, assessing her body type. That was my intimidation tactic. Never let them see you sweat. Study your opponent. Look them up and down. Don’t give too much away. Yes, she might have been a dominating force in the ring, but I had a shot at this. I gave her a hint of the stink eye and lifted my chin to say, Come on, come get me. Strong body language is the pride of every boxer.
Headgear on, then the gloves, the mouthpiece last. We both stomped our feet in respect to each judge and went to our corners. Ready. The chanting crowd got me going, and they exploded when Maya and I started to shake our limbs and bounce up and down. My heart was beating out of my chest, but it was more from excitement than nervousness. Still I had to tell myself to stay balanced and focus. I heard a kid near ringside mock my petite size—“Look at that skinny little girl fighting!” I wasn’t going to let it get to me. One of my teammates nudged the guy in the arm and said, “That skinny little girl is fierce, bro!”
I closed my eyes and told myself not to doubt who I was or where I came from. The big girl across the ring from me might have been a boxer, but I was a fighter. Fighting was in my DNA. I came from a long line of fighters who had battled tougher situations. I could handle this. I thought of my grandfather and my grandmother and my great-grandfather. I thought of my father and his fight to make it work as a single father juggling work and raising a family. Then I thought of Madison Square Garden and smiled.
The announcer welcomed the match with pomp as he geared up.
He introduced my opponent. A good number of people clapped and cheered. Then he introduced me:
“Annndddd in this corner, from our very own Bergenfield, New Jerseeeyyy, Jesselyn ‘Too Cute’ Silva!” My teammates and family went nuts with the cheering. I was so glad they had my back.
I could handle this.
Maya and I met in the middle and bumped fists, moved back to our corners, listened to final words from our trainers, and faced the center of the ring, waiting for the bell to signal go time. Once you’re in that position, between the ropes, facing your opponent, you’re in there and there’s no place to hide and no way out after the starting bell rings. So once you’re in, you have to be ready to give blood.
Don looked at me and smiled. “Focus on your footwork. Speed is on your side. Show them what you got, Jess.”
The bell rang.
Maya came out really hard and got me with one powerful punch. I moved back to adjust. I’d been hit in the face while sparring and during training, but there was always something about that first punch of a new opponent that felt foreign and got my attention. It didn’t necessarily hurt, but it was always jarring in the way that anything new takes some getting used to. I needed to adjust to her speed and strength quickly or I’d never make it past round one. I couldn’t get off b
alance. I had to snap with the jab. I concentrated on my breathing and my feet. I had been preparing for this for years, and if I wasn’t ready now, I’d never be ready.
“Keep your hands close to your chin,” Don was saying.
Papi was hollering, “Jess, jab.”
Both Don and Papi were nervous. I could tell because they were kind of overcoaching, but I didn’t mind because I was enjoying the bob and weave of the match. I felt well conditioned and strong. Then I got hit with an uppercut to the jaw—hard. It caught me off guard, and I gave myself a little distance. I shoved my mouthpiece out to my lower lip with my tongue, sucked it back in. Then I moved toward her again.
“That’s it, Jess,” my teammates were shouting ringside. “You got this, Jess!”
Papi’s voice grew louder as the excitement grew: “You’re working the wrong hook . . . Half step back . . . Change your angle.”
Don threw me some praise: “Yes, Jess, that’s it. Hit hard, stay smart.”
Maya got in a few more solid uppercuts, throwing me off balance again. I got back in my southpaw stance, jabbing with my right, a few power shots with my left. When I got hit, all I’d think about was trying to get my punch back. Equal hits and I could actually win this thing, I thought.
The bell rang.
Round one was over and a win for Maya. But I had kept up with her in dodging hits and had even thrown a few to match hers. I wasn’t at all discouraged.
“Jess, you’re doing great,” Don said. “Just remember to work on your blocking. But you’re doing great.”
My Corner of the Ring Page 6
