Boxing brings Tucson retiree new challenge

Even before retiring from the City of Tucson at age 62 in November 2023, John O. Garcia had already heard a doctor tell him he was obese and had seen an inactive stepfather pass away early in his retirement.

He didn’t know what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, only what he did not.

No pickleball, Garcia said. No corn hole. No wandering around aimlessly. Nothing too easy.

Just challenge. Some kind of challenge.

“I didn’t want a life of laziness,” he said earlier this month, after finishing three rounds of sparring at T-Town Boxing in preparation for the Senior Masters Boxing event Saturday in Las Vegas. “I think this happens to men a lot when they retire: You putter around the garden, you go top off the gas in the car. … You don’t have to go to work, so it’s ‘What now?’

“I saw my stepdad do that, and he died shortly thereafter. I wanted to continue to grow.”

At the same time, a decades-old message from his mother kept ringing through Garcia’s head: Learn to defend yourself.

Already, Garcia had started taking self-defense courses, gaining exposure to judo and some other martial arts. But nothing hit him quite right, except boxing.

“I was sort of lost,” said Garcia said. “I was retiring from the city, and at the same time my mother got sick and was in the hospital. I was just moping around trying to figure out what I’m gonna do. I was walking down Congress, and I saw a sign and I walked in.”

The sign, above the old Chicago Music Store building, read “T-Town Boxing … Walk-ins welcome, join upstairs.”

So one day in December 2022, Garcia walked in and went upstairs. There, he met owner Jake Wilson, a former pro and amateur fighter who had never worked with a competitive boxer as old as Garcia.

“It was ‘What are your goals?’ At first it wasn’t about competition,” Wilson said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, we can work on some boxing and some techniques, some basic fundamentals.’”

Wilson said Garcia was strong but “stiff,” and with a serious need for cardio work. So they worked weekly on all those things for 10 months starting in January 2023. They focused not on things that can get you knocked to the canvas, but getting into shape.

That’s what most of Wilson’s clients want.

An Oregon transplant who says he once prepared former Arizona basketball player Rawle Alkins for the NBA draft process, Wilson says only eight of his 150 members actually compete in boxing competitions.

Garcia was progressing well enough with the routine that, upon retiring in November 2023 after serving in various business and accounting-related roles for the city, he took up Wilson’s suggestion to increase his boxing training from once to twice a week.

But Wilson didn’t expect what came next, a few months later.

“We went to lunch at a pizza place and I asked him, ‘Do you think I can go to the Masters?’” Garcia said. “And it was pause … He said, ‘Yeah, we just have to do a little more stuff.’”

Garcia’s friends were even more skeptical.

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“I think they thought that this hobby would soon pass after I got punched in the face a few times,” Garcia said.

There are safeguards in Masters Boxing. Fighters older than 45 must take an EKG as part of a physical workup, then wear heavier headgear and gloves than boxers in regular competition, and their rounds are just 90 seconds instead of the usual three minutes for men. They also aren’t allowed to fight anyone more than 10 years younger or older than they are.

But, of course, they can still get punched in the face. They can get knocked to the canvas.

That’s the nature of boxing competition.

“It’s high level problem-solving with dire consequences,” Wilson says. “If you don’t solve the problem correctly, there’s really bad consequences.”

That’s why Garcia, now 63, spends two days a week in Wilson’s ring, training, sparring and constantly hearing Wilson in his ear.

“I want that back knee bent here. Now, hold,” said Wilson, while guiding Garcia through a recent workout in his gym, now located just north of downtown. “I’m getting leverage on the back. I need everything that motors on the back of the boat. If I put the motor on the front of the boat, it just goes around the circle.”

That was the warmup on this particular day. After 10 minutes, Garcia held a sparring session with Roman Kelly, a 23-year-old Tucson resident who will debut his amateur career next month.

“I’m old enough to be his grandfather,” Garcia says.

Yes, he is. But the two traded jabs for three two-minute rounds, and Garcia stood up the whole time.

It was another initiation, after Wilson himself gave Garcia one a week earlier, trying to prepare him for speed beyond what he might see in the Masters event.

“Just doing three two-minute rounds with a young kid who’s moving around like that, it’s not easy,” Wilson says. “When I sparred with him, I was going fast. I wanted him to get overwhelmed, so he has to stay calm, and then fire.

“It’s like you walk into a dark room and you get hit and you don’t know where it came from. I want him to be ready, so he has that flashlight and he goes in that background.”

He’s ready now, Wilson says.

Because there is only one other cruiserweight (189-203 pounds) competitor in his age category, Garcia is scheduled to fight 66-year-old John Mote for the championship at the Orleans Arena Saturday in Las Vegas.

Before he could enter, Garcia had a physical workup. He’s supplemented his boxing with weight training and other workouts. He has better cardio, a leaner 200-pound frame and says he feels “a little stronger in my day to day life.”

Also, he has inspiration. From his stepfather, his mother and a good friend who also passed away in 2023 unexpectedly at age 58.

“That year, three things died: my mother died, my friend died, and my career died,” Garcia said. “I thought, ‘Maybe it’s time for me to move on.’”

So Garcia moved on to life, exactly the way he wanted to live.