Born in the coastal state of Guerrero, his family moved to the Bondojito area of Mexico City in 1947. It was a time when thousands of Mexicans were leaving the countryside, and the slum areas around the city were expanding faster than the government could provide adequate housing or services. Olivares became a tough boy on tough streets. Siblings died, his father left to find work in the U.S. and he was thrown out of school for fighting. According to boxing folklore, the headmaster once offered to present his graduation diploma early, on the condition that Olivares never come back to the school.

How Rubén Olivares began his boxing career

He tried his hand at carving wooden figures, a career for which he had little talent. Then, he and a friend decided the one thing they could do was fight, so they walked down to the local gym. Many boxers start as amateurs for fitness, or to toughen up, and then find they are good enough to turn professional. The day Olivares first entered the gym, he already had a professional career in mind.

He built up a reasonable record in the amateurs, including a Mexico City Golden Gloves title. But having missed his chance to compete in the 1964 Olympics, he saw no point in continuing to fight for free. At just 17 years of age, he had his first professional fight, beating Isidro Sotelo in Cuernavaca. It was the first of 24 consecutive knockout wins. Apart from his winning record, Olivares had that special star quality. While many boxers wear out their opponent, slowly mastering them until you sense a knockout is coming, from the moment Rubén stepped into the ring, you knew a knockout punch could come at any moment. Whatever else might happen, fans were not going to get a dull fight. 

With money coming in from fights, Olivares did not slow down when he left the ring. He was noted for his love of tequila and women. However, this lifestyle only made his fans love him more. As the wins accumulated, Ruben started to get attention beyond Mexico. The Los Angeles Times once described him as having “a smile that stretched from ear to ear and thunder in both hands.”

The man with thunder in both hands

Another young Mexican bantamweight catching headlines at this time was Chucho Castillo. He was noted for his quiet, almost shy approach to life, working ruthlessly in the gym but then quietly slipping away. He was one hell of a boxer and in December 1968 traveled to Inglewood, California, to fight World Champion Lionel Rose. The 10th round saw Rose knocked to the canvas, a moment that convinced the many Mexicans in the audience that their man had done enough to win the title. However, when at the end of 15 rounds, the referee raised the Australian’s arm in victory. There was first surprise and then anger. The riot that followed put 14 fans and the referee in the hospital. Five months later, Olivares came to Inglewood, where he beat Olympic champion Takao Sakurai of Japan in a title elimination bout. 

He was now set to meet Rose for the world title, which would once again be fought in California. The first round was even as the two men sized each other up. This was followed by an action-packed second that started with the fighters exchanging blows. Slowly but steadily, the brawl turned in the Mexican’s favor, and close to the bell, Rose was knocked to the canvas. The Australian got to his feet and fought on, but from this point it was a case of not who would win, but how long Rose could last. It ended in the fifth, Olivares becoming world champion at the age of 22.

The trilogy of fights with Chucho Castillo

All of Mexico now wanted to see Olivares fight Castillo. The former delayed the showdown by taking a few easy fights, but in April 1970, the two Mexicans stepped into the Inglewood ring for what would be the first of three fights that would define their careers. Olivares won the first clash on points, but it was close enough to justify a return. This time, he received a badly cut eye in the first round, a wound he claimed was from a clash of heads, something the Castillo camp denied. The referee kept checking the cut and finally stopped the fight in the 14th. It was Olivares’ first defeat in five years and 63 fights.

It is possible that by then, he was already in decline. Olivares notoriously hated training, and one reason his management team kept him fighting so regularly was to keep him occupied and away from parties. Not that the management had to push him into the ring. The money Olivares got from each contest quickly disappeared, lost in rip-offs, taxes, bad investments, and gifts to his relatives and friends back in the barrio. His bank balance always needed one more fight.

The end of Olivares’ career

By now, he was no longer putting the same effort into the gym work, while his party lifestyle meant he was increasingly struggling to make the weight limit. Yet Olivares was so talented and so proud in the ring that at first the decline didn’t show. In April 1971, he fought Castillo for the third time, surviving an early knockdown to win on points. He seemed back on form and won his next six fights. However, those around him were increasingly worried about his attitude and his playboy lifestyle. In March 1972, he met Rafael Herrera. It was a fight neither man wanted. Olivares was out of shape, and Herrera had been sick. When Herrera later won with an eighth-round knockout, Olivares was still surprisingly upbeat.  He had not, he announced, lost the bantamweight title, but had started his pursuit of the featherweight title. 

However, his life was growing increasingly wild. There is a story that while he was preparing for one fight, he and his opponent passed each other in the street. His rival was going out for an early training run just as Olivares was coming in from a disco. It was also at this point that the boxer started to get into movies, starring in “Nosotros Los Feos” and getting numerous other smaller parts. Despite all the distractions, Olivares won three more world titles. He beat Bobby Chacon for the NABF featherweight title in 1973, Zensuke Utagawa for the WBA featherweight title in 1974, and Chacon again for the WBC featherweight title in 1975. He finally left the ring in 1981, having lost three and drawn two of his last five fights.

Life after boxing

His life since then has had its ups and downs. On the downside, there was a marijuana-related arrest. In contrast, there was his induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. There were some television roles, but financially, his post-boxing career brought tough times. In his later years, Olivares was a regular in the Mexico City mercado, selling boxing memorabilia and autographs. There are children and grandchildren, and at 74, he is still active, still has that captivating smile, and still has the respect of the people who recognise him in the street.

Bob Pateman is a Mexico-based historian, librarian and a life term hasher. He is editor of On On Magazine, the international history magazine of hashing.

The post Who was the greatest Mexican boxer of all time? appeared first on Mexico News Daily

The latter — better known as the Los Cabos Tennis Open — is an ATP 250 competition staged annually at the Cabo Sports Complex. The tournament opens Monday and runs until July 19.

In 2024, these two tournaments — whose series numbers reflect their respective prestige, prizes and available ranking points — took place back-to-back on the ATP schedule in February and March. This was so that the Los Cabos Tennis Open could serve as a lead-in for the Mexican Open, a symbolic gesture that reflected the importance of the latter to Acapulco as the city recovered from the devastation wrought by Category 5 Hurricane Otis in October 2023. 

But this year, the ATP dictated that the Los Cabos Tennis Open would return to its traditional summertime calendar slot on the tour.

This means that not only will 32 of the world’s best men’s singles players and 16 of the best doubles players be battling each other for a share of the US $873,000 in prize money, they’ll be battling the intense seasonal heat, with temperatures this week predicted to stay at around 90 degrees Fahrenheit with up to 50% humidity.

What the Open means to Los Cabos

The Los Cabos Tennis Open is one of two premier spectator sporting events in the area. The PGA World Wide Technology Championship, held in November, is the other. 

Yes, Los Cabos is famed for sport fishing too. But it’s not as though one can watch fishing tournaments live, since boats range as far as 50 miles from the coast and spectators are not welcome aboard. You can watch the fish being weighed, but that’s not exactly an activity brimming with athleticism or sustained action. The same could be said of golf, although it’s certainly interesting to see how top players perform from an up-close perspective.

No, in Los Cabos, the ATP event is the only one that offers real action, which is why it’s a highlight of the summer sporting season, even for those like myself who typically choose to watch it on television in air-conditioned comfort.

The Los Cabos Tennis Open’s history

When the tournament first premiered in 2016 at the Delmar International School, it seemed something of an oddity: Los Cabos is a resort destination, and although some of its luxury properties do feature tennis courts, it didn’t seem as if vacationers could support a big-time tennis tournament. Nor did natives seem likely to, given the relatively high prices for tickets and the fact that few local youngsters then played the sport.

Over time, though, an appreciation for tennis has bloomed in Los Cabos, due in part to family-friendly initiatives like this year’s Kids Nite by Disney, an event in which children can interact with tournament players. 

Attendance, too, has grown steadily, despite the 2020 open being cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 iteration having no spectators. In 2022, 25,000 people attended the weeklong Los Cabos Open. In 2023, that figure increased to 30,000. By 2024, attendance had grown to 34,000, and the tournament generated an economic impact of over $6 million. This year, the numbers should be even higher.

The level of tennis, meanwhile, has been high from the start. Past champions of the event have included Ivo Karlović, Sam Querrey, Fabio Fognini, Diego Schwartzman and Daniil Medvédev, the 2021 US Open winner and the world’s number-one-ranked player when he captured the Los Cabos Tennis Open trophy in 2022.

Which players are participating in the Los Cabos Tennis Open this year?

Unlike the Mexican Open, which features both top men and women, the Los Cabos Tennis Open is solely a men’s event, as the list of former winners indicates. No, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, the winners of the last six Grand Slam singles titles, will not be participating this year. Nor will Novak Djokovic, the winner of a men’s record 24 Grand Slam singles trophies. 

However, the open will, as always, welcome many highly ranked men’s players. This year, the roster of 32 singles competitors includes some ranked among the world’s top 50 players: Russian Andrey Rublev (No. 14) — the tournament’s top seed and a 17-time ATP tour-level winner — Alejandro Davidovich-Fokina of Spain (No. 28) and Denis Shapovalov of Canada (No. 31).

Also competing is 20-year-old Mérida native Rodrigo Pacheco Méndez (No. 219), who garnered excitement at February’s Mexican Open in Acapulco when he made history by being the first Mexican player in decades to win a main draw match. He was ultimately knocked out in the quarterfinals by Davidovich-Fokina. 

Top-50 players Lorenzo Musetti of Italy (No. 7) and Australian Jordan Thompson (No. 37), the latter who was last year’s champion, were scheduled to compete at this week’s tournament but withdrew, Musetti due to a leg injury.

How to enjoy the action live or on television

Prices for 2025’s Los Cabos Tennis Open start at 1,075 to 1,280 pesos (US $57–$68) for individual tickets and climb to 11,715 to 12,890 pesos (US $625–$688) for the three-day weekend series covering the quarterfinals, semis and finals. Full-week passes for all six days of live festivities are even more.

As it has since 2021, the tournament will take place at the Cabo Sports Complex, home to five hard courts, including a stadium court that can accommodate up to 3,500 spectators. The complex is located across from Solaz Resort Los Cabos at kilometer 18.5 of the Carretera Transpeninsular.

For those unable to attend, television coverage of the tournament will be available courtesy of ESPN and Disney+.

The post Baja heats up as the Los Cabos Tennis Open begins appeared first on Mexico News Daily

Sports historians have long contested baseball’s alleged U.S. origins, suggesting it instead began in the United Kingdom as a sport known as rounders. For three years in the early 20th century, a commission of baseball executives and president of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs deliberated the issue of the game’s beginnings.

To further complicate matters, Canadians claim to have recorded the first baseball game in Ontario in 1838 — one year before the sport supposedly debuted in Cooperstown. But wherever and whenever the game was invented, it’s certainly no longer confined to U.S. borders, and it’s especially popular in several Latin American countries, in places no one would otherwise associate with star-spangled pinstripes and maple wood.

The Mexican-American war brings baseball to Mexico

Just over a decade after baseball’s roughly documented global origin in the late 1800s, the sport had already reached Mexico by way of militaristic expansion. Since then, “béis” as it’s colloquially known, has swung its way to the top of Mexican sports fandom, behind only soccer as the country’s second-most watched team sport. Iconic Mexican players like Beto “Bobby” Ávila and Fernando Valenzuela have all donned uniforms in Major League Baseball, helping establish the sport’s popularity among Mexican sports aficionados.

The game’s origins in Mexico can allegedly be traced back to Xalapa, Veracruz in April 1847, during the Mexican-American War. A 1909 travel guide may have been the first book to print the story that a group of U.S. soldiers belonging to the Fourth Illinois Infantry Regiment were stationed in a central part of the city.

Santa Anna’s leg: The first baseball bat in Mexico?

At the Battle of Cerro Gordo, U.S. Army forces under General Winfield Scott and Captain Robert E. Lee had defeated troops led by General Antonio López de Santa Anna, decisively outflanking their entrenched position just outside of Xalapa. The victory helped to open a strategic path from the coast of Veracruz towards Mexico City, with Santa Anna’s routed troops abandoning munitions at the site along with various resources and miscellaneous items, including Santa Anna’s wooden leg, one of several prosthetics he had worn since losing his lower left leg in the First French Intervention.

There are varying accounts of what happened next. But the mythic retellings involve a wooden leg, a group of homesick American soldiers and an open area in Xalapa being turned into a makeshift baseball field. In its simplest form, the story goes that this group of soldiers, which included military officer Abner Doubleday of Cooperstown, New York — the man who would later be credited as the inventor of baseball — used Santa Anna’s wooden leg to play the first ever baseball match in Mexico.

Who really invented baseball?

Sports historian Eric Nusbaum, whose extensive book about the dark history of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ stadium winds all the way back to Mexico during the 1800s, disagrees with the claim, writing “It’s a myth. It did not happen.” And in 1983, American Heritage magazine wrote an extensive profile on Doubleday titled “The Man Who Didn’t Invent Baseball.” As with many things surrounding American origin stories, particularly one so far removed beyond U.S. borders, there are conflicting reports, particularly with Doubleday’s involvement in baseball at-large, let alone his presence in bringing it to soldiers in Xalapa. 

The claim around Doubleday as the progenitor of the sport has been heavily contested over time and involves none other than Albert Goodwill Spalding, the founder of Spalding sports equipment, best known as the manufacturer of the official NBA basketball. Spalding wrote what is believed to be the first comprehensive history of baseball, titled “America’s National Game.” He also advocated in defense of baseball’s Cooperstown origins by publicly vouching for Doubleday’s involvement in it all. Nowadays, much of this story is seen as a farce and as Spalding’s way to promote a new sporting business and tourism to Cooperstown, where the Baseball Hall of Fame stands today.

Regardless, Mexico has definitely had a longtime relationship with the sport. In 2024, MLB writer Carlos Molina traced the sport’s history in the country, concluding that, despite the difficulties of historical precision, Guaymas, Sonora, likely hosted the earliest documented baseball game in Mexico in 1877, three decades after the alleged peg leg game would have taken place in Veracruz. In this rendition, a group of sailors aboard the USS Montana landed in the Pacific port, hosting a pick up-style game that grew to include sailors from other ships.

Mexico leaves its stamp on baseball

As the game became rooted in its new home, Mexicans left their own stamp on baseball. In 1933, Baldomero “Melo” Almada became the first known Mexican national to join the MLB’s ranks as a member of the Red Sox, where he played as a center fielder for five seasons. 

Outside of the Majors, Mexico has developed its own leagues and baseball lore, too. The Liga Mexicana de Béisbol was created in 1925; early on, the league recruited players from the Cuban and U.S. Negro leagues as a way to position itself as a competitive system. LMB’s success is highlighted primarily by the Diablos Rojos del México, a team founded in 1940 which is considered to be Mexico’s royal baseball dynasty on par with the New York Yankees. The Diablos Rojos currently boast former Yankee star Robinson Cano on their roster, and the Mexico City-based team also went head-to-head with the Bronx Bombers in an exhibition series last year that was aired on ESPN.

Looking back at the sport’s mercurial beginnings, you’d never know how long it took for the game to reach Mexico’s home plate, so to speak. It’s been a hit since then, and with the World Baseball Classic only one year away, Mexico will have another chance to celebrate its storied baseball lineage and show that its players belong among the best baseballers in The Show.

The post The unbelievable origins of Mexican baseball appeared first on Mexico News Daily