Sammy Vasquez survived two tours in Iraq, now eyes welterweight title shot
Two deployments in Iraq a decade ago humbled Sammy Vasquez in ways the average person can't even fathom. It made him appreciate even the little things. Like green grass.
"There's not a lot of grass over there," the 29-year-old undefeated boxer told Paste BN Sports. "When I got home, I just laid in the grass for about an hour and looked up at the blue sky."
It also made Vasquez appreciate that he made it home with his body, if not necessarily his mind, intact, considering he was involved in dangerous work that included fire fights and some dangerously close calls. Many of his buddies and fellow soldiers he served with didn't make it home, or arrived with mangled or missing body parts.
During his first tour, Vasquez was part of a unit called the Quick Reaction Force, which was among the first responders to, as he puts it, "anything that went down." He was grateful "that I was able to get out of there twice with hardly any damage."
There was some damage. Vasquez was diagnosed with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), which he says never really goes away.
"When things start happening here, it kind of puts you on edge," Vasquez says. "I get kind of paranoid at times. I'm living in Colorado Springs now, and we had the shooting in the movie theater here, and then there was the guy that shot up Planned Parenthood. He killed three (including a police officer) and wounded many others. That was 10 minutes away from me. So I would say I'm a little paranoid at times, depending on what it is.
"But I try to keep my mind away from it because I need to worry about my family and take care of mine. When we go somewhere, I'm always prepared and ready for something to go down. I don't know if it's because I was just trained that way, but I'm definitely very cautious of where I'm at and who's around me."
To this day, Vasquez says, he can't sit in a restaurant with his back to the door. He needs to see who's coming through that door. His wife knows to always take the chair with her back to the door.
The one place where Vasquez can put his mind at ease and feel most comfortable is the place where he has sought refuge for much of his life: in a boxing ring. The welterweight fighter feels at ease because he's good at what he does. And what he does most in the ring is win.
A rising star in the sport, Vasquez is 20-0 with 14 KOs, and will go for No. 21 on Saturday night at Staples Center (Fox, 8 p.m. ET) in Los Angeles. Aron Martinez (20-4-1, 4 KOs) is his most dangerous opponent to date and is fighting in his hometown.
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Staples Center is a long way from Monessen, Pa., near Pittsburgh, where Vasquez grew up and where he was bullied in school. So much so that he took up boxing at age nine, at his father's suggestion. Vasquez is one of many boxers who got their start after being bullied.
"I'm able to use boxing as a outlet, you know what I mean?" says Vasquez. "It helped stabilize me as a person. You know after a good, hard workout, you feel good about yourself and you feel more complete. If I didn't train or I didn't box I'd probably be a lot more antsier than I am and I'd probably have more problems than I do. Boxing is a stress-reliever for me."
Vasquez is boxing for all those wounded warriors.
"It's not the end of the road for them," Vasquez says. "There's a lot of things they can do now not having legs or arms, but they have dreams and goals, too. They have kids and it just humbles me that I was over there twice and I came back unscathed.
"For me to be able to do what I always wanted to do, and also use it as an outlet, I'm just honored to do it and at the same time I'm doing it for those guys."
The slugging southpaw puts his unbeaten record on the line against Martinez, who lacks big power, as his knockout record indicates, but has something Vasquez feels makes him dangerous.
"He's got a lot of heart and grit," says Vasquez. "To me he's not a boxer. He's a brawler. He comes in and he tries to box, but doesn't seem very comfortable at it, and then once he gets uncomfortable, he comes in and puts his head right in the middle of your chest. And he just throws and throws and throws and tries to wear his opponents out. He's a very tough brawler and is someone who keeps coming and coming and coming, and it's a great challenge to me."
The welterweight division, now that perennial pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather has retired, seems pretty wide open. Vasquez's 10-rounder against Martinez is considered a semifinal elimination bout ordered by the WBC, which puts Vasquez on the title track. He likes his chances of earning a title shot within the next year or so.
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"There's not a specific person in the division anymore," Vasquez says. "Everybody was calling out that one person, Mayweather. Now you have multiple people you can look at, you have multiple avenues you can go, with the different belts and different titles. Mayweather had all of them, and if it wasn't him it was Pacman (Manny Pacquiao, who will retire after his third fight against Timothy Bradley in April).
"It's pretty scattered but there's a ton of fights that can be made. I want to get up in the top 10, I want to be in the upper echelon with those guys, I want to be one of the names tossed around like Amir Khan, and Timothy Bradley. But in this game you have to fight somebody to call somebody (out), so hopefully if I beat Aron Martinez, that would set me up for a bigger name and a bigger fight. Just keep climbing that ladder till you reach the top."
One of the guys in the upper echelon, undefeated Philadelphian Danny Garcia, who moved up to welterweight recently, takes on Robert Guerrero in the main event at Staples Center Saturday night. Vasquez could see a big fight down the road, especially if both remain unbeaten.
"That would be a good fight," Vasquez says. "That would be a fight for Pennsylvania right there. Philadelphia against Pittsburgh."
(Top photo of Sammy Vasquez, left, and Wale Omotoso, by John Gurzinski, AP)