Mi brother Carlos el friend Alvarez.

WHAT ELSE COULD I ASK FOR? 

Thank you Texx Spezia-Shwiff for writing such a beautiful review about your friend🙏🏾🥊👊🏾🥊👊🏾🦍

l sure appreciate his kindness to write this!

A Real-Life Superhero!

The first thing someone may notice about Carlos is his build. He is only 5’7” but his shoulders and back make him look like a tank of a human. His boxing is even more impressive. Once, I was holding a bag for him and asked him to hit it as hard as he could. His punch pushed me, a 135 pound MMA fighter, a couple of feet into a wall that actually broke where my foot hit it. I remember my jaw dropping from this movie-like display of strength. When watching Carlos box it can be hard to understand how someone his size can generate the power he does while moving the way he does. He is one of the few people I’ve met who I’m completely confident could destroy me in a fight. The control he has over his fists: everything from the area where they land to the strength with which he lands them, feels like it comes from a ancient tale about a grandmaster of martial arts. 

He’s also extremely charismatic. His English is slightly accented, but his jokes are absolutely hilarious and he has a way with words. He can express more in one sentence than many people could with a paragraph.

While these physical abilities and talents are truly remarkable, they are not the reason he is so special, nor are they the only things that draw the superhero comparison.

Carlos is from a rural town in Mexico, 2 hours north of the city of Guadalajara. To call this a rough place would be a bit of an understatement. Since a young age Carlos has had to deal with bullies of all kinds and all ages. In his words, people would always be looking to pick on you, especially if you seemed smaller or more vulnerable, and if you didn’t fight back, you would permanently be a target. I have experienced somewhat similar circumstances, but the environment Carlos was in was much more difficult than the one I experienced. 

This is where he developed the boxing skills of a warrior. While he could tell the world to screw off and use his skills for only himself and his family, and while it would sort of make sense for him to do so, he instead uses all of his skills for the help others. First of all, he will literally stop whatever he’s doing whenever he’s doing it to help someone in need. This can mean helping them get a meal to eat if they’re homeless or stand up to bullies if he sees someone being picked on. As he’s told me “I’m not afraid to lose. I don’t lose a lot, but I’m not afraid to lose a fight.” He’s not afraid to show emotion or cry, he’s not afraid to be honest about difficult things he’s been through; through this he shows that strength is not just physical but also in not being scared of people judging you or knowing your vulnerabilities. True internal strength is not only derived from physical strength (which Carlos has in abundance), but also from being unafraid to stand for what you believe in, even if it means being physically or emotionally destroyed. In the words of Dr. King “ 'A man who does not have something for which he is willing to die is not fit to live.” Carlos is not afraid to lose a fight or even to die if it means defending what is right. Probably because of this Carlos has not lost a fight for decades.

It also says something about him that he didn’t start bullying others, or even become indifferent to the mistreatment of others. Being in that kind of environment can make you callous to the world, it can make you lose hope and optimism and start to accept the evil of the world as “just the way it is”. This did not happen with Carlos. He started into the abyss and the abyss is who blinked, figuratively speaking. 

“People of character do the right thing even if no one else does, not because they think it will change the world but because they refuse to be changed by the world. -Michael Josephson

The other big way that he helps the world is the way that I met him. Carlos runs a boxing gym out of his house, where he trains people of all kinds of ages, genders, and races to box. He’s trained around 40 people overall, and he’s spent hundreds if not thousands of hours giving expert boxing lesson... for free. The only thing he demands is that his boxers respect others, act like good people, and work to prevent bullying and mistreatment of others. When I knew of a kid in Middle School who was being bullied, Carlos was the first person that I talked to, and he ended up taking in this 8th grader under his wing to train him. 

I am blessed to say that I not only have learned how to box from him, and box well, but I have also learned a lot about how to be a better person and a stronger person because of Carlos. This is still a work in progress, I can still afford to improve in not only not doing bad things but in actively adding good to the world.