Rematch. The word has been bouncing around in the head for more than nine months. Celeste Alaniz. That combination of eight letters has become the fuel that fueled his patient and tenacious work while waiting for that moment. The time for revenge will come this Saturday, when she will face the American Marlen Esparza at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California (TyC Sports will broadcast from 10:30 p.m.). There the flyweight titles of the World Boxing Association, the World Boxing Council and the World Boxing Organization will be put into play. Or, as she emphasizes again and again, that which belongs to her.
Chucky He does not resort to euphemisms or circumlocutions to define what happened on July 8 of last year in the first fight against Esparza in San Antonio: “It was a robbery, without a doubt.” That night, the boxer from Barrio Rivadavia de Merlo, who was then the WBO 112-pound champion, faced the American of Mexican family, who owned the WBA and WBC belts, in a unification duel.
With aggressive, fast and intense boxing, the Argentine was, in the eyes of most specialists, superior in the balance of the 10 rounds. However, the three American judges made a different evaluation: two of them, Javier Álvarez (99-91) and Esther López (97-93), awarded the victory to the local team and the remaining one, Lisa Giampa, declared a tie (95 -95). The whistles from the public, as Texan as Esparza, when the result was read were eloquent.
“While I was waiting for the ruling, I was sure they were going to lift my arm. When I heard her name, everything fell apart. I thought: ‘It can’t be, this can’t be happening to me.’ The booing of the audience was heard and that finally convinced me that she had done things well. When I got out of the ring, people came up to me, greeted me, asked me for photos, told me that the fight had been a robbery. That left me calmer, despite the anger I had,” recalls Alaniz.
The parsimony with which he reconstructs that day today contrasts with the sadness of the hours after that defeat that ended his undefeated record of 14 professional fights. “The first few days, I had what had happened in my head all the time. Although I had gone with the idea that it could happen, I wondered why. Afterwards I calmed down, the only thing I wanted was to get my revenge. I am very positive, but at first I thought it was not going to happen because of how these things are handled,” he admits.
Celeste Alaniz won 14 of her 15 professional fights and six of them were defined before the limit. Photo: Juano Tesone.
The possibility of revenge began to be woven the same night of that painful fall from the work of Georgina Rivero, promoter of Alaniz. “Celeste changed, we went to eat pizza and while everyone was eating, I put on my glasses and started. I wrote to the three World Championship Committees (WBA, WBC and WBO), told them what had happened and asked for a review of the ruling and an immediate rematch. I had already spoken with the prosecutors of the three entities and they had suggested that I make the claim. I cannot find out what they said afterwards, but I understand that they endorsed the request,” explains Rivero.
The management, like a serial, was resolved in chapters. On August 4, after the evaluation of a panel of independent judges convened to this, the WBO ordered a direct rematch within a period of no more than 90 days, something extremely rare in situations like this. But first Golden Boy Promotions, the company that manages Esparza’s interests, tried to avoid retaliation and then tried to agree on a unification with the American Gabriela Fundora, champion of the International Boxing Federation. These negotiations dragged on without an agreement until in December the organizations, at the initiative of Alaniz’s team, told Esparza’s managers to agree to a rematch between their boxer and the Argentine.
The first agreed date for revenge was March 16 and the venue was the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas. However, problems in the process of obtaining the Argentinean work visa truncated that possibility and extended the wait for six more weeks, which will finally come to an end this Saturday. In the middle, it was necessary to modify the planning of his training routine and resume sparring sessions.
“We knew how to take advantage of that extra time we had. Obviously I really wanted to fight, but I kept focused and aiming for the big goal, which was to get to the fight 100 percent,” says the challenger, who admits that the day she found out about the cancellation of the fight, she felt “bad, down.” “But the next day I went back to training as if nothing had happened because I am very clear about what I want and nothing was going to affect me. I knew how to handle it very calmly,” she explains.
Despite the long wait, Reaching this revenge is evaluated as a triumph by the entire team. Chucky. “It is a satisfaction and a pride to have achieved this for Celeste. The organizations complied in carrying out the review and giving us the rematch, now it is our turn to show that the rematch was well done,” reasons Rivero, who in October was recognized by the WBO as the Latin promoter of the year. Alaniz picks up the gauntlet and highlights the work of her promoter: “Georgina took care of this all the time and thanks to that we have this chance. Each one did their own thing: me, above the ring, winning the fight; and she, below, giving it to me so that they would grant me revenge.”
Celeste Alaniz lost to Marlen Esparza in a fight whose decision was highly discussed and merited a direct rematch. Photo: Golden Boy Promotions.
The woman who directs the destinies of OR Promotions (the company founded by Osvaldo Rivero, her father, in 1988) is one of the pieces that make up the basis on which the work of the Merlense boxer is affirmed. This structure, which also includes a nutritionist and a psychologist (“she helped me get through these months with calmness and patience, with my feet on the Earth,” says the former champion), has two fundamental pillars, son and father: Leandro Ledesma, his coach, and Julio César Ledesma, the guide of his career. “Thanks to them I got to where I am,” she praises the two men who have accompanied her since she first set foot in a gym 12 years ago.
At that time, Alaniz was 15 years old and, unlike many boxers, she already had, before putting on a glove even once, the nickname that still accompanies her and that refers to the doll from the horror movie saga. Child’s Play whose body is invaded by the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray. “My mother put me Chucky when I was a baby because I was terrible. When I started crawling, I already started making batons. And since then it stuck with me,” she explains.
That baby’s unruliness escalated until it reached its peak during Celeste’s adolescence, when Leonardo, her father, introduced her to sports as a way to channel her energy: “I was very provocative, I got into fights in the street and at school, and it made my mother suffer, who was the one who kept complaining because everyone was going to talk to her with complaints. One day, my dad sat me down and asked me: ‘Since you like to fight, would you like to start boxing?’”
Chucky He accepted without knowing very well what the universe he was about to enter was about and despite the fear of María Angélica, his mother. “When I walked into the gym, I looked at the bags, I put on the gloves and I immediately fell in love with boxing. At that moment this dream was born. And also my father was not wrong because I never fought again in the street or at school,” she highlights.
Celeste Alaniz is preparing for her first performance in Las Vegas. Photo: Juano Tesone.
When Alaniz started boxing, she was already the mother of Jazmín, who is now 12 years old and accompanied her throughout almost her entire career. With the support of her family, her motherhood, far from being an obstacle, became an encouragement. “I dreamed of being a world champion and I also thought that with boxing I could change my life and that of my daughter. And that is what I am achieving,” says the former WBO monarch. And she reveals that in her first fights she avoided taking Jazmín with her for fear that her crying would blur her focus.
– How much did you realize that boxing was more than just a hobby?
– The day I had my first fight, I knew that boxing was for me. It was a litmus test to know how I was going to feel and I loved it. I got out of the ring very happy and never wanted to stop again. Since then, I never doubted what I had chosen, regardless of the difficulties.
After a colorful career as an amateur, Alaniz was seen as a hope for Argentine boxing when she debuted as a boxer at the Argentine Boxing Federation stadium in May 2018 (she beat María Elizabeth Sánchez). In February 2020, in her seventh professional fight, she won the national flyweight title by knocking out Anyelen Espinosa in Lanús. After that victory, the country’s main promoters tried to add her to their ranks. Already in tandem with OR Promotions, she reached the WBO world championship in June 2022 with another categorical definition against Tamara Demarco in Merlo. “Looking back, I see everything I accomplished and I can’t believe how far I’m getting,” she admits.
Be arriving. The use of gerund periphrasis is not accidental. Chucky He thinks of his journey in sport as a path that he is firmly traveling, but which still has several seasons left. One of those that she projects is to be a champion in a higher division. “But I have to go step by step and day by day,” she warns. Now I have it in my head to recover what is mine. This rematch was what she most expected, the only thing she had in her head.”
Marlen Esparza has won her last seven fights after her only professional loss to Seniesa Estrada in November 2019. Photo: Golden Boy Promotions.
To recover what he feels is his, he will have to beat Esparza, 34 years old, who won 14 of his 15 professional contestss (she was only defeated in 2019 by the undefeated Seniesa Estrada, today the undisputed champion of the minimum category), and that before entering paid boxing she had been the first American boxer to qualify for the Olympic Games, she had won a bronze medal in London 2012, she had been amateur champion at the Jeju 2014 World Cup and had been the first woman to sign a contract with Golden Boy Promotions (in December 2016, four months before debuting as a rental).
The background of the fighter born in Houston and daughter of Mexican parents does not intimidate Alaniz, who was not dazzled after fighting 10 rounds with Esparza. “It was an easier fight than I expected from it because of what I had seen, because of what I had been told and because of how it was talked about. It was easy for me to hit her. Now maybe I should look for other things, not just hit him, but take care of myself a little more,” she evaluates.
-How do you minimize the risk of repeating a mistake like the one in the first fight?
– I don’t know what will happen, everything will be seen in the ring, but I don’t think they want to make mistakes again like the first time because this had a lot of repercussions. I hope this time they are more coherent. I also have things to improve and I am going to do everything to make things clearer than that night. In addition, the knockout hand is in the plans to appear. She already felt my hand and I already know that she doesn’t hit anything, although she boxes and has other resources.
In addition to being a lover of her sport, Celeste Alaniz is a soccer fan and a Boca fan. Photo: Juano Tesone.
A victory against Esparza would not only mean a huge boost for the Argentinean’s career and a door to new and profitable opportunities in the United States, but it would also give national women’s boxing a joy in times when reasons for celebration are less than yesteryear. The country has consecrated 35 champions in the last two decades, but today it only has two: the Buenos Aires Clara Lescurat (WBA super flyweight) and the Villa Galvanian Evelin Bermúdez (WBO and IBF light flyweight).
“I want to get back what they took from me. I know I’m not alone, I have a lot of people behind me who are going to go up with me to look for those belts. It’s for me, it’s for what they did to me in the first fight and it’s for all those people,” emphasizes Alaniz, for whom these nine months of ups and downs were marked by that word that will mutate into fact on Saturday: revenge.
2024-04-24 09:02:33
