Daniel Gonzalez is scheduled to face Chris Algieri in welterweight action Friday night on the undercard of the Demetrius Andrade-Artur Akavov fight inside the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Regardless of what transpires, one could say that Gonzalez is already a winner by being the biggest loser.
Now 29, Gonzalez credits boxing for an incredible 100-pound weight loss as a teenager.
"Around 16, I was about 250 pounds. I was really overweight, eating garbage everyday. Girls would make fun of me, people would make fun of me — ‘How did you get so fat? Why are you so fat?’” Gonzalez remembers.
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That’s when his mother found a local boxing gym — Universal Boxing Gym — close to their Woodhaven, N.Y., residence, urging Gonzalez to give it a shot.
“My brother suffered from diabetes and asthma and he was 400 pounds, so my mother didn’t want me to fall in the same situation, so she took me to the boxing gym and I fell in love with it,” Gonzalez recalls.
Pretty soon that instant love with boxing turned into an obsession, with Gonzalez spending four to five hours in the gym daily, even waking up before school to run. The weight shed was dramatic — 100 pounds in two months.
Gonzalez’s new obsession rubbed off on his family as well, as his older brother wound up boxing too and losing a staggering 300 pounds.
Gonzalez wound up going pro in 2012 at 22 years old and not too far removed from his incredible transformation. Coincidentally, in two years he became a sparring partner for none other than Algieri, as the fellow New York native was preparing for his June 2014 bout with Ruslan Provodnikov. Gonzalez estimates that the two have roughly 50 rounds of sparring experience with each other. Algieri, who’s a nutrionist as well, also helped Gonzalez understand nutrition more.
“Little by little, I learned what was healthy and what was not. I started doing a lot of research,” Gonzalez says. “I had people help me like Chris Algieri because he’s a nutritionist. It’s funny we’re fighting now.”
He adds: “Sometimes your idol becomes your rival and you got to do what you got to do. I believe I could compete with anybody — I’ve been in Danny Garcia’s camp, Keith Thurman’s camp, I’ve been with Chris Algieri, Sadam Ali, I’ve been with greats. I belong here.”
And now, on Friday night, Gonzalez has a chance to make his inspirational story complete, as a win over Algieri would bring him one step closer to reeling in gold.
“Ain’t no better story than a fat kid who stayed dedicated and became a world champion,” Gonzalez vows. “You could write a book about that, a movie about that … that’s once in a lifetime, so that’s my goal and I’m going to do it.”
