For Boosting Her Confidence, Nothing Can Beat Boxing

Step into the ring with Cindy Zamudio and you step into a storm of pounding, punishing leather.

Her hooks come screaming out of nowhere, her body blows crash down like felled trees across your chest and behind every thundering fist is 300 pounds of gym-shaped bulk.

Zamudio, an 18-year-old from Arleta, is one of the top-ranked female super heavyweight boxers in the country. She’s on the road to stardom, her handlers say. I spent some time getting knocked around the ring by her and wouldn’t suggest standing in her way. (But more on that later.)

She has swatted around former champions like beach balls and has become the pride of a Los Angeles Police Department boxing program for teenagers. She’s taken what used to be a problem--her size--and turned it in her favor.

It’s almost a cliche to say boxing can save a troubled kid. But for Zamudio, who has gone from nearly getting kicked out of school to earning straight A’s, life really had no point until she stepped into the ring.

“It was the first thing I felt good at,� she said.

For the past five years, Zamudio has been slugging cantaloupe-sized dents into heavy bags and raining sweat on the hardwood floor, shaping her body and her future.

She trains seven days a week at the Athletic Club, a no-frills health club in Northridge with a small boxing gym. She eats no sweets or bread, does sit-ups and push-ups every night and goes to bed

on weekends at 10 p.m.

If she wins the national championship in Texas next month, she’ll have a shot at a college scholarship and maybe even a chance to go to the 2004 Olympic Games, if women’s boxing is included.

There aren’t many women in the 201-pounds-and-above category, and Zamudio is emerging as one of the more experienced, more skilled super heavyweights, said Tom Eaton, founder of FemBoxer Inc., a South Carolina company that tracks women fighters.

“That Zamudio girl can really hit,� said Eaton, who watched her pummel a former women’s Golden Gloves champ at a Georgia tourney three years ago.

During a recent after-school sparring session at the Northridge gym, Christian Dominguez, one of those 16-year-old boys whose veins pump with teenage machismo, got the deluxe Zamudio treatment.

“She’s kinda big,� Dominguez said, as he crossed himself moments before he stepped into the ring. “But I’ll be cool.�

The two put in slobbery mouth guards and touched gloves center ring. Dominguez unleashed some quick combos. For a moment, he looked bold. But Zamudio protects herself well, and Dominguez couldn’t lay a clean glove on her. Then it was Zamudio’s turn.

“Keep your gloves up! Tuck your chin!� John Hardin warned Dominguez. Hardin, an LAPD officer and Vietnam vet, is the program’s boxing coach and, even at 54, looks as if he could still do some damage.

Zamudio backed Dominguez into a corner. Her small dark eyes drilled holes into his head. Siss! Siss! she exhaled as she peppered him with fists, knocking his headgear crooked. Then the hard rain really began to fall, and Zamudio was tagging Dominguez with unchallenged lefts, rights, hooks and uppercuts.

He tried to cover up, but he couldn’t. The machismo was being beaten out of him, blow by blow.

“OK, man, come on out,� Hardin told Dominguez.

“He got scared,� Hardin told the other boys who had squeezed around the ropes to watch the bout. But because Zamudio is bigger and has more training than almost anyone else at the gym, her opponents generally feel there’s no shame in being defeated by her.

Afterward, Zamudio gave Dominguez a hug and an encouraging grunt.

She knows what it’s like to feel picked on. If you’re bigger than everybody else in school and a girl, you get teased. “They used to call me gordita [little fat one],� she said.

When she was 13, she weighed 250 pounds, and at times she’s pushed 330. Recently she learned she was born with a thyroid problem that keeps her metabolism at a hibernation-level low.

That’s why she used to act out, she says, flunking classes and fighting. She almost got kicked out of junior high for setting a toilet on fire with hair spray.

“Someone snitched,� she said.

It was that sort of behavior that brought her to the Jeopardy program, a sports camp and alternative education service run by the LAPD for troubled kids.

When she arrived in the spring of 1995, Zamudio had low self-esteem and was angry at the world, Hardin said. It didn’t help that when she asked to box with the boys, she was told that girls don’t do that and that she was too fat anyway. Eventually, her mom convinced coaches to let her daughter box.

A big, tattooed kid named Sergio was Zamudio’s first victim. It was supposed to be a friendly sparring match. He knocked her around a bit. Then she slugged him back. It felt good.

A few months later, in the spring of 1996, she won her first tournament fight, in Pico Rivera. She began training daily with Hardin at the Athletic Club, which donates space to the police boxing program.

Zamudio now fights five to six tournaments a year, and her success in the ring has spawned success in school. She’s a senior at Kennedy High School in Granada Hills and a few weeks ago was accepted to Cal State Northridge, though she may hold out for UCLA or a boxing scholarship to the University of Michigan or Ohio State.

Gloves off, Zamudio is like a lot of teenage girls: giggly when asked personal questions, talkative about school stuff, interested in malls and movies and a shameless fan of Mariah Carey.

Zamudio’s parents say boxing has been good to their daughter. They love watching her fight. Especially when she humbles young men.

Having boxed in college, I was persuaded to go a couple of rounds with the champ. So a few days ago I laced up a pair of 12-ounce boxing gloves, popped in a rubber mouth guard that soon tasted like a clay plate and climbed through the ropes.

Problem was, my skills were rusty at best. Zamudio’s coach even had to refresh me on how to make a proper fist. Oops.

The first round went OK. I’m about half Zamudio’s weight, so I’m supposed to be quicker. We’re about the same height at 5-foot-9, so reach wasn’t an issue. I popped her with a few wild jabs, thumped her once or twice with a lucky right and ducked a couple of huge hooks that, if they had found their mark, probably would have interfered with my writing this article in intelligible English. The fact that Zamudio was a woman never crossed my mind.

The second two-minute round was ugly. I was on the run. I stopped to throw a few body shots, but her stomach swallowed up my fists like an amoeba engulfing a cell.

My energy vanished. My face turned scarlet. What little offense I had was downsized to a save-your-

butt defense. She trapped me in a corner, and I nearly kissed the ropes as she began to pummel me with body blows. A sound has never been so sweet as that bell going off.

Later that night I crowded around the TV with the Zamudios in their home to show them the video of my two-round drubbing.

Her mom, Suzy, cheered, “Go, Cindy, Go!� just as she had at the real fight. Her dad, Ismael, laughed as I got clobbered. Zamudio analyzed my defense and told me that I had been ducking the wrong way.

“But you punch pretty hard,� she said.

My face lighted up as if a teacher had just given me a gold star.

Punch hard? Really?

“Yeah,� she said. “But, man, did you get tired quick.�