Boxing Still Has Right Hook for Trainer

At age 72, Noe Cruz can still be found most days at the Westminster Boxing Club, still working with young fighters, still keeping an eye out for the next hot prospect.

Boxing has been his passion for more than 40 years, but the only real fighting Cruz ever did was as a young Navy recruit. He fought 18 “smokers,” informally arranged bouts between servicemen with no official standing. He won a few; lost a few.

Cruz returned home from the Navy to Rio Grande City, a south Texas town near the Mexican border where he grew up working from dawn to dusk on the family farm with his father and grandfather. It was not a place where a career in any professional sport was an option.

Yet Cruz would eventually find success in boxing as a trainer, 30 years after his brief military boxing career ended. He discovered and trained Carlos Palomino in 1968, who went on to become welterweight champion of the world in 1976.

“It’s like playing the Lotto,” said Cruz, a Fullerton resident. “You can be a trainer all your life and never have a winner. I was lucky.”

His luck came after many years of hard work. After moving to California in 1951, Cruz spent 32 years working for a roofing company, volunteering his off-hours to teach boxing to troubled youths at a small Los Angeles community gym. It was his training ground.

“Some of these kids were juvenile delinquents, from the streets. They were in gangs. We didn’t have that kind of thing when I was growing up, it was just work,” Cruz said. “Boxing gave them discipline, the kind of discipline I had when I was growing up. I grew up in the Depression; everybody worked hard. You had no choice.”

After Cruz moved to Orange County, he taught boxing at the newly opened Stanton Athletic Club in 1965. The former club operated out of a vacant church building on Beach Boulevard, created by community leaders to give youths an alternative to gangs. Three years later, 18-year-old Carlos Palomino walked into the gym.

“He was hitting the heavy bag, and I could see that he had a lot of natural ability. He was the kind of guy I’d been looking for. I watched him for about three or four days, and then I asked him if he wanted to box, and he told me, ‘Yes.’ So we went to work. It was that simple.”

Cruz did not have to talk Palomino into the idea.

“You never push an athlete into doing something he doesn’t want to do himself. You can’t force him. If he wants to do it, he has to do it himself. And that’s a hard discipline, to come in every day and give 100%.”

Cruz started him out in amateur bouts with the inmates at Chino prison.

“Every month, we’d take the guys from the Stanton club and go over there to fight. They were matched pretty evenly, but they were tough fights.”

Palomino was drafted into the Army, where he won the All-Army boxing championships, returning home to train with Cruz and Jackie McCoy, who had become Palomino’s manager.

Cruz and McCoy worked with Palomino again earlier this year, training the 47-year-old boxer for a comeback fight, 18 years after he had retired from the ring.

“Jackie and I saw Carlos walk into the gym one day, and he told us he wanted to fight again. I was shocked. I thought he was kidding. We did not want to see him get hurt. Carlos never took a beating because he was in super condition all the time.

“So we said, ‘We’ll take a look at you.’ I was looking at his legs. If you’ve got a pair of legs, you can fight again. That was point No. 1. The second point was if he’s got some reflexes left. Then stamina and endurance, and a good frame of mind. He looked good, so we went ahead and gave him the green light.”

McCoy, who developed five world champions during a 46-year career, died of cancer last January, three days after Palomino’s comeback fight. Palomino won that fight by stopping Ismael Diaz at the end of eight rounds in a scheduled 10-rounder.

Cruz thinks he may have another champion in the making. He’s been working with 25-year-old Ancee Gedeon of Westminster for about three years, a bantamweight fighter who lost a world title bout in March 1996.

“He works hard, like a horse. When he first came in, he showed me a lot of ability, but he was more like a brawler. . . . He quit fighting for a year to learn some skills,” Cruz said. “He’s got all the ability and the skills right now to fight anybody. It’s just a matter of time. It’s just a matter of time.”

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Profile: Noe Cruz

Age: 72

Hometown: Rio Grande City, Texas

Residence: Fullerton

Family: Wife of 51 years, Mary; five children; 11 grandchildren; one great-grandchild

Education: Attended Rio Grande High School in Texas; completed workshops on the science, psychology and techniques of boxing at USC as an adult

Background: Joined Navy at 18; operated earth-moving equipment for construction of Falcon Dam (Zapata, Texas), 1947-51; production work for Reynolds Aluminum, 1951; flood-gate technician at Sepulveda Dam (Van Nuys), 1951-52; roofer, 1952-84

Boxing: Eighteen matches in the Navy; taught boxing to troubled youths in Los Angeles, 1953-64; youth boxing coach, 1965-75, when he discovered Carlos Palomino; boxing coach in Santa Ana, 1975-78; trainer at the Westminster Boxing Club since 1979; trained Palomino for his successful comeback last May; trains Westminster police officers

On finding Carlos Palomino: “I watched him for about three or four days, and then I asked him if he wanted to box, and he told me, ‘Yes.’ So we went to work. It was that simple.”

Source: Noe Cruz; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times