All his life, feather and super featherweight contender Juan Carlos
Burgos, known as “Mini” has wanted one thing: to follow in the footsteps
of his uncle, former IBF light flyweight world champion Victor Burgos.
“When I was little, around 12 years old, my manager who used to be my trainer, Roberto Sandoval, used to hang me from a tube in the gym so I could limber up a little more,” Burgos told me and Doug Fischer at a luncheon held in his honor following his November 2011 win over highly touted Luis Cruz. “For three minutes, one round they used to hang me from the tube. And that’s what they used to call me because I was too little. ‘Mini.’ Then I grew up and they don’t bother me so much but the name stuck.”
Now known as “MiniBurgos” after his uncle Victor, Juan Carlos follows in his family’s tradition in search of the fulfillment of his dream.
“I think I have boxing in my DNA,” Burgos said. “My father was a boxer, my mother was a boxer, my brother was a boxer and then my uncle was a boxer. I carry it in my DNA. I have been in the gym my whole life. I have seen my uncles, my father . . . boxing was their life.”
However, boxing almost took the life of Victor Burgos on March 3, 2007 when he took a brutal beating from Vic Darchinyan. Burgos was dropped in the second round but survived. In the twelfth round, he was taking hard punches again and again prompting the referee to stop the fight. He summarily passed out and was rushed to the UCLA medical center. Somewhere in the fight he had developed a blood clot on his brain. It was removed and Burgos was put into a medically induced coma. Beyond being devastating to the fighting family, it nearly proved fatal to JC Burgos’ career. His parents asked him to retire.
“They wanted me to quit right off the bat. They put on a lot of pressure,” Burgos said. “But then they realized that my dream to become world champion was much bigger than their wishes. They never want anything to happen to me like any parent or family member. But they understood my dream was to be like my uncle and become a world champion. So they let me do what I wanted to do. I wanted to box.”
Victor Burgos would wake from his coma and recover.
“Nobody had any expectations,” JC Burgos said. “It is a blessing that he is back and raising his kids. He has three girls and one boy. He is raising his kids and working as well.”
The younger Burgos got a little closer to his dream last November when he shellacked Luis Cruz to earn a majority decision on the undercard of the Pacquiao-Marquez III card at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, NV. Burgos, 28-1 with 19 KOs, was the underdog. Promoted by the modestly budgeted Southern California promotional firm Thompson Boxing, Burgos was supposed to be no match for Cruz. Never mind that the then 19-0 with 15 knockouts fighter was also promoted by big wheel Top Rank who happened to be running the HBO PPV proceedings. This was supposed to be a coming out party for Luis Cruz. Instead, Burgos crashed it.
“I felt it a little bit. The cards were stacked against me in a lot of different ways,” said Burgos. “But I used that as a motivation tool for me. I needed to show myself off. I knew there would be a lot of fans watching the event. It just motivated me to really showcasing myself and use it to show the world who I am, that I am a great fighter.”
How high the deck was stacked never mattered as Burgos had something that Cruz did not: the experience of loss. More importantly, Burgos understood why he lost. Two fights back he had attempted to beat featherweight Hozumi Hasegawa for the vacant WBC world title. Burgos lost a twelve round decision and gained valuable self-knowledge.
“The greatest lesson I learned was in Japan,” said Burgos. “And that is that I can never underestimate anyone. When I fought Hasegawa, this guy, even though he was a good fighter, was moving up two divisions to face me. I was overconfident. I thought that it was going to be not an easy win but that I had enough to beat him. So yes that was the best experience that I could acquire. And that is, you go out there and you have to do your best from the moment the bell goes off and finish strong. I fought my heart out in Japan and I came up short and that was probably because I didn’t start early enough. So yes, I had the advantage of experience in the fight.”
Understanding who you are is incredibly important. Helping a fighter get there is an art. Thompson Boxing matchmaker Alex Camponovo understands this.
“It’s a combination of things. First of all, I don’t like to match our guys too tough. Just tough enough,” Camponovo said. “It’s like a roller coaster. You go up and then you go down to see where they are at. You have to match them with different styles so when they go up in the bigger leagues they don’t go up with their eyes wide open thinking ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ A lot of kids complain ‘Oh I don’t want to fight another lefty. Or I don’t want to fight a tall guy. Thanks to youtube, guys are getting crazy these days. But we just have to match them the best we can.”
Burgos joined Thompson Boxing in his fifteenth fight in 2007. He took on Adam Carrera, a 19-2 at the time fighter in Corona, CA. Fischer, who sat next me to interviewing Burgos on this day, recalled the fight as a tough one. So did Burgos.
“I knew that I was getting tested in that fight,” Burgos said. “But I knew that was what I had to do in order to get a chance to work with them. I couldn’t be happier with the direction they are taking me. From that point on, we started a great relationship and I always thanked them for giving me that opportunity. I want to pay them back for all the hard work they have given me and the only way I can do that is to be a world champion.”
Burgos knocked his opponent with a body shot that night and the rest is history. Since that time, Burgos has been kept busy, fighting a variety of styles no more than four times a year and no less than three. For Camponovo, staying busy is a key to growing and staying sharp as a fighter.
“The most important thing is activity, said Camponovo. “Give me a kid that is ready to work hard and is ready to fight seven or eight times a year. He is going to be better than the guy who has 300 amateur fights but only fought once in the last thirteen months. You see more things inside the ring. Match them tough enough when they are learning and keep them busy. Busy is the main thing.”
Coming into the Cruz bout, Burgos studied his foe.
“I saw the fight with Honorio. Everyone said he was hard puncher but he connected with Honorio and he never went down,” said Burgos. “A lot of people thought he was very fast and he wasn’t as fast as people said. Everything was landing. But I still wanted to keep myself motivated in the fight. So I would try and win every round. I took some risks because I thought I could knock him out. But I was never in any trouble. He was not a heavy handed guy.”
From the outset Burgos boxed and moved, keeping Cruz off balance and guessing. The fight plan was not what anyone expected from the aggressive Burgos. It was intelligent, layered and executed perfectly.
“The style you saw that fight, we worked it just because it was Cruz,” explained Burgos. “If I have to box I will box. If I have to bang I will go out and do that. I adjust to my opponent. I knew I had to use combination punching, move around and box him. So you know, I will just try and be smart.”
Burgos credits an early style change to Sandoval. It was he who first got the hyper-aggressive Burgos to use his natural gifts of size and length to full advantage. At 5’8 ½ with a 68” reach, Burgos should fight at long range and let the action come to him.
“The problem I had early on was that I used to want to be like my uncle, Victor,” said Burgos. “I used to be full frontal against my opponents. Since I am a taller guy, much taller than my opponents even in the amateurs, I was giving away my advantage. I would bend down so much I would get caught with punches. That is why [Sandoval] forced me to train and work on my coordination and my movements. He took away that style and taught me not be [recklessly aggressive]. “
By the middle of the fight it was all Burgos with tiny explosions of activity from Cruz who let desperation take over before he fully complied. Burgos would take some shots but he credits that with trying to draw Cruz out a bit.
“I probably took some risks in the fight but I did that because around the fourth round I felt that I could connect at will,” he explained. “My combinations were working. I knew that it was going to be a tough fight not because of the guy I was fighting but because the guy I was fighting belonged to Top Rank. I knew that it was going to be hard. I knew that I had to go out there and be there every single round. I had to start fast.”
Burgos did just that and in the end, victory and a WBC silver super featherweight belt were his. The belt has given Burgos a top ranking in the WBC and opens up the possibility of fights in the feather and super featherweight divisions. He is in the top five of the major sanctioning bodies at super featherweight but feels he can stay at featherweight, get titles then move on up to 130 permanently. With all that aligned, 2012 should be a big year for Juan Carlos Burgos.
But first things first, he has to get past Cristobal Cruz on Friday Night Fights this week. Cruz is 34 years old, a solid veteran but coming off a long layoff. He last fought in August but the fight ended early off an accidental head clash. The style is great matchmaking for Burgos who looks to jump off from this point and head after the big names. I predict an action fight that lasts about 8 rounds.
”I would love to fight Mikey Garcia at featherweight. I would love to fight Juanma, Orlando Salido, Gamboa,” said Burgos whose lanky frame can surely grow into a lightweight someday.”
More than anyone, Burgos wants revenge with Hasegawa.
“Like a thorn in my side. I want to get rid of it,” he said. “I think I can knock him out in less than seven rounds. I know how to fight him now. With my experience, and what I did in that fight, I seriously think I can knock him out inside seven rounds.”
As for the present and the hopeful future, Burgos looks to Friday and his overall dream of one day joining his uncle as a world champion.
“My dream is to be a world champion,” said Burgos. “Everyone needs to know that I can compete against anyone. That I can give a rough night to any champion out there. I want to become champion for my family and my promoters. I have to give them all the satisfaction and myself the satisfaction to become a world champion.”
. “When I was little, around 12 years old, my manager who used to be my trainer, Roberto Sandoval, used to hang me from a tube in the gym so I could limber up a little more,” Burgos told me and Doug Fischer at a luncheon held in his honor following his November 2011 win over highly touted Luis Cruz. “For three minutes, one round they used to hang me from the tube. And that’s what they used to call me because I was too little. ‘Mini.’ Then I grew up and they don’t bother me so much but the name stuck.”
Now known as “MiniBurgos” after his uncle Victor, Juan Carlos follows in his family’s tradition in search of the fulfillment of his dream.
“I think I have boxing in my DNA,” Burgos said. “My father was a boxer, my mother was a boxer, my brother was a boxer and then my uncle was a boxer. I carry it in my DNA. I have been in the gym my whole life. I have seen my uncles, my father . . . boxing was their life.”
However, boxing almost took the life of Victor Burgos on March 3, 2007 when he took a brutal beating from Vic Darchinyan. Burgos was dropped in the second round but survived. In the twelfth round, he was taking hard punches again and again prompting the referee to stop the fight. He summarily passed out and was rushed to the UCLA medical center. Somewhere in the fight he had developed a blood clot on his brain. It was removed and Burgos was put into a medically induced coma. Beyond being devastating to the fighting family, it nearly proved fatal to JC Burgos’ career. His parents asked him to retire.
“They wanted me to quit right off the bat. They put on a lot of pressure,” Burgos said. “But then they realized that my dream to become world champion was much bigger than their wishes. They never want anything to happen to me like any parent or family member. But they understood my dream was to be like my uncle and become a world champion. So they let me do what I wanted to do. I wanted to box.”
Victor Burgos would wake from his coma and recover.
“Nobody had any expectations,” JC Burgos said. “It is a blessing that he is back and raising his kids. He has three girls and one boy. He is raising his kids and working as well.”
The younger Burgos got a little closer to his dream last November when he shellacked Luis Cruz to earn a majority decision on the undercard of the Pacquiao-Marquez III card at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, NV. Burgos, 28-1 with 19 KOs, was the underdog. Promoted by the modestly budgeted Southern California promotional firm Thompson Boxing, Burgos was supposed to be no match for Cruz. Never mind that the then 19-0 with 15 knockouts fighter was also promoted by big wheel Top Rank who happened to be running the HBO PPV proceedings. This was supposed to be a coming out party for Luis Cruz. Instead, Burgos crashed it.
“I felt it a little bit. The cards were stacked against me in a lot of different ways,” said Burgos. “But I used that as a motivation tool for me. I needed to show myself off. I knew there would be a lot of fans watching the event. It just motivated me to really showcasing myself and use it to show the world who I am, that I am a great fighter.”
How high the deck was stacked never mattered as Burgos had something that Cruz did not: the experience of loss. More importantly, Burgos understood why he lost. Two fights back he had attempted to beat featherweight Hozumi Hasegawa for the vacant WBC world title. Burgos lost a twelve round decision and gained valuable self-knowledge.
“The greatest lesson I learned was in Japan,” said Burgos. “And that is that I can never underestimate anyone. When I fought Hasegawa, this guy, even though he was a good fighter, was moving up two divisions to face me. I was overconfident. I thought that it was going to be not an easy win but that I had enough to beat him. So yes that was the best experience that I could acquire. And that is, you go out there and you have to do your best from the moment the bell goes off and finish strong. I fought my heart out in Japan and I came up short and that was probably because I didn’t start early enough. So yes, I had the advantage of experience in the fight.”
Understanding who you are is incredibly important. Helping a fighter get there is an art. Thompson Boxing matchmaker Alex Camponovo understands this.
“It’s a combination of things. First of all, I don’t like to match our guys too tough. Just tough enough,” Camponovo said. “It’s like a roller coaster. You go up and then you go down to see where they are at. You have to match them with different styles so when they go up in the bigger leagues they don’t go up with their eyes wide open thinking ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ A lot of kids complain ‘Oh I don’t want to fight another lefty. Or I don’t want to fight a tall guy. Thanks to youtube, guys are getting crazy these days. But we just have to match them the best we can.”
Burgos joined Thompson Boxing in his fifteenth fight in 2007. He took on Adam Carrera, a 19-2 at the time fighter in Corona, CA. Fischer, who sat next me to interviewing Burgos on this day, recalled the fight as a tough one. So did Burgos.
“I knew that I was getting tested in that fight,” Burgos said. “But I knew that was what I had to do in order to get a chance to work with them. I couldn’t be happier with the direction they are taking me. From that point on, we started a great relationship and I always thanked them for giving me that opportunity. I want to pay them back for all the hard work they have given me and the only way I can do that is to be a world champion.”
Burgos knocked his opponent with a body shot that night and the rest is history. Since that time, Burgos has been kept busy, fighting a variety of styles no more than four times a year and no less than three. For Camponovo, staying busy is a key to growing and staying sharp as a fighter.
“The most important thing is activity, said Camponovo. “Give me a kid that is ready to work hard and is ready to fight seven or eight times a year. He is going to be better than the guy who has 300 amateur fights but only fought once in the last thirteen months. You see more things inside the ring. Match them tough enough when they are learning and keep them busy. Busy is the main thing.”
Coming into the Cruz bout, Burgos studied his foe.
“I saw the fight with Honorio. Everyone said he was hard puncher but he connected with Honorio and he never went down,” said Burgos. “A lot of people thought he was very fast and he wasn’t as fast as people said. Everything was landing. But I still wanted to keep myself motivated in the fight. So I would try and win every round. I took some risks because I thought I could knock him out. But I was never in any trouble. He was not a heavy handed guy.”
From the outset Burgos boxed and moved, keeping Cruz off balance and guessing. The fight plan was not what anyone expected from the aggressive Burgos. It was intelligent, layered and executed perfectly.
“The style you saw that fight, we worked it just because it was Cruz,” explained Burgos. “If I have to box I will box. If I have to bang I will go out and do that. I adjust to my opponent. I knew I had to use combination punching, move around and box him. So you know, I will just try and be smart.”
Burgos credits an early style change to Sandoval. It was he who first got the hyper-aggressive Burgos to use his natural gifts of size and length to full advantage. At 5’8 ½ with a 68” reach, Burgos should fight at long range and let the action come to him.
“The problem I had early on was that I used to want to be like my uncle, Victor,” said Burgos. “I used to be full frontal against my opponents. Since I am a taller guy, much taller than my opponents even in the amateurs, I was giving away my advantage. I would bend down so much I would get caught with punches. That is why [Sandoval] forced me to train and work on my coordination and my movements. He took away that style and taught me not be [recklessly aggressive]. “
By the middle of the fight it was all Burgos with tiny explosions of activity from Cruz who let desperation take over before he fully complied. Burgos would take some shots but he credits that with trying to draw Cruz out a bit.
“I probably took some risks in the fight but I did that because around the fourth round I felt that I could connect at will,” he explained. “My combinations were working. I knew that it was going to be a tough fight not because of the guy I was fighting but because the guy I was fighting belonged to Top Rank. I knew that it was going to be hard. I knew that I had to go out there and be there every single round. I had to start fast.”
Burgos did just that and in the end, victory and a WBC silver super featherweight belt were his. The belt has given Burgos a top ranking in the WBC and opens up the possibility of fights in the feather and super featherweight divisions. He is in the top five of the major sanctioning bodies at super featherweight but feels he can stay at featherweight, get titles then move on up to 130 permanently. With all that aligned, 2012 should be a big year for Juan Carlos Burgos.
But first things first, he has to get past Cristobal Cruz on Friday Night Fights this week. Cruz is 34 years old, a solid veteran but coming off a long layoff. He last fought in August but the fight ended early off an accidental head clash. The style is great matchmaking for Burgos who looks to jump off from this point and head after the big names. I predict an action fight that lasts about 8 rounds.
”I would love to fight Mikey Garcia at featherweight. I would love to fight Juanma, Orlando Salido, Gamboa,” said Burgos whose lanky frame can surely grow into a lightweight someday.”
More than anyone, Burgos wants revenge with Hasegawa.
“Like a thorn in my side. I want to get rid of it,” he said. “I think I can knock him out in less than seven rounds. I know how to fight him now. With my experience, and what I did in that fight, I seriously think I can knock him out inside seven rounds.”
As for the present and the hopeful future, Burgos looks to Friday and his overall dream of one day joining his uncle as a world champion.
“My dream is to be a world champion,” said Burgos. “Everyone needs to know that I can compete against anyone. That I can give a rough night to any champion out there. I want to become champion for my family and my promoters. I have to give them all the satisfaction and myself the satisfaction to become a world champion.”
