A head coach in boxing plays a pivotal role in the sport. They prepare the fighter and also create many memories from the coaching and motivation they offer their fighters in the corner.
We intended to spotlight three lesser-known boxing trainers as the sport heads into a new era, each with their own accomplishments and journey. Here are the new faces of the corner:
Jose “Chepe” Contreras
One of the many great trainers who work out of Robert Garcia’s Boxing Academy in Moreno Valley, California, Contreras’ most notable night in the ring might be when he cornered Jackson Marinez against Rolando Romero. Romero got the nod, but Marinez put up a valiant effort, with some even believing he deserved the win.
So, how did Contreras get into boxing?
He started training roughly a year or two after he moved at age 12 to Mexico from Oxnard, California.
“My uncles were big boxing fans; they’d talk to each other about Salvador Sanchez and Julio Cesar Chavez,” Contreras told BoxingScene. “In Mexico, it is on television every Saturday for free, so that is how I got into it.”
Boxing became his passion.
Whenever there was a holiday, whether it was a summer break or Christmas vacation, he’d visit the gym in Oxnard.
“I started to train with RGBA every vacation that I had,” Contreras said. “It was my hobby.”
Ironically, Contreras admits that he “never took it that seriously”, despite loving the sport. He never had an amateur or professional career.
Contreras would train for a month at the Garcia gym and then go home to Mexico to train in the back of a small ranch of a family friend.
His friend knew how to box and helped him, but he wasn’t pushed the way he needed to become an elite fighter. Contreras stopped boxing to go to college. His goal was to become a physical education teacher. He was looking to bring the knowledge at his young age back to Mexico and help with up-and-coming fighters based on what he learned from his time with the Garcias. As soon as he finished school, he asked if he could help with RGBA, and he got his shot.
“I always remember the first day I walked into the gym, Robert had just signed Hector Tanajara Jnr, Joshua Franco, and Jonathan Navarro, when he made the move to Riverside,” Contreras said. “They were doing mitts that day, and I just remember thinking how good of an opportunity I was given, and I wasn’t going to let it pass by.”
Now, Contreras has had other memorable moments, such as seeing Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez spar Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez. That first day still stands out. Contreras recalled when Jose Ramirez unified the junior welterweight titles against fellow titleholder Maurice Hooker.
“We went to Matchroom to fight Hooker and to see a big team from Top Rank there to support Ramirez. It was cool to see,” Contreras said. “We were the underdogs, and it was seen as a 50-50 fight.”
Contreras remembers even more about that night.
“Robert sent me to watch Maurice Hooker get his hands wrapped and I was noticing a lot of little things,” Contreras said. “I saw a few small advantages just watching him getting wrapped.”
As for his training style, Contreras explained what makes his style different.
“I really focus on the fighter and what they need while trying to adapt to their style,” Contreras said. “I always try to leave my mark on a fighter. I always want them to remember I tried to help them.
Darrell Davis
Jahmal Harvey, the most anticipated 2024 Olympian who has yet to turn professional, is guided by Davis, a former college football quarterback who played at Charleston Southern University.
His journey to being a boxing coach was unintentional. He was helping with coaching football players and began to help train boxers as a way to keep athletes in shape year-round.
“I had no idea that coaching boxing would turn into this,” Davis told BoxingScene. “I was just doing it as another sport for the kids to go from football season to basketball season to boxing. Everyone in my neighborhood boxed, so I could always fight,” Davis said. “I had about a 12-1 record. I won the DC Mayor’s Cup.”
Davis compared his fighting style to Paul Williams, but also said his football outweighed his boxing times ten. Davis won Coach of the Month from USA Boxing in July 2017. In 2019, he got the USA Boxing Gym of the Year.
“I am a risk taker,” Davis said. “I brought seventeen kids to nationals that year, and I was in the championship match six times that tournament.” The amateur grind Davis recalls would break some of the parents of his young fighters. They’d expect that it would be a vacation, but Davis ran a strict program, tough on discipline. After winning a fight, it was back to shaking out and preparing for the next fight.
“I remember explaining to the parents the routine, and by the third day, a lot of the parents had mentally checked out,” Davis said. “They couldn’t keep up with the everyday struggle of shaking out weight, fighting, and then I would have the parent help the child shake out while I am cornering fighters for the entire day.”
Then there is Harvey, the Olympian and one of the most exciting up-and-coming U.S. prospects. Davis reflects on what it is like having a fighter like him.
“It is a gift from God,” Davis said. “We are on the same page, just the journey of it.”
As for Davis’ fighting style, he sums it up simply.
“My style is aggressive,” Davis said. “Check hooks are what we call holding. We hook off. We take one to give six back.”
Joseph Peres
The boxing bug caught up with Peres, a successful entrepreneur whose love for the sport began as a child.
“I remember my family gathering around to watch all the big fights,” Peres told BoxingScene. “So, as I got older, my best friend Ruben Salazar became a pro fighter, and at 17, 18 years old. I started helping him out.”
Peres had trained previously with Salazar, but admits he was green in 2006. He moved to San Diego, California, with Salazar, and on the suggestion of Salazar’s father became his coach. This was around the time of the UFC boom, and Salazar opted to get involved in the mixed martial arts waters.
“16 pro fights later, I picked another fighter, and then another fighter, as I was coaching and having to manage at times too,” Peres said. “I was selling tickets, printing t-shirts, and learning on the job.”
That journey came to an end in 2012. Peres’ professional endeavors brought him to San Francisco. He never thought he’d be in the boxing gym again. In 2017, he found himself back in the gym working with a 13-year-old fighter. 18 months later, he was ranked No.1 in the country for the junior male 138lbs division.
“I had a business in the Bay Area, and I was coming home every day at 3:00 PM at peak hours to coach this kid,” Peres said. “I became obsessed with the idea of proving people wrong.”
He heard it all. People would question what he knew because he had no amateur fights.
“I wanted to prove to the world and myself that if I put my mind to it, I could do anything,” Peres said. “I got obsessed with trying to win.”
He recalled getting obsessed with national tournaments, semi-final defeats were not losses, it was fuel and motivation for Peres to build a fighter who was deemed the best in the nation. Then he got his first silver medal nationally against one of the great modern amateurs of the era, Kasir “Mazzi” Goldston.
“A lot of people said we won the fight, but I didn’t want to hear any of that; we went right back to the gym,” Peres said. “Through the process, I started getting phone calls from other fighters, but I was turning them down, because I knew how much time I had to put into them.”
Peres then accepted an eight-year-old fighter. That eight-year-old would win a silver in his first Pee-Wee tournament. Six months later, Peres would win his first gold medal with the fighter at the Eastern Qualifiers.
“Boxing is a what have you done for me lately sport,” Peres said. “I heard people saying you won as a pee-wee, now try winning as a bantamweight, and we won as a bantam.”
Peres continued to prove people wrong, winning gold medals in intermediate, junior, and youth. Then in 2021, Peres accomplished a milestone goal: winning a gold medal with Steve Johnson at the 2021 Summer Festival in the elite division.
“Now it is at the point where I have the resume,” Peres said. “It is hard work and a little bit of luck.”
Peres admits he jumped into the fast lane, taking his fighters to four national tournaments a year. Often, loading the car up and taking fighters up to Oregon to fight in two-day tournaments.
“I took a boxer who was getting stopped in every tournament and got her back on Team USA,” Peres said. “She fought in the Pan-Am Games. I never thought I would be a boxing coach, but I feel boxing chose me.”
Now, Peres trains young up-and-comers he has worked with for a decade in El Centro, California.
“Even though I started in the pros, I am now returning to the pros with the same fighters I have been in the amateurs with,” Peres said. “I was humbled when the fighters I had worked with told me they would do camps with me in Southern California.”
Johnson, junior lightweight Braulio Ceja-Navarro, and cruiserweight Josue Valenzuela are amongst the top up-and-coming pros he is working with right now. It just became a never-ending door of what is next? Peres says his style isn’t easy to explain, but explains it is all about mastering the basics.
“I try to adapt to my fighters, I don’t have what is called an assembly line style,” Peres said. “If you give me five different fighters, I will create five different fighters based on their abilities.”
“Drillers make killers,” Peres said. “I don’t know everything about boxing, but I have been doing it long enough to know when it looks right.”
Peres explains his motivations for the next 15 years of coaching.
“I don’t do this for money, because I could do other things and make more money,” Peres said. “When I am old, I want someone to point at me in a gym and say, ‘That old guy over there is a great coach.’ That is my motivation for training fighters."
Lucas Ketelle is the author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing,” a guide for young fighters, a writer for BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at .
