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02/15/2006 Archived Entry: "Pop Goes the ‘Weezel’ - David Estrada Talks Frankly about Loss to St. Juste!"
Pop Goes the ‘Weezel’ - David Estrada Talks Frankly about Loss to St. Juste!
By Juan C. Ayllon
David Estrada shadow boxes in preparation for his bout versus St. Juste
(photo courtesy of Tom Barnes)
MONTREAL, February 11, 2006 – He thought he had him. David “The Weezel” Estrada had seen this type before: a young and dangerous puncher of the front running sort. Estrada suffered a flash knockdown earlier, but was coming on with a vengeance.
His muscular opponent, Renan St. Juste, was breathing heavily. Surely, he had shot his bolt. Backing to the ropes, he was just where Estrada wanted him. It was Weezel time.
And then it happened.
Boxing well, he landing a pair of hard rights. Pressing his advantage, Estrada walked into a mind numbing straight left that whistled over his right glove. He went down hard. Instinctively, he arose. However, it was to no avail, as the referee waved it off moments later.
Like that, David Estrada’s attempt to advance to the next level was TKO’ed in the fourth round in his opponent’s back yard. With that, he gave added credibility to the tigerish St. Juste, who some predict will become Canadian Super Middleweight Champ, and whose record now stands at 10-1-1 with six knockouts.
A popular Chicagoan and TV fighter with a handful of appearances on Telefutura and ESPN, David Estrada remains, for now, a fixture in the Netherlands of the intermediate level of professional boxing. As such, he’s not a club fighter, nor is he a contender. With a record of nine and five with seven knockouts, he’s a recognizable face with crowd-pleasing skills who falls somewhere in between.
Disappointed but not broken, the next day a reflective David Estrada spoke frankly by telephone at length about his fight with St. Juste and where he goes from here.
JUAN AYLLON: How do you feel after last night’s fight?
DAVID ESTRADA: Of course, I feel bad because I let myself down and I hate to lose. I let my coach down, and this fight right here was winnable! I was out-boxing the guy and—bottom line—I just got caught. I walked right into his hands and I fell into his trap.
You know, that’s what boxing’s all about: You’ve got to capitalize on people’s mistakes and I made a big mistake. He caught me, I walked right into it, and he hit me right on the button. No excuse, he hit me right on the button. And usually when you hit someone right in the button, they’re either going to take it or they’re going to fall, and I fell. I got up, but I was a little wobbly, I guess. And the referee felt that that was it. And, you know a fighters mentality: I wanted to continue.
JA: So, what’s next?
DE: What’s next is just take this week off and relax; and just get in fighting shape again, that’s it. Next week, I’ll start my roadwork and try again, you know.
I’m not going to let the fight beat me down. I’m not losing to ‘nobodies.’ You know, I lost to somebody good and, like I said before, his record explains itself.
Whenever you go to someone else’s hometown, it’s never easy: you’re fighting him, you’re fighting the crowd, [and] you’re fighting the hometown judges. You know, it’s never easy.
It’s hard mentally. It stresses you out and drains you.
I felt good in the fight. In the fight, I felt great! I mean, like I said, I was in the best shape of my life. That’s the thing: After I catch him, I heard the guy breathing, he started getting tired.
My coach told me, ‘Don’t stand in front of him,’ and, you know, I’m kind of hard headed. I stood in front of him and I got caught. And, that was it.
We felt that if this would have gone the distance, I would have pulled it out. Unfortunately, I got knocked down and I could never get back after that.
But, there’s life after that, you know. I can’t dwell on the past, I can’t dwell on the future, I can’t think about what’s going to happen tomorrow, what happened yesterday, I’ve just got to live life today.
Yesterday already passed, tomorrow will come, and today, I’m living it.
The bottom line is I’m okay. I didn’t get hurt. I’m not scratched. My face has no cuts, no bruises. I’m okay. I’m living, I’m walking, I’m talking to you and, oh, it’s just depressing. You know, it’s sad. You know, ‘cause I hate to lose.
This is a rough, rough sport. People that think it’s easy, I would like them to come in the ring and give it a shot. Try it.
You know, but there’s life after this.
JA: Do you have any people you would like to target right now, or would you prefer to take it one day at a time?
DE: You know, right now, just take some time off. Like I said, I felt really good for this fight. I just want to relax for a week and get back on the drawing board. Like I said, I’m not going to let this fight bring me down.
I’m a little depressed. But, you know, you fought, when you fall, what do you do? You get right back up and hopefully start another winning streak. You know, I fell down before and I won. I fell down again and—you know—I came back. So, I’ve got to keep moving forward, not think about the negative. Think about the positives.
And the positive for me in this fight was I was boxing him. I was doing really good, I was in great shape, I was moving good, [and] I was giving him good angles.
And, you know, I made one little mistake and that’s all it takes in boxing. You know, you’re supposed to capitalize on people’s mistakes. He capitalized on my mistake.
I can’t be standing in front of him, posing for a picture. I’ve got to hit and get out and move instead of trying to stay in there and put up a little bit.
JA: Did he hurt you any time before that?
DE: Yeah, he knocked me down and I got up—a flash knockdown, you know. But, the last one was—it’s the punch that you don’t see coming, that’s what hurts you—and I didn’t see that one coming.
I threw my first shot, I saw that he went backwards, I thought I stunned him a little bit and I threw a nice right hand and I stopped right there to see what his reaction was because he was moving backwards. And, evidently, he just countered over my right hand. I threw my right hand-right and I didn’t bring it right back to my face and I got caught.
You know, I recouped; I got my conscious back and everything, but the referee felt that was it, even though I got up at the count of eight, he said, ‘Walk to me,’ and I walked to him. But he said that was it.
The guy fought a smart fight. I made a mistake and he capitalized on it. And my hands go down to him. He beat me.
JA: Tell us about your difficult experience prior to the fight.
DE: First of all, when I first got there, they were messing around with me. They weren’t going to let my coach in the country because whenever you go to someone else’s country, you can’t have any—I believe—felonies or any type of warrants, any background that’s really bad. And, so, Jorge had a little problem, but that was like 29 years ago. Everyone knows the story about Jorge. They were giving him problems. They weren’t going to let him into their country because he had a strike on his record. So, automatically, they weren’t going to let him in.
So, I said, ‘Well, you know what? If my coach doesn’t come in, I’m not coming in.’
All of a sudden, they started turning the tables around. We called the promoter and said, ‘I’m not coming in there if my coach can’t come in there.’ And, they really don’t care about the coach. They just care about the fighters. They’re like, ‘We’ll pay you more money.’ And, of course, I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ They wanted to give me more money and of course, the money sounded right. They said, ‘What do I have to do so I can have you stay here?’
When he said that, I looked at my coach and he said, ‘You do what you want to do.’ But, like I said, I wasn’t going to go without him and have someone else that I don’t know try to coach me.
To make a long story short, they finally let us in, you know, after they harassed us for about three hours that we were in there. And they let us in.
We got there late around 11:00 o’clock [P.M.]. I was about four pounds over, ‘cause the contract weight was at ’60 and I was at 164 pounds. And, I told myself, it’s already late, it was cold, I didn’t bring [any] running stuff to run outside ‘cause it was cold out there! As you can see, they were having a blizzard out in New York and that area. And that day, it was just freezing; it was like 15 below zero!
I told myself, ‘You know what? They had a treadmill—they had a health club in there.’ But, it was closed. So, I told myself, ‘I’ll just wake up in the morning, and I’ll just run and lose the pounds that I’m a little bit over.’ And, I’m very good at making weight. That was my decision.
In the morning, I wake up, get ready to start running, [and] they say, ‘We’ve got to go.’ I go, ‘Where’ve we got to go?’ They say, ‘We’ve got to go get our physicals.’ I’m like, ‘I want to run right now and make weight.’ And, they told me, ‘No, because we have a set appointment and if we miss your appointment, that means you’re not going to fight. We’ll finish getting our physical, then you can come back and run on the treadmill. You’ll have at least an hour to make weight.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay, that’s fine.’
What do you know? We’re in the physical all day. I had to get my EEG, my physical, I had to get my AIDS test, my blood test and all that. And, by that time you know, we were there all day!
When we were finished, they took us straight to the weigh-ins, and they didn’t give us a chance to make weight!
They said, ‘Step on the scale.’ I told them, ‘You know what? I think I’m going to be a few pounds over because I know myself and I know my body.’ I was going to start running, but [they said], ‘No, you have to make weight right now.’
I stepped on the scale and for the first time in my career—I’d never been overweight; I’ve always made weight and everything—and I was three pounds over. I weighed in at 163.
So, automatically, they told me they were going to take 20 percent off my purse! I’m like, ‘Listen, if you’ll just give me 15 minutes or 20 minutes, I’ll make the weight.’ They said, ‘Nope, it’s too late. Now you should have made weight.’ I said, ‘I couldn’t make weight because I was all day doing the physical’ and they were just getting on my nerves.
Well, we [finally] made an agreement and they took 10 percent of my purse for being overweight, which, again, I wasn’t happy [about]. I don’t like the way they treated me, I don’t like the way they treated my coach and you know, it was on my mind; it was affecting me.
And, then the day of the fight! Ah, you know we fought at 12 o’clock. I didn’t even know we were going to fight at noon, ‘till the day before my fight.
So, I woke up in the morning around eight o’clock to eat breakfast and, again, they rushed us. They said, ‘You’ve got to hurry up and eat ‘cause we’ve got to be in the auditorium at 10 o’clock. And, you know, I was just rushing.
The whole time we got there, we were rushing. Me and my coach, we were never able to sit down and relax and stay comfortable ‘cause we were going from one place to another place. We were running around like a chicken with our heads cut off. We weren’t able to relax and settle in. Just relax.
But, that comes with the territory.
And, I felt good for the fight. I mean, I felt really good for the fight. I just wish people could see the fight because I boxed the guy really good. I did really great. My coach was happy with what I could do!
I just made one mistake and he capitalized on it. And, I know if someone makes a mistake on me, I capitalize on it. You know, he did the right thing.
You don’t want to stand in front of a puncher. I threw my punch, I saw that I saw that I stunned him a little bit, and I just stood right there— and you could see me admiring myself, like, ‘Hey, that’s a nice shot!’ And, what do you know? Here he comes with his shot. He threw an overhand left over my right hand and caught me. And, I went down, took a knee and went right back up. And the referee thought that was enough.
My training was great. I was with the right people. As far as my lifestyle, it was great. Problems at home? [No], it was great. The only thing that was wrong was when I got there—everything was rushed.
What can I say? There’s still life after that. Again, I hate to lose. I’m sorry I let myself down, my friends down, I let my girlfriend down, my friends, you, and everyone else that was supporting me, pushing me to win.
I’m just happy that I came out of there in one piece. I’m alive; I’m talking to you. You know, I’m able to hear good reports—I heard that Miguel Hernandez won, I just read on the Internet. You tell him congratulations, I’m proud of him: Someone from Chicago can represent the Puerto Rican people; you’ve got someone out there who’s ‘living the dream,’ like he said. He’s doing something that I haven’t even done, that a lot of other people haven’t even done.
I’ll be back. I’m still learning.
