Photo by Frank Tankard
Monday, June 16, 2008
Where the four ropes enclosing the ring are frayed, duct tape does the job. The canvas is stained with blood and dirt. A fan blows loudly somewhere overhead. Harsh fluorescent lights shine.
Mirrors on two sides of the ring broadcast Marcus Oliveira’s punches to a dozen kids sliding side to side, gloves up, honing their footwork along the red carpet of the humming Topeka gym.
“You ain’t gotta hit him hard, you just gotta hit him,” Erik Riley instructs his light heavyweight from the ropes. Sweaty, lean and muscular in his black cutoff T-shirt, Oliveira hits his sparring partner with a quick combination. “Just like that,” Riley says. “One-two. Short.”
Oliveira, 29, was the pride of Haskell Boxing Club when he turned pro two years ago. Since then, he’s gone 12-0-1 with nine knockouts, building his record with small-money fights and waiting to take his shot at a big-time opponent. It’s getting close to time.
He broke his right hand in the fifth round of his last fight, a 10-round draw against Nick Cook (15-1-2) for the vacant United States Boxing Council light heavyweight title in February.
A rematch with Cook for the title is in the works, and Oliveira’s manager, Doug Ward, says he’d like for him to pick up another one of the many alphabet titles before angling for a major title shot. “Hopefully, before we close out 2009,” Ward says, “he’s the world champion.”
Marcus Oliveira Fight
- When: Friday, June 20, 2008, 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.
- Where: Kansas Expocentre, One Expocentre Drive, Topeka, KS
- Cost: $21 - $31
- Age limit: Not available
As a hundred other guys in other cities say the same thing, Oliveira spars in the Danger-Fire gym, training for a June 20 fight at the Kansas Expocentre in Topeka against Leo Pla (3-2-1). Riley quietly instructs from the ropes. “Don’t lose your balance,” he says.
After today’s workout, Oliveira will drive 30 minutes back to Mayetta, where he lives with his girlfriend and newborn baby boy on the Prairie Band Potawatomi Reservation. The next day, he’ll wake up at 5:30 a.m. and go to his full-time job cleaning hotel rooms at Prairie Brand Casino & Resort. Then it’s back to the gym.
Balance can be a hard thing to keep while you’re trying to become champion of the world in your spare time.
•••
Photo by Frank Tankard
Marcus Oliveira
On a Saturday night six years ago, Oliveira showed up at Riley’s garage in Lawrence as a Golden Gloves amateur boxing burnout.
The formula for Riley’s informal fight nights was simple: cheap gloves, two competitors and a crowd. Riley was the one kicking just about everyone’s ass, until the day Oliveira showed up. Riley tells the well-worn story like it was folklore:
“This skinny, 185-pounder came in one day and everybody was scared to fight him,” says Riley, who is 6 feet tall and weighed 250 pounds at the time. “They said, ‘He’s Golden Gloves, he’s Golden Gloves.’ I was like, ‘I ain’t scared, man. Line him up.’
“He beat my ass in 30 seconds. I didn’t hit him once. He hit me with a hook-power, ‘pop-pop.’ I didn’t see the punch coming. I ran after him. I was throwing every punch I knew, just throwing and throwing. I missed him every time.”
As Riley was having his 30-second Great Awakening, learning what a real boxer was like, he didn’t know that Oliveira was realizing, for the first time since he’d quit, how much he missed the sport.
Growing up in Keshena, Wis., on the Menominee Reservation, Oliveira was about 7 years old when his mother started dropping him off at the Keshena & Neopit Boxing Club on her way to work the evening shift at the casino.
Audio clips: Waiting for his shot: Talking with Haskell Boxing Club Star Marcus Oliveira
- Marcus Oliveira explains how he went from thinking he sucked to kicking ass
- Marcus Oliveira on how he got started at the age of 7
- Trainer Erik Riley on getting beat by Oliveira at a toughman contest six years ago
- Trainer Erik Riley on Oliveira's heart and training someone with more experience than him
From then on, he was in the gym nearly every day. He estimates he’d fought more than 200 bouts by the time he was 19, winning most of them but not standing out as a prodigy by any means.
“I actually hated boxing for a long time,” Oliveira says, speaking softly in the gym with an air of shyness, “the butterflies you’d get before you’d get in the ring, and sometimes the beatings you would take. You can’t beat up everybody.”
Meanwhile, he started getting into trouble as a teenager. “Stealing, breaking into houses and stuff,” he explains. “A lot of trouble, hanging out with people that were getting me in trouble. It just wasn’t good.”
He moved to Kansas to finish high school, staying with an aunt in Ottawa. When his aunt went back to Wisconsin, he moved in with one of his teachers and her husband. They then moved to Ulysses, in southwestern Kansas, where he finished high school.
As he adjusted to his changing surroundings, he left boxing behind. “I’d been doing it for so long,” he says, “I was completely sick of it.”
He worked odd jobs here and there after high school. Then he moved to Lawrence and enrolled at Haskell. He picked up basketball and joined the team, becoming one of the leading scorers despite being new to the sport.
On the night a bunch of his friends headed to Riley’s house for fight night, Oliveira had been out of boxing for a while but figured he’d give it a try. Kicking Riley’s ass felt great.
•••
Riley, who works in maintenance for Lawrence Public Schools, became somewhat of a boxing fanatic after that night.
He started attending pro fights and boning up on the sport. He found a trainer through Topeka Golden Gloves. Within a couple of years, he and some others had started Haskell Boxing Club out of an old yellow building on campus. (The club, still going strong, relocated to a nicer building in January. They’re still saving up for a boxing ring.)
As Riley’s love of the sport grew, Oliveira started easing his way back into it, working a punching bag in Riley’s garage between class, work and basketball. Riley’s coach, Paul Adame, started giving him pointers to relay to Oliveira while they trained.
Oliveira signed up for some fights, and even though he wasn’t in top shape yet, he felt better than he had as a kid. He started gaining confidence. “When I moved up here, I still thought I sucked at boxing because I was always getting beat in Wisconsin when I was younger,” he says.
Before long, he was defeating nationally ranked amateurs at regional and national tournaments and climbed to the rank of 10th in the nation among heavyweights.
When he decided to turn pro in 2006, Riley called around to managers and promoters to find someone to take care of the business end of things. Riley says most of the people he talked to wanted to sign Oliveira right away, offering 20-fight deals over five years and such.
Then, he called Doug Ward, of Underground Boxing Company out of Overland Park. After watching Oliveira spar at Haskell, Ward offered him a handshake deal. “They just had a little hole-in-the-wall gym,” Ward recalls, “but you can pretty much tell if a guy’s got that potential or not.”
Two years later, they still haven’t signed a formal contract.
“After I talked to Doug, that’s when I saw all the other promoters were just licking their chops at us,” Riley says. “And I didn’t even know.”
•••
Damon Reed still remembers how hard Oliveira hit when he sparred with him years ago, back when Oliveira was an amateur and Reed was in his prime.
“I think Marcus only came two or three rounds on me, but he was hell on me for those two or three rounds,” Reed says. “I thought, ‘My gosh, if that kid gets in good shape, he’s gonna be dangerous.’”
Reed, 36, once lost a World Boxing Organization heavyweight title match to Herbie Hide, was a sparring partner with former champion Tommy Morrison and has fought big-money bouts in Europe and South Africa.
He’s promoted all but one of Oliveira’s fights through Danger-Fire Promotions, the company he co-owns with fellow boxer Craig Cummings. He says all that’s keeping Oliveira from earning a lot more money is timing.
In his last fight, Oliveira says he made about $2,300. He says he averages about $1,300 a fight. Not a bad bonus to his salary at the casino, but not close to a living wage on its own. That could change soon. The big fights are out there. He just has to choose the right one at the right time.
Reed says that at 29 years old and with his level of experience, the time for Oliveira to start scheduling bigger fights has about arrived. But the bigger the fight, the tougher the opponent and the larger the risk of losing something he can never have back: his undefeated record.
“If you’re gonna go fight for $10,000, $15,000, $20,000,” Reed says, “they’re only gonna pay you that because you’re fighting a bad dude.”
Before he takes a big-money fight, it’s crucial to schedule opponents he can beat but who will also challenge him, making him a better boxer. Of course, when you’re undefeated, everybody’s gunning for you, Ward says.
“That guy’s always gonna bring his best game to the table because he knows he’s in a no-lose situation against Marcus,” he says. “You get beat by an undefeated fighter, it’s no big knock on you. But if you beat him, then suddenly you’re a giant-killer.”
•••
Oliveira has finished sparring. Riley had stepped into the ring and sparred after him, and now he’s done too. They exit out the back of the gym, placing a weight in the door so it doesn’t lock. Soon everyone will be gone except for them.
“It’s always like this, too,” Riley says. “We get here at 5, the first ones to come, and the last ones to leave.”
He starts his stopwatch and instructs Oliveira to take off running toward a Westlake Ace Hardware trailer 100 yards down the parking lot. 2009, Ward says, and this man could be the champion of the world. That is, if he keeps winning fights. To get his best shot, he first has to win June 20. He returns from the trailer, then takes off again. Riley contemplates the future.
“I’ve always said, when Marcus gets really good, I’m going to have to step back a little bit and have somebody else take over,” he says.
Between training the fighters in Haskell Boxing Club and training Oliveira, Riley has packed a lot of experience into the last few years. He’s gone from beating people up guerilla-style in his garage to winning Kansas City Golden Gloves Coach of the Year in 2007. But one day he might have to step into the role of Oliveira’s assistant trainer. At the minimum, he wants to be there to watch his friend’s back.
“Me and Marcus, we talk,” he says. “If he ever says, ‘I want to do something different,’ I’m always going to be open to that, but I want to tell Marcus too, ‘You’re not gonna go without me.’”
Oliveira has completed his sprints and now it’s time for free weights. Then he’s done with his three-hour workout and it’s back to Mayetta. He’s living two realities. On one hand, he’s a promising boxer, a possible star. On the other, he’s got a new baby boy, Marcellus, to feed. “It’s going to change now since we just got the kid,” he says. “It’s a lot harder.”
He’s waiting for his shot. In the meantime, he’s got to keep his balance. «
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