Dallas Boxer is Chasing the Gold Ring

Rodarte watches from ringside, amazed at what this gym has become. When he took Yanez in, he had just two or three other fighters. Now there are 30 to 40 boxers, from school children to young fathers, who fight under the GTO banner. All of them are from Oak Cliff, where there are two other popular boxing gyms.

"I think for a lot of kids in this neighborhood, boxing is seen as a way out," Rodarte says. "And obviously boxing is very much a part of the Latino culture."

The last sparring match of the night now over, Rodarte exhorts Yanez to put on a show for the reporter in attendance. Yanez takes off the gaudy rings on his fingers—two for his Golden Gloves national championships, one for his Golden Gloves state championship—and steps into the ring. The club's prized prospect, Beltran, takes the mitts as Yanez dances around the ring. Yanez looks over to where the reporter is seated, and with a grin he says: "Don't blink." And then he unleashes a rapid-fire succession of blows, ducking and weaving around Beltran's mitts until everyone around the ring—fighters working speed bags, a dad holding a baby, a teenage girl in a Mavs T-shirt—are grinning in amazement at the boy's speed.

"If Luis won the gold medal, wow, I don't even have words for what that would mean to all of us," says Ulises Beltran, a former fighter at the gym who still comes to help out. "It would be such a great thing for this community, to show these kids what they can do, that like Luis they can overcome anything."