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photo by Olaf Growald
Total K.O. Boxing Club
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photo by Olaf Growald
Total K.O. Boxing Club
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photo by Olaf Growald
Total K.O. Boxing Club
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photo by Olaf Growald
Total K.O. Boxing Club
There were soft, audible grunts as the 3-foot-11-inch boxer expertly shifted from side to side, throwing jabs and big right hands at the punching bag that served as a stand-in for a sparring partner. The bag’s swing became more prominent with every hit landed, and the boxer kept his hands tucked closely to his cheeks — as if the bag would retaliate with a combination of punches at any moment. Despite my best efforts to distract him with attempts to get a picture for Instagram, his eyes remained fixated on the bag, and he stayed in motion, bouncing, shifting, pivoting, punching, until a loud buzzer sounded. His small frame stopped in its tracks, but there was hardly a sign of exhaustion. At most, a single bead of sweat ran down the left side of his face.
“This kid is amazing,” Jonathan Saenz, co-founder and president of Total K.O. Boxing Club, says. “He’s a natural. If he keeps this up, he is seriously going places.”
The kid’s name is Cannon Martin, an 8-year-old who attends elementary school by day and is frequently seen at Total K.O. Boxing Club at night — a rugged, warehouse-like gym just north of The Foundry District. Here, on any given night between 7 and 8 p.m., you’ll find dozens of children going through high-intensity workouts. The kids, whose ages range from 5 to 18, travel from workout station to workout station, where they jump rope, shadow box, perform speed-bag workouts, and even spar. Every three minutes (the length of a round of boxing) a loud buzzer rings, signaling the young patrons to change stations and begin their new sweat-inducing workout. Near the center of the gym is a boxing ring — where, yes, children box — and in the rear are rows of giant punching bags, a single one likely outweighing the average size of one of the gym’s patrons. The action and environment are something straight from a “Rocky” montage, only replace full-grown men with children — both boys and girls.
According to Cannon’s mom, Roxanne Martin, at this boxing sanctuary, Cannon gains far more than muscle mass or the ability to knock down trouble that might come his way; he’s also acquired the tools necessary to succeed at school.
“It [Total K.O. Boxing] has taught him a lot of discipline and to work hard,” Roxanne says. “If they don’t come to practice and practice four days a week, and they don’t put in the effort, then they’re not going to let them in the ring with anyone else.
“He loves to spar, so he knows he has to put in the hard work.”
Cannon has flappy blond hair and the energy of a Jack Russell Terrier; for a spectator who’s unused to the sport, it’s difficult to imagine him going toe to toe with someone else in boxing gloves. But, as is emphasized, the sport of boxing is not a fight but, rather, using skill, technique, and discipline to outsmart and outclass an opponent.
Total K.O. Boxing is the brainchild of Rita Serrano, Jonathan’s mother, a professional boxer who was once ranked No. 5 in her weight class. After a brief break following the end of her boxing career in 2005, Serrano began training only women.
“She was focusing on just the women because there wasn’t that many at the time whenever she was doing it,” Jonathan says. “So, she wanted to give back in that sense. She had her own thing [training facility] going on in her backyard.”
One of her backyard students was Sarah Saenz, the future wife of Jonathan and the future main cog at Total K.O. Boxing.
“My father used to tell me, ‘You’re a pretty girl,’” Sarah says. “‘You’re not doing boxing.’”
Jonathan credits Sarah as being the one who works most with the children and the one who carries the brunt of the work.
“She’s been carrying the load for two out of the three years we’ve been open now,” Jonathan says.
Jonathan himself is an ex-infantryman who spent six years in the United States Army and served in the Iraq War. Following his deployment overseas, Jonathan received his bachelor’s in business and criminal justice at TCU. The pair married in 2014 and took over operations at Total K.O. Boxing when Rita began experiencing health problems.
Initially aimed at recruiting young girls only, Total K.O. Boxing eventually extended its services to young boys, as well.
“It felt so bad because we would have dads come in with their sons,” Sarah explains. “I guess they talked to other gyms because most gyms around here ... they’re good. They only will take some kids if they’re wanting to compete right away or just stuff like that. But some kids, they’ve never done it before.
It’s like being thrown out to the wolves, you know? I know that’s the old way, but it doesn’t have to be like that. You can gradually get them there.”
This all aligns with Total K.O. Boxing’s approach to teaching. They’re here to help kids not just improve in the sport of boxing, but to improve in life, and they have a not-so-crazy theory that two are not mutually exclusive.
Total K.O. Boxing doesn’t have a singular cause or mission, but several. While their website highlights the organization as a health initiative fighting childhood obesity through exercise, Jonathan also emphasizes the importance of character development, increasing self-esteem and confidence, and combating bullying.
Ubaldo Rivas, a soft-spoken yet charismatic DHL driver who has three children who regularly come to Total K.O., has seen positive changes in all of his children since they started punching bags and training as boxers.
“My daughter, who’s been there about year, she was very shy,” Ubaldo says. “She was very behind-the-scenes. She didn’t want to speak up. But she didn’t want to do any kind of sports. Unfortunately, nowadays in school, there’s a lot of bullying. I was telling her, ‘You know what? This sport’s going to build your confidence.’ Just because you learn how to fight doesn’t mean you’re going to go fight around. It means that you’ll keep calm, that you’re just very comfortable; in case you have to defend yourself, you can.”
It can seem a little ironic, the idea of boxing, one of the world’s most violent sports, keeping kids from getting in trouble — keeping kids from bullying or being bullied. But, the importance of exercise and physical well-being is a proven antidote to combating many obstacles in life, including teen depression, obesity, and bullying.
According to a 2015 study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, there’s an 8% decrease in sadness for bullied students who say they exercise regularly. And it doesn’t just stop with assisting in minimization of sadness. The study also reports a decrease in hopelessness, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts.
“My wife at first was scared that if you teach him boxing, he’s going to be picking fights,” Ubaldo says. “Actually, it’s the opposite. He’s very calm. There’re times where there are kids messing with him, and he just smiles and walks away. A lot of people are scared that because he knows how to spar, because he knows how to fight, then he’s going to be a bully — and it’s the opposite.
“I ask him, ‘What makes you walk away [from bullies]?’ He says, ‘If I really want to, I can probably hurt them.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, you can.’ So, he’s very confident, so now he walks away.”
There’s no firm evidence that boxing in particular helps reduce bullying, and we have only anecdotal evidence that it builds the self-esteem for bullied teens to psychologically combat bullying. However, one of the few children I spoke with at Total K.O. Boxing, Sophia Aguilera, 7, gave the most honest insight.
“It [Total K.O. Boxing] has helped me in school because I get bullied a lot,” Sophia said. “It’s helped with my confidence.”
In the fall of 2018, Total K.O. Boxing partnered with Metro Opportunity High School, an alternative school a mere two blocks from Total K.O.’s gym. For those who don’t know, this school is largely for kids who have had disciplinary issues in school.
The idea was to take students from Metro Opportunity and, once a week for 45 minutes, teach them the sport of boxing.
“Not teaching them how to fight,” emphasizes Glenn Taylor, health and physical education teacher at Metro Opportunity High School. “But teaching them the discipline and the hard work required to get into the ring.”
The program proved to be extremely popular, according to Taylor, and it gave the children a tool to work out and removed their desire to be aggressive.
“There are so many disciplinary parallels between life and boxing,” Taylor says. “If they didn’t learn the techniques and the right way to box, then they didn’t get in the ring. They had to work hard to get what they wanted.
There are different ways to fight obesity and stay in shape, and these kids don’t want a redundant routine. They want something to spark their curiosity. Half the time, they didn’t even realize they were working out.”
Total K.O. Boxing has started allowing adults to use their training facilities to help subsidize their income. Jonathan and Sarah both have acting gigs where they perform stunts — much of this to help make ends meet. Those involved in the program believe in it and sacrifice to be part of it. The hope is to one day make the program free for all children, and Jonathan and Sarah are working hard to make that a reality.
“We’re always striving to do more things or add more technology,” Jonathan says. “But our priority right now is just to keep the doors open. We also have some kids that say, ‘Hey, I want to visit for free.’ So that’s the priority: to make this as free or close to free as possible.”
