“Cuba” Gonzales-Santos, Elisabe Hernandez-Perez, Alejandro Rodriguez - United Boxing Club

About this Nominee

At 10 years old, Gonzales-Santos began training as a boxer in Cuba – hence the nickname – but he was forced to stop and was kicked out of school when he began speaking out against Fidel Castro and the forced conscription of young people into the military.
That’s when he sunk into depression, addiction, and self-destruction, until he met his wife, Elisabe Hernandez-Perez. He says they escaped Cuba first via Costa Rica and then through 11 other countries, before claiming asylum and moving to Kalamazoo where, like most refugees, they had to start over.

Without a car or strong enough English skills to traverse the Metro bus system, the couple walked to and from their job at a Portage restaurant each day.

A co-worker introduced him to the local boxing community, and his style and experience almost immediately brought him attention, clients to train, and opportunities to fight himself.
Then the pandemic hit, the gyms were closed, and the fights were canceled.

He rushed to the stores on the last possible day and bought a speed bag, a punching bag, and a couple of weights. He knew he’d need to stay in shape, so his wife popped off her acrylic nails and filled in as his trainer.

The rhythmic thuds were like music to the boxer, but a cacophony to their neighbors. Their complaints put an end to Gonzales-Santos’s indoor training. In the summer, he took his training outdoors to the parking lot.

First his neighbors watched, then they started joining him. He says kids that lived in the apartment complex would join him after school and adults would arrive in the early evening and stay until midnight.

“Soon enough, when I would wake up to leave my apartment and go train, I’d have four or five students sitting on the staircase waiting for me to get out there,” he says. He was committed to the kids just as much as they were to training with him. Then winter came and he told them, “you guys gotta stop coming because if you keep coming, I’m going to keep training, and we’ll freeze to death out here.”

That’s when Gonzales-Santos sought out a real space for them to train, and partners to help support it. His promise to the kids was that as long as they showed up, he’d handle the bills and finances, caring for them in a way he wished someone had done for him as a kid.
“A lot of the students that come, they don’t live at home with their parents, and not all of them have their moms and dads at home,” Gonzales-Santos says. “A lot of them don’t have money.”

The two met Rodriguez through mutual friends, and he stepped in as an administrator of sorts, with a skillset for managing nonprofits and applying for grants.

Rodriguez helped in ways that provided life skills and job training for many youth who were ready to start their first job. We knew the youth needed money when they would come to the gym and couldn’t afford to pay their monthly fee, or even a new pair of gloves. Boxing can bring money, but it’s a difficult career and not everyone makes it.
Even if they don’t make their money from boxing, Rodriguez says, many of the teens become motivated to get their first legitimate job. The partners build trust, which helps the young fighters develop other parts of their lives.

Boxing draws the kids in, but in reality, the men provide a hub of resources that they’re looking to grow as they upgrade their gym. The finances just didn’t work in the smaller location, and they’re planning to close down the Edison neighborhood gym. They are working with parents and local nonprofits to help with transportation and other sustainability issues so that the expanded gym can still be a resource that kids heading toward trouble can be referred to.
The bigger space will allow them to better support their young amateur boxers and a larger, more traditional clientele, to make up for and build on the passion project for which they’ve paid out of pocket for years. In addition to boxing, there will also be training in Zumba, Taekwondo, Jujutsu, and Karate at the new facility.

We also continue to provide resource navigation, mental health support and other services that our alumni is in need of.
Our gym just doesn’t focus on boxing, we want to assure that our alumni is wining not just in the ring, but also outside the ring.
We want all our students to live a good life, sometimes this looks like helping a person receive therapy, or counseling, sometimes it requires connecting someone to housing resources for help with housing, sometimes is providing gas cards or bus tokens so people can get to and from work or school.
We believe that boxing is the net that we cast out, but as the gym draws people in, we want to come alongside everyone and take them through what we call discipleship.
Not just physical support but also spiritual guidance.
Our gym serves as a lighthouse in our community, pointing people in the direction that will better benefit them. We want everyone to win.
Coach Cuba says no cardio no champion, that applies to all aspects of life. So if your not doing the best you can, you may lose a round here and there, but we believe that you can always get up and keep fighting as long as you have the right people in your corner.