TRU Boxing taking Pueblo pugilists to the pros
Anthony Soto has been boxing since he was 7. He is now a professional boxer with a record of 5-0-1 and has signed with HAVOC Boxing. He has also won nine Golden Gloves awards and was a four-time national champion.
Isaac Alvarez is a few years younger than Soto but has also been boxing since he was 7. He has won 10 Golden Gloves awards and is a six-time national champion.
Isaac’s sister, Iveth Alvarez, was only 3 years old when she started to learn how to box. Since then, she has won five Golden Gloves awards and is a two-time national champion.
What do all these boxers have in common aside from their accolades and wins? They are all trained out of one camp.
TRU Boxing is a family boxing club that trains anyone who wants to get into the sport in Pueblo. For the past 14 years, Gilbert Trujillo and fellow coach Miguel Alvarez have worked with Soto, Isaac, Iveth and other boxers to get them to this point.
More: Pueblo-grown boxer Anthony Soto set for next professional boxing bout
The “gym” is located in Trujillo's home. He has been coaching since 1997 when he was in the United States Army and built the gym inside of his garage. While it may be small in size, the setup is one of a top-notch club.
Trujillo said they have one basic goal for the gym: to show kids that dreams can come true by any necessary means through hard work and dedication.
“I always knew I was going to work with him (Soto) and teach him the fundamentals and teaching life.” Trujillo said.
Soto started training under Trujillo at 3 years old and since then, Soto has gone on to do big things in boxing. He attributes a lot of his success to training but also to his background and the different things he did when he was younger.
“I was young, active and I wanted to (play other sports),” Soto said. “Then just come middle school, I was getting hurt every year playing football when I was younger, I just kind of kept getting hurt. Then high school came. I was like, I'm not going to do it (football); I'm done. I'll play basketball, just have fun. Then I got into running and cross country. I run all the time, why not run at school and so (I) did that and that was actually kind of fun. It made me want to go faster and learn more about conditioning, too. I used to not drink water ever. It was a rarity for me to drink a whole 32 ounces of water a day."
Now Soto is working under world-renowned trainer Andre Rozier from Brooklyn, New York. He hopes to have his next professional match out in New York as well.
But Soto isn’t the only name that is coming up at the TRU Boxing club. Isaac and his sister Iveth are also making waves in their respective divisions.
Isaac just won the Golden Gloves and advanced to the regionals on July 23 in Denver. Isaac wants to try and make the USA National team and represent the USA in the 2024 Olympics.
Iveth recently won the 2022 Golden Gloves in June, and she is trying to make the Junior USA Boxing team in December. Isaac and Iveth also competed at nationals in Wichita, Kansas, this past week.
Both of them love working out with TRU and have grown up with Soto as well. For both of them, boxing is the main sport in life and nothing else comes before it.
“I lost a lot of time trying to recover,” Isaac said. “I had every problem, from breaking my ribs twice and a lot of them were just non-boxing injuries.”
Isaac played football when he was in high school. Now he only focuses on boxing and is looking to make it on the USA National team one day.
His sister Iveth also loves boxing. She’s been working at her craft for quite some time, and now that she is entering high school, she’s continuing to focus on boxing.
“I might try out track or cross country for fitness and cardio, but boxing is my main sport,” Iveth said.
At this point in her career, Iveth is struggling to find competition within the state and says that most of the time opponents will avoid entering her weight class to get around facing this up-and-coming boxer.
"When they see their names (Soto and Isaac), and people started to know them, and they see I'm from the same gym, they usually say, 'I dont know about that'," Iveth said, when talking about getting a matchup for herself.
Ultimately, all they can do is train and wait for a fight.
This kind of dedication is what helps define TRU Boxing club as a legitimate place to train for boxing. Right now, Trujillo has about eight boxers who train under his club, and it used to be more.
“I had like 25 kids in here and I was doing two or three sessions a day,” Trujillo said. “But it got hard for me and it just took away from the kids.”
More:Building an 'Empire': Pueblo track and field coach offering summer coaching service
Trujillo over the years has done the coaching out of his own pocket. He would provide the equipment and the training materials all on his own. Now he has to limit the number of kids he has under his club due to the time commitment.
However, Trujillo hopes in the near future, through funding and fundraisers, that he can take on more kids and continue to grow the club into what he hopes will be a resurgence of boxing in Pueblo.
“You know eventually,” Trujillo said. “There was always a goal since they were little, I think they had dreams to get successful but they have seen other people not necessarily from our state but you know they watched boxing and they have seen world champions and you know getting them to believe in this topic that's what I think the hard work pays off and people are seeing the results.”
Christopher Abdelmalek is a sports reporter for the Pueblo Chieftain and can be reached at cabdelmalek@gannett.com or on Twitter: @chowebacca
This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Tru Boxing putting Pueblo on the map when it comes to local talent
