Young Jeezy blared over the speakers as Antonio Martinez, better known as “Tone” throughout the Española Valley, went through his usual warm-up paces.
He danced around the ring, July 13, inside Holmes Boxing’s training base, a small, unmarked building on Santa Fe’s south side.
The heater was blasting, creating sauna-like conditions, which juxtaposed to the chill that a summer monsoon brought. Martinez is in the midst of preparing for his 15th professional match in September, against a fighter that has yet to be decided.
What is known, though, is that Martinez will be fighting at Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino, which has been a relative fortress for him over the last four years.
He has fought nine matches there, winning eight and drawing once.
His draw came against Benjamin Vasquez of Amarillo, Texas, whom Martinez fought once more in May. In that latest fight, Martinez won with a technical knockout. In his write-up, boxing writer Austin Killeen, of Killeen’s Korner, called Martinez’s punch that ended the match “the best punch of the year.”
With eight consecutive undefeated matches, Martinez has become the biggest boxing name to come out of Española in the last decade — and he is prepared to launch onto the national scene in the near future.
He is used to having sold-out crowds watch him at Buffalo Thunder — crowds that have a tendency to break out into a chorus of “Tone.”
But, that was not always the case.
Brawler beginnings
“It was like he (Martinez) had a rebirth … as soon as he hooked up with Pat Holmes, it has turned his career around,” Killeen said.
Martinez, now 31, began his career late, for the average boxer. He was 21 when he first hit the bags with a level of seriousness. Professional fighter Monica Lovato opened a program in Española, and he decided to join.
“I’ve always been a fan of boxing, but there was never anything there,” he said. “Finally, when they (Lovato) started a program, I went in to just to check it out and hit bags, and I fell in love with it.”
Martinez is a small welterweight, competing in a weight division that maxes out at 147 pounds, although he normally drifts close to the 140-pound mark, that would land him in the super lightweight division.
He fought 11 amateur matches before eventually going professional. His first six matches were some of the toughest.
Of those first six fights, from 2010 to 2013, he was able to lift his arm in victory for just one.
In April 2013, Martinez faced off against his toughest opponent to date, Jose Carlos Ramirez of Avenal, Calif., another light welterweight. Ramirez holds such honors as being a three-time United States amateur lightweight champion, and he represented the United States in the 2012 Olympics in London.
“We were in Austin,” Martinez said. “We had gone to get my wife a salad from McDonald’s. I turned the cup around, and he (Ramirez) was on the cup with his Olympic medals.”
He ended up going the distance with Ramirez, staving off a knockout, but Ramirez came out on top with a unanimous decision from the judges. If the two were to fight again, Ramirez would surely not recognize this version of Martinez, compared to the one he squared off against in 2013.
In Martinez’s early days, he fought as a brawler, meaning he would try to get as close to his opponent as possible, to land powerful hits. It is a more aggressive style that generally ends up with more confrontation and contact.
His brawler days ended in November 2014, as he contacted local trainer, Holmes, who took Martinez under his guidance and stressed the more technical aspects of boxing. At the time, Martinez’s professional record was 1-2-3, and he had little interest from any trainers, but Holmes took him on.
“Before I started training with Pat (Holmes), I was kind of that guy,” Martinez said. “I would come in and take five shots to land one.”
Now, Martinez is more careful with his movement in the ring. He will only take a shot when necessary and possesses a vastly improved defensive skill set.
Killeen noted that in his last match against Vasquez, Martinez showed off a strong left jab that Killeen had never seen from him.
“If it was fun for him before, it’s exciting for him now,” Holmes said. “Now, he’s got a few more tools.”
Since coming under Holmes’s direction, Martinez has yet to lose a match, only drawing that once to Vasquez in 2016. Martinez’s record is currently 8-2-4.
Corrections
You can find Martinez training every day in the Holmes Boxing gym in Santa Fe, except Sunday. No matter the weather or condition, Holmes makes sure that he is getting the most out of Martinez every day.
Usually, practice starts with a little fatigue, especially after Martinez is finished with his trying job as a corrections officer at the Santa Fe Penitentiary. He commutes from his home in Hernandez to Santa Fe early in the morning. From there, he might work a 12-hour shift before going to the gym, changing out of his uniform, and hitting the bags for another few hours.
“As soon as I get out of work, from a 12-hour day, I come over here, and we grind for another two-and-a-half or three hours,” Martinez said.
He has worked as a corrections officer for three-and-a-half years. Before that, he was a dialysis tech for seven years. His side gig as a boxer has earned him newfound respect from the inmates with whom he interacts on a daily basis.
“A lot of them have found out, and not by me talking or anyone talking,” Martinez said. “They’ve seen commercials or newspaper clippings, because they get all that stuff, or they’ll hear it on the radio. A lot of them will respect me after. They’ll go ‘When’s your next fight’ or ‘Good luck, if I don’t talk to you beforehand.’”
Supportive love
When Martinez readies himself in the ring during a fight, he has a number of tattoos on display.
Among the most eye-grabbing are a Zia symbol above his right hip and an image of St. Michael over his heart.
A bit lower, on his right calf, are two Chinese symbols stacked vertically. One stands for love and the other for eternity. Martinez’s wife, Claudia Martinez, has a matching tattoo of those Chinese symbols in the same spot.
The two met at Española Valley High School, more specifically in the Edward Medina Gymnasium. Claudia Martinez was a sophomore cheerleader, and Antonio Martinez was out of high school, but watching the Sundevils basketball team for which he used to play. They met 13 years ago.
“The rest is history,” Claudia Martinez said.
She has been by his side since he started in the amateurs. She goes to as many practices as she can, fitting in time when her job as a universal banker allows. She can usually be found ringside, holding a water bottle and a towel for whenever her husband needs a break.
She also fills a sort of unofficial coaching role, filming his training sessions, and he says that she has a good eye for the sport.
“Usually she (Claudia Martinez) films sparring,” Holmes said. “She has everything down. She says, ‘Look,’ and she sends it back to him. They’ll look at it in the evening, later on. So, she’s a big part of the team.”
Dangerous sport
According to an article from Wired, a study by neurologist Charles Bernick, showed subconcussive blows, or hits to the head that are not concussions, over time, in fighters, can lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Before doctors had a name for this disease, boxers referred to it as “punch drunk.” Boston University’s chronic traumatic encephalopathy center states the symptoms of this disease as “memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, anxiety, suicidality, parkinsonism, and, eventually, progressive dementia.”
Antonio Martinez has one up-side protecting him from the grip of this disease — he started boxing late. For a 31-year-old in the ring, he has taken significantly fewer punches than his boxing counterparts of a similar age.
Nonetheless, he does worry about all of the head trauma catching up with him. He said that the moment he begins to feel even slightly off, with slower reaction times or slurred speech, he will hang his boxing gloves up for good.
“I have seen a lot of fighters that have overstayed their welcome, I guess,” Antonio Martinez said. “And that is one thing that I won’t do. I love the sport, but I’ve always said that I will retire from boxing before it retires me.”
When he retires from boxing, he hopes to return to school in order to get a nursing degree, symbolically atoning for the cuts and bruises that he so frequently dealt in the ring.