Now, He’s Doing time in the Gym : After 5 Years in Prison, Alex Garcia Is Ready to Pay His Dues as a Boxer

The coaches said Alex Garcia Jr.’s biggest asset as a football player was that he was a bully on the field, he punished people.

As a 6-2, 225-pound sophomore, he started at middle linebacker for San Fernando High. Great things were expected for his next two years. There was talk of a college scholarship down the road.

But there was also Garcia’s other life, hanging with the gang on the street. There wasn’t enough excitement in school, and football lasted only a few months. The gang knew how to have fun all the time.

“We’d say, ‘Hey, let’s rob this guy or let’s rob this place.’ If you wanted a car you would steal one. We were young and we figured we wouldn’t do much time. You could always beat the rap. Back then it was fun.

“Then I caught the murder beef and everything went down the drain.”

At age 18 and still in high school, Garcia was charged with stabbing a rival gang member to death. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and went to state prison.

Now, five years later, the 23-year-old Garcia is back on the streets and has turned back to sports, to boxing, to pull his life together. His struggles are probably little different from those of a million other kids trying to box their way out of poverty. And his chances at the big time are one in a million.

But, for now, Garcia will settle for staying in the gym and out of trouble. The daily grind of training may be the best way to fight against slipping back to the streets and the gang and the crime.

“Some days it feels like it’s getting easier. Some days it feels like it’s getting harder.”

Garcia leans against the wall and smiles.

“It’s a lot of work. Sometimes you get up in the morning and your feet hurt and your back hurts and you don’t want to work out. But then you get to the gym and you feel all right and you forget about everything else.

“I’m feeling real good about myself. I’m not just hanging around the neighborhood.”

In the 9 1/2 months since he was paroled from Soledad State Prison and took up boxing, Garcia has fought only three times. But he has won all three amateur bouts with first-round knockouts and the last two victories earned him the super-heavyweight novice title in the Los Angeles-area Golden Gloves competition.

“His first fights were unusually professional,” said Edward Couzens, Garcia’s trainer. “We feel he has the capability to defend himself and throw hard punches.”

Garcia has also sparred regularly with former-World Boxing Assn. heavyweight champion Mike Weaver and heavyweight contender Mike Evans, who fought Olympic champion Tyrell Biggs in Madison Square Garden on national television last November.

“I won’t kid you, he has a lot left to prove,” said Blinky Rodriguez, Garcia’s manager and a professional kick boxer. “But he’s got ring presence. There’s a quality you see in him. He’s got a natural punch and he’s not wild. When he hurts you he’ll stay on top of you. He’s got killer instinct.

“Even more important, he’s getting over his problems. I mean, the kid just got out of Soledad. What can you say? He’s setting a dream for himself and we’re telling him ‘Don’t look back.’ ”

Garcia started “messing around with friends” when he was in junior high school. He soon learned from the older members of the gang that crime was one of the best ways to break the monotony of days spent hanging around with nothing to do.

Staring at the floor and mumbling about burglaries and car thefts, the soft-spoken Garcia was reluctant to discuss his criminal past.

The others in the gang often got away free, but Garcia was the tallest member of his gang, so when something went wrong, the authorities came looking for “the big Mexican,” Garcia said.

“My mom told me, ‘You’re always fighting in the street. Why don’t you go pro and get paid for it?’ ” he said with a laugh. “I thought about being a boxer when I was a kid but I was having too much fun on the streets.”

He spent time in juvenile hall--four months here, five months there--mostly for burglaries. The pattern continued in high school.

“At football practice, he was a complete gentleman. All ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir’ and always worked hard. He was a dynamite football player,” said Dwight Chapman, assistant football coach at San Fernando High. “But once school ended and he put on the bandanna and got with his buddies, it was ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.’ ”

For Garcia, the “fun” ended in January of 1980. He is hesitant to talk about the stabbing, but steadfastly maintains that he was innocent.

Garcia recalled that he went to a dance at a rented hall in Glendale. He said he heard a commotion outside, but never left the hall. He said that he later heard a member of a rival gang was stabbed to death.

Two weeks later, the police came to his house saying they had an eyewitness who would testify that Garcia stabbed the victim. Garcia was arrested and charged with murder.

“I was in County Jail all of 1980 fighting it. But there were other guys in jail who were fighting murder beefs and the jury found them guilty. Man, they were looking at 25 years to life. I started thinking about that.”

Garcia began to get scared, faced with the prosecution’s threat of a witness who would testify against him. The district attorney offered to reduce the charge against him to voluntary manslaughter if he pleaded guilty. The lesser charge carried only a seven-year maximum sentence. Garcia took the deal.

“I didn’t let prison get to me. It’s like boxing. You watch what people do and you learn from them. If you don’t, you could end up dead. And I never cried about it. I just did my time. I took it like a man. I played a lot of handball.”

Garcia said he remembered what his mother had told him about fighting professionally. As time wore on, he thought more and more about being a boxer.

“As soon as I got out I started looking for a gym.”

Sitting on a bench in the corner at his training gym, Benny “The Jet” Center in Van Nuys, Garcia was reflecting on his life since he left prison last June.

Unemployed, he now lives with his parents in North Hollywood and spends all of his time training. Rodriguez helped him get a grant from Project Heavy, a government-funded program for underprivileged young people, to pay the $900-a-year training fee.

Within 10 months, Garcia has seen his life go from sitting in a prison cell to getting into the ring with Weaver, one of the top heavyweight fighters in the world.

“I said to myself, ‘Why am I getting in the ring with this guy?’ But he was a nice dude,” Garcia recalled. “I hit him a few times, but it was like hitting a wall. The guy is solid. And quick for his size.”

Garcia figures he can reach top form as a fighter in four years. There is a lot to learn between now and then--not just punching and blocking shots, but also strategy, developing a style, breathing properly and learning to set the tempo in the ring.

There is also conditioning. Garcia has already trimmed down from 230 pounds to 218 by following a daily regimen that starts with running in the morning and ends with a four-hour workout in the gym.

“He’s in the gym everyday and he seems to be really into boxing. Before he was always with his friends,” said Cha-Chi Garcia, Alex’s 26-year-old sister. “We all think it’s great. It’s a big improvement from what he used to do.”

Next in line for the fighter is the Diamond Belt amateur boxing tournament in October. Between now and then he will look for any amateur bouts he can get. Rodriguez said his fighter needs at least 20 amateur fights before he will consider a professional career, but that does not stop the manager from looking ahead to future paydays.

“I’ve already got promoters calling me about Alex,” Rodriquez said. “He’s a rare commodity--he’s a Mexican heavyweight.”

Garcia himself admits to watching boxing on television and dreaming of the day when he will fly across the world to fight a million-dollar match.

But the world of boxing is still very new to the light-skinned, thick-browed man. And the memories of his past are strong. Across his bare stomach, in large blue letters, is tattooed the name of his old gang, “SAN FER.”

Garcia leans back on the bench and looks around the gym. In the corner, a massive heavyweight pounds the speed bag. Another fighter shadow-boxes in front of a mirror, the sweat dripping off his shoulders and arms, his trainer standing beside him barking instructions. Two welterweights spar in a burgundy-colored ring. One connects with a solid right and the other shakes his head.

“When I was growing up, they told me that the only person you can hurt is yourself. I’ve always tried to keep that in mind. I guess when I was young I just didn’t realize.”