It’s been said that when life closes one door, another
one opens.
It may sound corny, but that certainly applies to the
boxing career of Danbury’s Fernely Feliz. After a successful 15-year
professional career as a heavyweight fighter ended in 2008, the now 42-year-old
Feliz has taken the wealth of knowledge he amassed over the years—both in the
ring as a technically sound fighter and out of the ring on the business end of
the sport—and applied it to a burgeoning career as a trainer.
One door closes, another opens.
And now, Feliz—whose last name in English appropriately
means “happy”—is hoping to open the door to a world title. He came close as a
fighter—going 23-9 with 16 knockouts in a career that spanned from 1993 to 2008
and took him all over the globe—and as the trainer for fellow Danbury resident
and Dominican native Delvin Rodriguez.
Feliz and the 33-year-old Rodriguez share an unbreakable
bond that stretches back more than 20 years to when a grade-school-aged
Rodriguez walked into the old Hat City Boxing Club and Feliz took him under his
wing. The two have followed remarkably similar paths, both in the ring and out
of it. They both moved to Danbury with their families from the Dominican
Republic as youngsters and endured many of the same hardships once they arrived
here, like difficulties in school because of a language barrier and the
ever-present attraction to life on the streets and all the problems that come
with it. Both men came from humble beginnings and have had to fight for
everything they have—literally and figuratively speaking.
“Delvin is a kid who had to earn it,” Feliz said during a
quick break at his used-car business on East Liberty Street—just a few blocks
away from the gym. “Whatever it is, he had to earn it.”
For both Feliz and Rodriguez, boxing provided a safe and
positive environment—and at times means of self-protection—during those
difficult adolescent years. It seems absurd, to think about it now, that a
future world heavyweight title contender would have to worry about being picked
on at school—at 6-foot-2 and a solid 214 pounds when he was in the ring, Feliz
is not exactly the guy you want to provoke—but it happened.
“The situation was tough,” Feliz recalled. “I used to go
to school and I had a bunch of kids who used to pick on me. I didn’t know how
to speak English. They used to call me names, everything. They jumped on me a
few times.
“One day, I decided to go to a place named the Harambee
Center. The person who helped me out over there was Bill Curtis. He gave me a
job to clean and watch out for the kids. Even though my English wasn’t too
good, he gave me a job. And to start me off, he had me clean the gym. When I
was sweeping, I saw a ring, a boxing bag in there. I went up to his office and
I asked him ‘What is all this? Let’s clean them up and put them up.’ He used to
have a boxing gym on Spring Street. So we put the gym together again.
“Some of those guys who used to pick on me at school used
to hang out at the Center, and some of those guys who used to jump on me, I
started to beat them up in the gym. I started feeling more and more confident,
and all of a sudden, everything started to change. I didn’t have any more
problems. I started to enjoy going to the gym and working out. It helped me out
big-time.”
And for both Feliz and Rodriguez, boxing was a ticket out
of Danbury and a means to earn a living. Both fighters have traveled the world
and gone places and done things that may not have been possible without boxing.
“I had a beautiful career,” Feliz said. “I had a lot of
fun, I traveled a lot of places, I was in Europe many times, and I worked with
a lot of big fighters.
“I helped a lot of people make a lot of money,” he added
with a laugh.
As Feliz’s career first began to take off, he made sure to
keep the teen-aged Rodriguez by his side to show him the ropes.
“We used to go to camp with Evander Holyfield, and I
would take him to big camps down in North Carolina,” Feliz remembered. “I used
to look at him like a kid and I had to protect him.
“Everywhere we would go, people would want to beat him—he’s
got the baby face, he’s a skinny kid,” Feliz added with a smile. “When I used
to take him to Holyfield’s camp, he used to box professional fighters like
nothing was going to happen. No fear. That’s when I knew this kid was going to
be something else.”
Feliz seems to have adjusted smoothly to life as a
trainer, but he admits his heart is still in the ring.
“It’s tough, but I like what I do,” Feliz said. “I like
to show people my abilities. Anytime improves themselves, like you can see with
Delvin, that makes me feel proud. It shows the work that we’re doing.”
Key to his success as a trainer are the lessons he
learned himself in the ring—both the good and the bad, the successes and the
failures.
“I like doing what I do because it shows me the abilities
that I had before that I never used,” Feliz said, “all the things that I could’ve
used before in my career to be a great fighter and I didn’t use it.
“To train is hard because you have to have a rhythm,”
Feliz added. “You have to have good eyes and you have to see the weakness of
the opponent that you’re fighting. You have to see the weakness of your fighter.”
With Feliz in his corner, Rodriguez will step into the
ring on Friday night at the Mohegan Sun Arena and square off against Freddy “El
Riel” Hernandez in a 10-round, junior-middleweight fight. The fight will be the
main event on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights that night.
Rodriguez (27-6-3, 15 knockouts) is the seventh-ranked
junior middleweight in the world by the World Boxing Association. He is coming
off a win by technical knockout over George “Comanche Boy” Tahdooahnippah on
Feb. 15 at the Mohegan Sun Arena. Rodriguez dominated the previously unbeaten
Tahdooahnippah from the outset, and the fight was finally stopped after nearly
six full rounds of relentless pounding.
“The last time he fought, he looked good, he looked
sharp,” Feliz said of Rodriguez, “but there were a few mistakes that he made
during that fight that we’re working on to make him better.
“To be honest, I’ve never seen Delvin so serious and so
dedicated,” Feliz continued. “The way he’s working, that’s what is letting me
know he’s ready to go for the win. He’s hungrier than ever.”
As for that elusive world title, Feliz feels like he
already has the most important championship of all.
“I have the best title in the world,” he said with a
smile. “I have my wife, my three beautiful kids and I have two grandchildren.
My brain is good, I can walk, I can talk, I can deal with people, I can sell
cars, I can have fun. You can’t ask for more.
“I’m happy.”
Happy. Feliz, that is. (Read the original story)
