How I met and became best friends with John Martinez

By kiki

                                         John and Bea Martinez

In early1968, I was chairing a meeting at the Teamsters Gym to plan our annual Junior Golden Gloves tournament. A new group of guys, John Martinez was among them, came to our forum and said they were with the A.A.U. (Amateur Athletic Union). The pack leader, Tony Cerda, told us that we needed to have the A.A.U. sanction our Junior Golden Gloves tournament and that the A.A.U. would run the tournament. John was also one of the guys pushing hard to get me kicked out as tournament director; I told them that they were welcome to enter their boys in our tournament if they liked (they did) but, I said to them that I was running the tournament, as I had been doing so for the last four years. Their ploy didn't work, as I ran the tournament in 1968 and did so for another six years. 

After that 1968 meeting, I would see John and his wife Bea around town - John, who lived close to me at the time, had a youth boxing club, and one Saturday night, he was holding a benefit dance for the club at the local handball club. So Connie and I decided to go to the dance, when John saw me there he looked at me like:

 'What the hell are you doing here?'

 After a beer or two, we started talking, after that every time we would run into each other we would talk, soon we were visiting each other's home, started going out to dinner with the wives. We also became co-trainers to each other's boxers - one time during dinner, John began to laugh, and he said to me: "You know I didn't like you before I met you" Said he had been brainwashed into disliking me by the A.A.U. Guys.

John, Bea, Connie, and I became best friends through the years.

John passed in 1994. R.I.P., my friend.