Every night for the last 10 years, along the dimly lit, paved side streets of Hyannis, the heavy thud of two human feet can sometimes be heard amidst intermittent sirens or the frenzied howling of coyotes.
Jesse Barboza of Hyannis will fight for the Northeast Heavyweight championship title on August 8 at the Hyannis Youth and Community Center.
Sean Walsh/Capecod.com Sports
Most of Cape Cod lays asleep on such nights, but not hopeful world heavyweight contender and Hyannis native Jesse Barboza.
With his iPod plugged in, the violent hip hop thump of Rick Ross pounding in his ears, the 28-year old, 6’2”, 240-lb. professional boxer runs in the darkness, bobbing and weaving in the shadows of streetlights. He has been driven to this by a life’s ambition to one day be a World Champion, to be the very best, to wear one of the coveted four belts prized by pugilists worldwide. He is driven by this vision, this aspiration, this quest by a need to win. It is a need to reach the apex of something so few ever come close to attaining.
Growing up on Wolley Road with his big brother Andre “Dre” Barboza, Jesse concedes that his early childhood dream was to one day become a professional baseball player, but that dream faded after his mother decided “about the 4th grade” that the Barboza boys’ behavior did not merit the privilege that spring to play Barnstable Little League.
As a student at the former Barnstable Middle School at Marstons Mills, Barboza quickly turned to football in the 7th grade, playing for then head coach Nelson Belanger. He fell immediately in love with the game, but that program quickly fizzled out and the middle school was merged with Barnstable Middle School at Hyannis amidst a very real school budget crisis. But for the 8th grade, Jesse had nothing to lean on. Football at the middle school level was temporarily shut down. He was allowed by then Barnstable High School head football coach Paul “Spanky” Demanche to serve as a sort of de facto team manager for the Red Raider varsity team, to tag along with older brother “Dre,” he explained, “because I simply loved the game that much.”
But interwoven throughout his formative years, from the time he was an elementary school student at Hyannis West, all the way until his graduation from Barnstable High School in 2004, the one, true common thread in his life was boxing. The grandson of 1950s professional welterweight Walter Barboza – whose career was stymied by a stint in the Korean War – Jesse had heard the stories, the legends, the folklore of boxing throughout his childhood. He remains mesmerized by his Cape Verdean grandfather’s tales to this day.
The former Barnstable High School football captain and BHS Class of 2004 graduate grew up in Hyannis and has been boxing for a decade.
Sean Walsh/Capecod.com Sports
A year ago training at the 4:13 Boxing Studio Cape Cod, a sort of hidden haven for enthusiasts of the sport as well as teens or athletes in need of athletic or spiritual guidance, Barboza was training in the ring, listening to his 86-year-old “white-haired” grandfather talk about some of boxing’s all-time greats but then noticed he had disappeared into another part of the studio.
“Then we hear this repetitive banging around, this noise from the other room so we went to go see and there he was working the speed bag and at a pretty good clip,” Barboza recalled fondly of his beloved, elder patriarch. “He still had it.”
But as affable, articulate and every bit the professional that Jesse Barboza appears to be on the surface, there is little mistaking the potential of this hulking athlete in the ring. With forearms like two Pittsburgh-steel sledgehammers, and a pair of fists hewn from marble, Barboza’s poundings of the heavy bag reverbate like tremors in the compact Mashpee studio, named for the Bible’s Philippians 4:13 where it reads: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Barboza runs at night or in the wee morning hours. By day, he works at a nearby lumber yard. When the whistle blows, he is back again in the 4:13 Studio to box. The routine repeats itself each day as it did through his 33-2 record as an amateur and his three New England Heavyweight Golden Glove championship titles.
This has been a decade-long, focused ritual for a man whose introduction to boxing was in one of the maze-like locker rooms at Barnstable High School with friends, where “sometimes we only had one glove… it was pretty much like a little fight club, but we were all friends and we would box.”
Barboza’s first boss during the summer months in high school was former super welterweight Terry Crawley who hired the Red Raider football captain to work landscaping and the only time Crawley would give his rake-wielding charges a break was when “he was telling one of his boxing stories,” reminiscing about the days he “sparred with “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler.”
One day Crawley suggested Barboza and his older brother Dre go down to the former David’s Gym in South Dennis where he shook the hands of the owner and from that moment forward Barboza has been boxing ever since.
Jesse Barboza’s grandfather, Walter Barboza, a native of the Cape Verde Islands, was a professional welterweight in the 1950s.
Sean Walsh/Capecod.com Sports
Fast forward to today and he is a professional with a 9-1-1 record and five knockouts to his credit, as well as two official sponsors: Dig It Construction in Harwich and Eagle Wash in Osterville.
Now he is in the prime of his athletic life. Now is his time.
On August 8th in Hyannis, at the Hyannis Youth and Community Center, Barboza will take his decade of training and fighting and “believing” and put it to the test when he goes toe-to-toe with Pennsylvania heavyweight Jesse Oltmanns (10-5) for the Northeast Heavyweight title.
It will be the first time as a professional boxer that Barboza will fight in front of his hometown crowd. It will also be his first main event and first professional title bout. Tickets have been flying out of the box office for the event (www.capecodboxing.com)
“I am extremely excited to fight in Hyannis,” said Barboza of his homecoming fight in two months. “I think every fighter when they start fighting wants to comeback and fight in their hometown. I’ve gotten so used to fighting two hours away from home that I can’t wait to fight with my home crowd behind me.”
In the middle of the night on some side street in Hyannis, a car door slams in the distance. A dog barks nearby.
The Rick Ross lyrics pound heavily in the young, hulking man’s eardrums… “Hustle out of necessity,” the song goes… “I’m allergic to failure… I’m addicted to winning.”
And two heavy feet hammer the pavement on a decade-long quest for some little piece of greatness.
— Capecod.com sports editor Sean Walsh’s column “One On One” appears here weekly. His email is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @coachwalshccbm
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