The boxing ring at the Lopez Gym north of Minot is the training home to twin brothers Jose and Rafael Lopez. The gym is also the training ground for several young aspiring boxers, and it was one of those kids who looked up at the ring and excitingly said “Wow! That is a big ring!”
I spent several minutes watching the Lopez brothers warming up with one of their coaches, Gary Hundal, and I thought to myself about how small a boxing ring will look inside the Minot Auditorium on October 25th when Jose and Rafael step into the ring for their first pro boxing matches.
Behind the scenes, as promoter of the October 25th fight will be North Dakota native Virgil Hill. In Virgil’s trophy case there is an Olympic Silver Medal. There are also several World Championship belts in that trophy case as Virgil is a world champion in two weight classes, having held the World Boxing Association (WBA) light heavyweight title twice, from 1987 to 1997; the International Boxing Federation (IBF) light heavyweight title from 1996 to 1997; and the WBA cruiserweighttitle twice, between 2000 and 2007.
Helping as his partner promoting the event on October 25th is Virgil’s wife, Denine. Although the Hills live in California, where Virgil has a boxing gym and manages an amateur boxing team, according to Denine “Virgil always wants to bring boxing back to his home state whenever possible, and this is a great chance for us, and for the Lopez brothers.”
The Hills were able to see Jose and Rafael fight in Dickinson, and it was shortly after that the decision was made to schedule and promote a fight card in Minot. “Normally you would have a couple of amateur fights before you go pro, but for the twins (Jose & Rafael) they made the decision to go to a pro card” says Denine. “Right now, we have 11 fighters, of which 3 are women, so it will be a great card” continues Denine.
The Lopez graduated from high school last spring and have been hard on task training for their pro debut. Their coach Gary Hundall took them to Toronto, Canada to up their game a bit and “expose them to some high quality sparing partners” says Hundal. Anyone with a drive and passion for perfection in a sport certainly understands where the Lopez twins are in their careers. “The gym is their life” according to their father Alejandro Lopez. “The twins, they are different” says Alejandro, “Jose is more of the thinker, and Rafael, he is more the take action person.”
It has been exciting to start on the journey to October 25th with the entire Lopez family, especially Jose and Rafael. Next week we will talk to Quicksilver himself, Virgil Hill.
