Often alone in his Casa del Mar hotel room in Oxnard, California, away from the comfortable surroundings of Hollywood and apart from his throng of friends and family, Brian Viloria has had plenty of time to reflect on what has taken place in his once-promising career.
Since winning the WBC jr. flyweight title by stopping Eric Ortiz in one round in September of 2005 and making a successful title defense of that title against Jose Antonio Aguirre, he’s hasn’t won a fight. First he would get upset by huge underdog Omar Nino. Then in the rematch he would fade down the stretch and have to settle for a disputed draw. Nino would then fail the post-fight urinalysis, giving Viloria another crack at the title. But this past April he would be outfought down the stretch and lose a close majority decision to Edgar Sosa.
Because of this, he begins 2008 as the opening bout on Telefutura this Friday night at the Alameda Swap Meet in Los Angeles versus Jose Bernal. Win a round here or there, dig down just a bit deeper or land another punch or two to sway the judges, and he could be a world champion working on his next title defense on a major show. Instead, he’s fighting at a place where you look for bargains and bootleg DVDs.
All of this goes through his mind in his moments of solitude.
“A lot of that, just basically going to practice and even on the runs alone. Yeah, I have two or three other fighters that run with me, but in the moments you come back to the room and you look around and you’re like, ‘OK, you’re not in the same place that you got really comfortable in,’ and you just basically reflect on things and how you got to that point,” Viloria would tell Maxboxing. “And it really helped me get into that mode where I really needed to find where I needed to be in my career, what I wanted for myself. So it really was a big reflection on me.
“I just really worked on me being a fighter and just really wanting things. There are a lot of questions going around whether I wanted it or not or I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a world champion or if I did things just enough so I could get to that point. But I do want things for myself. I do want another world championship. I want another crack at that again.
“Just staying there by myself got me to think about things for myself and what I needed to do as far as being a fighter.”
‘There’ would be Oxnard, best known for producing strawberries and Fernando Vargas. About 45 minutes away from Los Angeles, this city, which is the biggest in Ventura County, is a haven of the working class and a far cry from the fast-paced lifestyle that existed for Viloria in Hollywood, where he was based since the inception of his professional career in 2001.
For the last month or so he has trained with Robert and Eduardo Garcia (famous for training ‘the Ferocious One’) and he now calls La Colonia Gym his boxing home.
“I was bouncing back and forth with different coaches for the last few years after I left Freddie Roach and the Wild Card. So it really hasn’t been difficult for me,” he says of the transition. “I just really needed to find the right person, the right trainer to get me where I wanted to get to. I was just bouncing around to get the right feel of things. Now, I’m in Oxnard with Robert Garcia and it’s so great, I can feel the right changes condition-wise and physically and mentally too.
“It was really tough for me to find the right coach and trainer. But I feel like I’ve grown into who I am out here in Oxnard and it really needs to show on Friday to see where I am.”
The Garcias are Viloria’s fourth training team in as many fights. But in the past, he never left the safe cocoon of Los Angeles. Here, it’s a Spartan existence.
?They have a small kitchen where I can cook in. You got just a bed and TV,” he says of his hotel room, which is anything but a presidential suite. “That’s all you need, basically. All I do is train all day anyway. So it’s not like I’m in the room all the time.”
Gary Gittelsohn, his respected manager, believes that his fighter may have had things a bit too luxurious and cozy in the past.
“I think so,” he says, “It’s been my experience with fighters over the years that if you can have a very talented fighter, keeping a world title is always more difficult than acquiring it. And Brian was in a very comfortable sort of upper-middle class environment in LA where he was able to pursue interests that went beyond boxing and I think that when you’re a professional boxer, very few people have the luxury of being able to dedicate themselves to anything but boxing if they want to be a success.”
In the Garcias and Oxnard, he believes he has found the right atmosphere for his boxer.
“Brian, for a good part of his professional development, was on his own. His success tracked the same success Freddie Roach had and Freddie quite naturally became stretched too thin,” Gittelsohn says. “And more important, more high-profile fighters got his time and that left less time available for Brian. So we had to make some hard choices and I finally found a situation for Brian where I was able to get him out of his comfortable environment here in LA and get him into a training camp environment that is as bare bones and back-to-basics as it gets.
“I think with the Garcias, their record of achievement speaks for itself and they work with some terrific guys. They’ve got good sparring for Brian, so all that works well for what I hope will be a very successful team.”
Robert Garcia, the former jr. lightweight titlist who’s becoming a noted trainer, says that the chemistry between himself, the rest of his boxers and Viloria is already clicking.
“He’s easy to work with, does everything we tell him and is very fun to be with. Already he’s good friends with all the guys at the gym and everything.” Garcia says that fighters can indeed get too comfortable with their surroundings. “I think it does happen, and sometimes with change, it’s what they need. What I see with Brian is he knows how good he is. So they come to a point where training is not too big for them. They think they’re already good enough to do good in the fight. But what I try to bring back on him is he’s got a great style, counter-punching, moving in and out, side to side. That’s what I’m trying to bring. He’s got very fast hands and he has a pretty solid punch. I think all he was focusing on was his punch.”
Viloria admits that he may have fallen prey to complacency in the past.
“I noticed being in this training situation, just focusing on boxing alone and not having to worry about everything else, with my personal life and all that, just basically waking up and just running and coming back and just thinking about boxing and just getting into that mode,” he says. “It just really brought out something in me that I haven’t seen since I first started, that little fire that I needed to push me over to where I wanted to go.”
It wasn’t that long ago that Viloria was a young champion with a bright future in front of him. Now, he’s just another guy who’s in danger of being another footnote of a highly disappointing 2000 US Olympic squad that has failed to live up to expectations.
In 2008, he either stays relevant or contemplates retirement.
?I just give myself this year to do well,” says Viloria. “I ran into a lot of walls last year and I really want to just start off this New Year on the right foot January 4th. I’m really taking it seriously just to see where I am at this point in my career. I’m taking this to heart and it’s really pivotal for me to do well on Friday.”
