Located halfway between California’s central coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains, roughly an hour’s drive alongside Route 99 to Fresno and Bakersfield, lies Tulare, a low-slung city oasis nestled amid San Joaquin Valley’s orange groves, alfalfa fields and dairy farms. It’s hardly the primary place you’d go looking for America’s subsequent nice heavyweight hope.
However, then, Richard Torrez Jr. is filled with surprises.
Torrez, who is about to struggle Joey Dawejko on Friday in Glendale, Arizona, on the undercard of Jaime Munguia-Erik Bazinyan, checks loads of the standard bins of an upwardly cellular U.S. boxing prospect. He’s a California child with Mexican roots who comes from a combating household that features his grandfather Manuel, a former southwest Golden Gloves champion, and father Richard Sr., who reached the quarter-finals of the 1984 U.S. Olympic trials and now coaches his son. After Torrez received bronze on the 2019 Pan Am Video games and silver on the 2020 Olympics – his run was halted by Uzbekistan’s Bakhodir Jalolov, then knowledgeable, within the remaining – he ended a wildly profitable newbie profession (154-10) to show professional in 2021, signing a take care of High Rank.
But in most methods, Torrez (10-0, 10 KOs) is about as typical as a bolo punch. He’s a southpaw – actually un-orthodox – who has few progenitors of Hispanic heritage within the heavyweight division. And moderately than resembling the endomorphic Andy Ruiz Jr. or Cris Arreola, Torrez – at 6ft 2ins and a chiseled 230lbs – is constructed extra like cruiserweight-turned-heavyweight-champion Oleksandr Usyk. He bangs – as evidenced by his 100 per cent KO price – however Torrez is more healthy than most within the division, a reality mirrored in his mild toes and prodigious punch quantity.
And that footwork? It isn’t developed solely on the ring canvas, but additionally on the floorboards of the stage and dance studio. On the School of the Sequoias in close by Visalia, Torrez is burning by means of the varsity’s dance choices – together with ballet, jazz, faucet and salsa – and lately added one other new dimension to his coaching.
“I began taking a faucet dance class once more, and I integrated a tennis class as effectively as a result of my dad and a pair different coaches at the area people faculty say that tennis mimics boxing so much, making an attempt to get across the ball and reducing off angles in your opponents,” Torrez instructed BoxingScene. “And I’ve seen numerous similarities in that, so I added that to my repertoire as effectively.”
Fighters are feted for his or her laser-like focus and dedication to the grind; much less so in relation to cultivating a variety of pursuits and following their bliss. However Torrez has a curious thoughts that he’s grateful was given free reign to discover by his mother and father.
“Like, after I was a child, I wasn’t only a boxer,” Torrez mentioned. “You recognize, you get numerous these boxers that their mother and father solely allow them to field and nothing else. It’s the one factor, they usually burn out a bit of bit. I performed soccer, basketball and observe. I used to be within the engineering program. I am within the philosophy membership, nonetheless. I used to be in chess membership. I used to be in robotics. Like, my mother and father actually let me attempt to discover my area of interest, and boxing was all the time simply sort of like a continuing – and it simply turned out that boxing was my area of interest, as effectively. You recognize, I’ve all the time liked it. It has been part of who I’m, and it simply sort of caught with me even after that.”
Torrez isn’t shy about sharing his erudite aspect, and he has cheerily admitted to preferring the corporate of “nerds” over jocks. It appears the closest he has come to the form of bother typically related to boxing tradition is the event when he and his robotics buddies had been busted for making an attempt to make rocket gasoline. And though he can pluck insights and hone sure expertise from a few of his extracurriculars to be utilized within the ring, Torrez isn’t particularly calculating concerning the endgame. Relatively than a dyed-in-the-wool fighter, he’s extra of a pupil of the world who, for the second, occurs to be majoring in boxing.
“In numerous these endeavors, with college and totally different areas that I discover fascinating, I feel it permits me to relaxation my thoughts in boxing whereas nonetheless bettering myself for boxing,” he mentioned. “I don’t have to consider boxing an excessive amount of, nevertheless it’ll nonetheless put together me within the ring.”
Torrez says he’s noticing progress there, significantly in his adjustment from the amateurs to the professionals – and never solely in his adapting to the contrasts in model and the better variety of rounds, but additionally in navigating the chaos and commitments that include greater crowds, extra followers, blocks of interviews and sponsorship obligations. Predictably, he views the Dawejko struggle as one other studying expertise.
“Dawejko, he is actually good at countering,” Torrez mentioned. “He likes to sort of sit again and wait so that you can throw – like, after you throw, to return again with a shot, one or two pictures. And he is fairly good at conserving his vitality. So he’ll solely plunge [ahead] when he must. And so getting into there, I am wanting ahead to only utilizing my conditioning, as a result of I really feel like it doesn’t matter what, you get into these later rounds, it is gonna be onerous for any of these huge guys to stick with me – simply due to how onerous I work in my coaching camps.”
Ten fights into his professional profession, Torrez might be one other 10 away from proving whether or not he has each the talent and the sand to carry up the highest of the heavyweight division after the pillars Usyk, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua have ambled off into retirement. However within the meantime, he’s already eager about his subsequent journey outdoors the ring.
“I wish to see the Northern Lights,” Torrez mentioned. “I wish to go mild searching, man. I went to Iceland a bit of bit after the Olympics, and I missed the Northern Lights by someday. So I heard that they sort of began displaying out in September, and so perhaps Sweden or Iceland once more.”
Jason Langendorf is the previous Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, has contributed to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Guidelines, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Solar-Occasions and different publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Affiliation of America, he might be adopted on X and LinkedIn, and emailed at dorf2112@hotmail.com.
