Many of us know a person who has a dream or a goal that changed his life. With all the hardships and struggles in life, its only natural that someone would want to find a dream or set a goal in life for himself. Boxing was that dream for Abraham Flores.
Abraham Flores started boxing at the age of 11. He had a friend, Joe Perez, who was a boxer himself, and one day Abraham asked if it was okay if him to join Joe. Joe asked his coach, Steve VanDeWalle, and he agreed and thus began the training of Abraham Flores at Visconi Tigers. Eventually VanDeWalle opened up his own gym called Quad Cities PRIDE there Abraham did most of his training. VanDeWalle taught Abraham a lot of things and took him to shows and competitions like any good coach would. However, a coach can only do so much to keep a kid out of trouble, which is what Abraham began getting into. Soon enough Abraham was sent away to a correctional center.
When Abraham was released he moved to Sterling, Illinois. There, he found a gym, Al Silva’s Boxing Team in Rock Falls, Illinois, and continued to train. Eventually, Abraham moved back to East Moline. Here he got into more trouble with the law and ended up doing 9 months in Scott County. When he got out of jail he settled down with his girlfriend, whom he married later, and in 2012 they had a baby and named him Abraham Flores Jr.
Later Abraham heard about the Golden Gloves competition, which became his new goal in life. After 6 years of being out of the ring, Abraham went back to train at numerous gyms, one of them was his old gym Visconi Tigers, where he was trained by Ramsey Vesey and Rick Ybarra. He also trained at “Ring Of Champions” with Manny and his Father Virgil. A week before Golden Gloves, Abraham asked Jeff Perez from Alley cats to join his team to Golden Gloves and did his last bit of training with him.
A week later Abraham was at Golden Gloves, but unfortunately he did not win. Even though he was told that he did well, Abraham got discouraged and quit training for a few months. Soon enough Abraham was training again for Ringside at Nile Pena’s Gym, and after intense work outs that his Coach Nile Pena put him through, less then a month later, Abraham Flores was awarded Ringside Champion for the 123 lbs division.
Now that his corner is stronger than ever, his new and current goal is the 2016 Olympics. Abraham plans on competing on the Olympic Qualifier. He will take one fight at a time until his dreams become reality.
Abraham Flores is a proof that Boxing can change someone’s life. He started out as a trouble making kid, but he found a positive way out through the sport of boxing to later become amateur world Champion.
Photos by Vey Rodriguez Pictured: Abraham Flores and his current coach Nile Peña
About the author Ashley Landa
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