With a new location behind the Animation Dance Community building at 640 McCray Street and all new equipment funded by a grant from the Community Foundation for San Benito County, Bulldog Boxing Gym is back and stronger than ever. Their official reopening celebration scheduled for Jan. 14 at 12 p.m., and owner Zeke Lopez is breathing easier, looking forward to taking his athletes to the next level as they prepare to compete in the new year.
“For the past year, I have been down and out about it,” Lopez said. “People kept telling me to relax, and it is true: when one door closes, another opens up. And things have worked out great. These kids train hard, and they deserve something like this.”
Bulldog Gym was evicted from its previous location at the corner of McCray and Gibbs streets in June 2021 when the city needed the area for a retention pond that services the chain stores in the Hollister Farms Shopping Center.
Since then, Bulldog athletes have done their sparring at borrowed gyms in other cities, or in a cramped shed in Swope Alley lent to them by Mmm Churros! owner Mike Jones. It meant that Lopez could not train as many athletes as he could before, but it did not stop his boxers Manny Bueno and Efron Gamino from competing in the 2021 Central California Boxing Association Championship held in Galt, and taking home trophies.
“It just goes to show what I mean,” Lopez said. “When you push and try, it doesn’t matter where you train. You can still do it.”
Gamino, 22, has been with Bulldog Gym since he was 13 and came to Lopez hoping to lose weight and get the training he needed to play high school football. Losing his father when he was two years old, Gamino looked up to Lopez as a coach and mentor.
“I was timid, and I could not be taught anything,” he said. “But I have learned so much from him, not just about boxing but also about carpentry—how to use a hammer or a drill gun. And Zeke made me a part of his family—his wife is like my mother, and his kids are like my siblings.”
Gamino’s win in Galt was his first, and so far only tournament fight. He credits Lopez for helping him overcome his initial nervous tension.
“After the first round ended, Zeke yelled at me and said, ‘What’s wrong with you? Relax, Relax!’” Gamino said. “So I felt a lot less tension, and that is when I almost dropped my opponent right at the beginning of the second round with the first two or three punches I threw. Everybody else said that I looked like I was throwing at full speed the whole three rounds, but I didn’t feel like it—I felt tired because there was just so much adrenaline in me.”
Gamino said that it was a good learning experience but thought he could do better in his next match-up, which may be happening in January.
“I’ve learned not to throw every punch hard—I did that and it was not very smart of me,” he said. “I think I could have stopped him if I wasn’t so tense and I wasn’t trying to kill him with every shot.”
Possibly joining Gamino in the next tournament trip is the youngest boxer at Bulldog, 11-year-old Pedro Villalobos, who has been with the gym for three years.
“Pedro trains hard, and you can see he really wants it,” Lopez said. “You got a lot more to teach in a younger kid, and sometimes they don’t soak it in as fast. But he picks things up well, and I am already using him to train some younger boxers. Some kids like him come in who are just naturals.”
Villalobos joined the gym because he had been picked on in school—something that no longer occurs. “He stopped, he’s not bullying me because he got scared,” Villalobos said.
He said that he likes the new gym, particularly the new gloves and equipment paid for by grants from the Community Foundation. “Some of the bags and gloves in the old gym were ripped,” he said. “You need padding in the gloves because if you don’t have it, hitting the bags hurts. But now we have brand new stuff, and it really helps.”
The money from the foundation is only part of what enabled Lopez to reopen. He said the community supported him in many ways after the eviction.
“I was blessed with many good people who helped us out,” he said. “A lot of people came to the rescue of these kids. Because I always tell them, ‘this place is not for me. This is for you guys. It’s not my gym. This is your gym.’ I love being here to train them and help them out, but this is for the kids and for this community.”
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