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11/15/2007 Archived Entry: "Rita Figueroa: Wife, Mother, Urban Professional—and Professional Boxer!"
Rita Figueroa: Wife, Mother, Urban Professional—and Professional Boxer!
Story and photo by Juan C. Ayllon
Female boxer Rita Figueroa hits the punch mitts with trainer Sam Colonna
Editor's Note: I originally wrote this piece in July for a Chicago-based periodical. As such, it's somewhat dated. However, I believe it's still relevant. And with Rita Figueroa fighting this Friday at Cicero Stadium in Cicero, Illinois, I thought this would serve as a means to acquaint readers better with her. As you'll discover, not only is she a rugged fighter, but a wonderful human being as well.
One of the first things to strike you about Rita Figueroa is that she’s sincere and upbeat. A diehard Chicago Cubs fan sporting short blonde hair, at 38, she’s pretty in a wholesome, next-door neighbor way. She’s the kind of gal you might share some laughs with, a couple beers and perhaps a punch or two in the arm.
Only, when she hits you back, it hurts.
Built sturdy at 5’ 5” and 140 lbs. from playing sports all her life, she serves in ATM switch customer billing for AT&T. She lives comfortably in Uptown Chicago with her computer programming husband, Mike, and their teenage daughter, Sahara. During their down time, they enjoy vacationing at their property in Wisconsin, riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and practicing and teaching karate.
Oh, and Rita boxes professionally.
What’s that, you say? You read right: Rita is a professional boxer with a record of 9-0 and 3 knockouts. In fact, in a highly publicized match last April 20th, she was the designated opponent for celebrity boxer Mia Rosales-St. John, a former champ who’d posed in Playboy Magazine. St. John had more experience with a record of 43-8-2 with 18 knockouts. Still, insiders felt that Rita had a good shot at winning.
Unfortunately, Rita tore her left rotator cuff in training just prior to their bout. Her sparring partner, Brooke Dierdorff—at 3-0 with 3 knockouts—stepped in and upset St. John with a split decision win.
“It was terrible. Not only did I not get to fight, but, I had to have surgery. I have more bills now than what I was supposed to get paid for the fight,” says Rita. “(Still,) there’s a reason for everything. I like to believe that because it gave me the opportunity to let my body rest a little bit. I train all the time, constantly. So, I think maybe that was a sign that…I was doing too much.”
Growing up watching TV boxing with her father, at 28, she joined the Degerberg Academy of Martial Arts at 4717 N. Lincoln in Chicago. Then, it wasn’t long before she was recruited for their kickboxing team.
“[At first], I was so bad. I was horrible,” said Rita, adding, “but it was fun! I had fun.” Then one day, her lead instructor began boxing and brought her along to the now-defunct Windy City Boxing Gym.
“I was scared to death—when you get to the gym, you walk up those stairs and they can be very intimidating,” Rita said. “But, I went…and I kept going back!”
Her tenacity paid-off on November 15, 2004, when she won her first professional fight by third round technical knockout over brawling Courtney Elliot before a raucous crowd at the Hawthorne Racetrack in Cicero.
As shown then and in her second bout—where she suffered a fractured cheekbone from a head butt by Sarina Hayden, but won by split decision—Rita isn’t afraid to get hit in order to land a few of her own. She’s nicknamed “La Guera,” which translates to “White Girl,” a Latin tribute to her aggressive style that blends hard punching, caginess and heart.
“When you’re in the ring, you’re so pumped up, the adrenalin is going…you get hit, but then you hear the crowd go, ‘Ooh-h-h,’ so you want to get them back,” said Rita. “It’s not as much as, ‘Oh, that hurt,’ but…now I’ve got to land something. You have to make the crowd go, ‘Ooh-h-h’ when you hit them!”
Now, it’s 1 P.M. on a Sunday afternoon. Figueroa is back training hard in a red, white and blue boxing ring upstairs at Degerberg. It’s a clean, cheery space with an American flag and a portrait of its founder on the wall, wall-to-wall gray wrestling mats, punching bags and exercise equipment. She and her husband just drove four hours from vacationing in Wisconsin to train at noon.
Rita spars a total of eight three-minute rounds. Six of those are spirited but measured sessions with female boxers Kristen Gearhart and Rachel Gray. Against Cedrick Agnew, 20, a muscular 175 lb. black professional boxer with a record of 3-0 with 2 knockouts, she unloads, while he focuses on defense and footwork. She finishes by hitting the punch mitts, which, on the hands of trainer Sam Colonna, are moving targets for Rita to practice various punching combinations.
Her husband, Mike, hits and kicks the heavy punching bags nearby.
With no upcoming fight currently scheduled, the question remains, why such sacrifice on a beautiful Sunday afternoon?
“I love it. I feel good; my shoulder is getting better. I can’t wait to get back in there,” Rita says. “It’s not…just the sparring; it’s the camaraderie. People that don’t do this don’t understand what it takes.”
She adds, “You can’t…come in here and spar and be distracted by a lot of other things, ‘cause you’ll get your ass kicked. But you just got to come in here, [and] you have fun…we have really good discipline here.”
It’s a mixture of fun, an adrenalin rush and satisfaction that keeps her coming back. Elaborating, she says, “When you do certain things that you’ve been training on, it’s just like, ‘Wow, it finally worked!’ Like I’ve been working on slipping the jab and throwing my right uppercut, which I can do now, because I can’t let go of my left right now. When you’re getting your ass kicked, it’s not as much fun, but [laughs] it’s good.”
Ironically, it wasn’t in boxing that she got hit the hardest, but in a kickboxing match. “ I was fighting this girl named something ‘The Hammer.’ I forget what her name was,” said Rita. “And she hit me—holy cow! I think I saw stars. I won the fight. But she hit me and for a minute there, I forgot where I was. I was standing there, and I was thinking to myself, ‘You’re in the ring fighting—you better get your shit together!’ I kicked her and she went down and I won the fight. Thank God.”
For all the abuse, the money isn’t that great. Rita started out making roughly $800 for four round fights. She would have made between $4,000 and $5,000 for the Mia St. John fight. But still, she labors on.
Her family makes it all possible. Rita’s husband, Mike “holds the [punching] pads for me a lot and…[helps] work on strategy,” Rita says. “The key thing from him is the support, though. Without him and Sahara supporting me…it would be impossible.” Sahara—who competed in a kickboxing tournament, wrestled on a high school boys wrestling team, and currently works toward a Black Belt—shoulders more of the household burdens and joins the rest of “Team Figueroa” at ringside to cheer Rita on. It’s a team rounded out by Rita’s mother, veteran boxer Rocky Martinez, and trainers Angela Gibson and Sam Colonna.
Clearly, Rita looks forward to boxing again, with another crack at Mia St. John at the top of her wish list. To help her get in shape, she’ll run in the Chicago Half-Marathon on September 9th.
Until then, Rita says, “I’m just having fun. If you don’t have fun doing this, you shouldn’t be doing it.”
