Gladiator School: Stories from Inside YTS (Ep 18)
“The boxing trophy”
Edited and photographed by David William Reeve
Editor’s note: This is Part 18 of “Gladiator School: Stories from Inside YTS” — an oral history of life inside California’s most notorious juvenile prison. Youth Training School (known formally as Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility) had a reputation for mayhem, violence and murder that earned it the name Gladiator School. It closed in 2010. Juveniles were hardened for survival at YTS, only to be returned to the streets.
Since publishing the story The Closing of California’s Most Violent Juvenile Prison, survivors of YTS have come forward to tell stories of daily life inside. This series relays and respects their stories: Juvie told by those who were there.
In this episode, Tony “The Tiger” Espinosa is an amateur boxer on the rise in Oxnard, California. With a devastating left hook, he’s undefeated, and gamblers place their bets on his next fight. Suddenly, his promising career in the ring is cut short: Tony lands in juvenile hall, facing time in the California Youth Authority. When he’s transferred to Youth Training School, all bets are off as The Tiger finds himself in the fight of his life.
The boxing trophy
In the Catholic school that I was at, whenever word got around that there was going to be a fight after school, the Monsignor would get word of it, and then he would get the two guys together. All the kids would make a big circle, and he would give us boxing gloves. That’s how we would fight. He was the referee in the middle.
I would knock the other kid out in two seconds.
I just came up with a natural left hook. I would square up and drop my head, and when I dropped my head, I would throw my left hook — and boom! It would connect. Because they would just follow me, and they didn’t know my left hook was coming, that’s how I would knock everybody out.
I’d been playing the piano since I was five years old.
It so happened that my kindergarten teacher was also a piano teacher. She never, in her wildest dreams, thought that I could play the piano. Every time she would let us in in the morning, whoever walked by the piano first would start pounding on it. I always asked her if I could play the piano, and she said, “Oh, not right now.” She would never let me play.
One day, she was going to have a show-and-tell in the classroom. Parents were able to come. I went home and told my mom. I said, “I don’t want to bring anything to show and tell. Now is my chance to play the piano.” She was like, “Oh, great idea.”
On that day, my friends brought their G.I. Joe’s, and the girls brought their dolls. They would go up there and say, “I got my G.I. Joe for my birthday,” and run back down and sit down. It became my turn, and she said, “Tony, what did you bring to show and tell for the classroom?” I stood up and said, “Teacher, I did not bring anything. I want to play the piano for the classroom.” You can see it registering in her mind that this is the kid that’s been asking me all year to play the piano. She looked for my mom. My mom gives her the thumb up, “Yeah, it’s okay.”
I went up there, and I started playing boogie-woogie on the piano. That’s one of my favorite songs. She just flipped her lid.
It was amazing how I had to maneuver my hands to play the song.
I started taking an interest in boxing when I was young. I didn’t like fighting, but I loved the sport of boxing.
When I was 12, I figured, I got something here, man. I got to go to a boxing gym. I took myself to the Oxnard Boys & Girls Club. They had boxing there. I started fighting, became an amateur boxer, and fought all over the place.
One fight was with a big-time amateur boxer from Carpinteria. He had something like 11 fights, and I only had 3. We drove to the community center in Carpinteria. There were several fights, and we had the main event.
I knocked him out in the first round. He never hit me.
My coach would bring professional boxers to spar and train with me. Lupe Aquino, a professional fighter, would spar eight or nine rounds every other day for a few months. When we got out of the ring, his face was all bloody, and mine was not.
I was 17 years old, 175 pounds, and 6 feet tall for my last amateur fight. It was at the Ventura Fairgrounds. It was sponsored by a group called the Trade Club. Before the fights, they had a barbecue, and they were showing slides on a screen featuring the sponsors of the fight. They showed a man who owned seven Holiday Inns, and the people sitting at his table would cheer.
“Wow, there’s the owner of seven Holiday Inns,” I said.
Then, the owner of five Hilton Hotels sat over here. That’s the type of people that were in the Trade Club.
I had the main event against his Hispanic guy.
During the barbecue, we were mingling with everybody. I was talking to the owners of this and the owners of that. They would ask me all about my career:
“How many times have you lost?”
“Do you think you’re going to win tonight?”
“How long have you been fighting?”
“What is your weight?”
They were betting on the fight. When I got up in the ring and was looking around at all the tables, everybody had a stack of money in front of them, so this fight was no joke.
My left hook knocked him completely out of the ring a few seconds into the first round.
He landed on one of the judge’s tables, and he was so out they didn’t even bring him back in the ring. They just worked on him there, and they announced that I won. As I got out of the ring, all these gentlemen I talked to before the barbecue were all coming at me.
It was dark, so I didn’t know what was going on. When you’re an amateur, I had my tank top and headgear on, and they’re pulling on my shirt and shorts. I’m trying to get to the locker room, and all the way there, people are coming up to me and pulling on my shirt, my headgear, my shorts. When I got to my locker room, I saw that it was money tucked into my clothing. It was all twenties and fifties. It was well over $1,000. It was amazing. It was my last amateur fight, and I got paid.
I was still undefeated.
In 1983, one of my neighbors went on a vacation. They had a shed in their backyard. They had booze in there, and I went to get the booze. They gave me first-degree burglary. I went to Ventura County Juvenile Hall.
I had already turned 18 when I was in juvenile hall, so they put me into the county facility, and I went to court. I had a few other minor things on my record that railroaded me. They transported me to the Norwalk Reception Center. My family was devastated. My oldest brother was into selling drugs and armed robberies. He was always in trouble, so my parents just thought, oh my God, here’s another one.
After 90 days in Norwalk Reception Center, they transferred me on the bus to YTS.
It was intimidating. I couldn’t believe I was in that position. The guards were very mean. They would roughhouse me, push me against the wall, and stuff like that.
On my first day there, the Mexicans, because I’m Mexican, gathered around me. They wanted to test me. They would talk about my mom, my dad, my brothers and sisters, tell them “F you,” and “I screwed them.” They were expecting me to go off. I didn’t know what was going on. I just kept quiet because there were too many of these guys. After they were done, and I had survived, they said, “Yeah, you’re in.”
I was one of them now. Weird. I didn’t want to be in that group.
I think it was my first week there when a guy got stabbed in his eye. His eyeball got ripped out. I don’t remember who it was, but they were fighting, and he got stabbed in his eye, and his eyeball landed right in between my two feet.
Right away, I got into the boxing program. Everybody on the boxing team wears a sweatsuit that says YTS, but there’s only one captain. I was the captain for the whole time I was there. The captain wore a black sweatsuit; the others were gray. The captain had two stripes down the side; the others had only one stripe. Mine read “Captain” of the boxing team on it.
My boxing coach would set up fights if somebody wanted to fight me. He would say, “Don’t fight him out there. Bring him in here.”
I was on the baseball team with this African American gentleman, the biggest, strongest African-American in YTS. He was super tall.
He had big guns, and nobody wanted to mess with this guy. He wanted to play shortstop, but I was playing shortstop, and I’m like, “I’m sorry, but you’re not playing shortstop.” He wanted to fight with me there. I was squaring up, and he was squaring up.
I said, “Wait. Do you want to fight? We’ll fight in the ring.” I set that up with my boxing coach, and, of course, I knocked him out. I used the left hook. That gave me so much respect at the prison. After I knocked this guy out, nobody wanted to challenge me.
My boxing coach was a Black man named Mercer “Smitty” Smith, and he had connections. Henry Tillman, the world heavyweight champion and Olympic Gold medalist, and his brothers, would come into YTS from the outside and spar with us because he knew Mercer Smith.
I was learning so much from these guys. One of the Tillman brothers would go two rounds with me; the coach would take him out and then put another brother in. I’m worn out, and these are fresh guys coming in. It was a workout.
We had the best gear money could buy. The gym had two rings — that’s how big it was. Four people could be sparring at one time. Heavy bags were all the way along the wall — speed bags, jump ropes, and a medicine ball. When we fought, we wore headgear and 10-ounce gloves, but when we were training, we wore 13-ounce gloves.
After winning and winning and winning, I was privileged. They didn’t lock me up that much. I could walk around freely because everybody in the facility knew who I was. They respected me.
Two years into my time at YTS, I was getting a lot of recognition from fighting when they brought in a kid who was about 12 years old. He was there for killing his parents. He wouldn’t talk to anybody. He was mute. I know for a fact that he was 12. The news media would go into YTS with cameras and try to interview him, but he wouldn’t say anything.
One day, he started talking to me. He would come to me when we’d go out to the yard. “Hey, Tony, how are you doing? You’re fighting good.”
This is what he told me: he was maybe one year old when his adopted father came into the picture. His dad would rape him; he abused him sexually his whole life. His stepdad had a shotgun. When his mom and dad were watching TV, he said that he got the shotgun, went behind his dad, and shot off his head.
He said he couldn’t shoot his mom from behind. He wanted to be looking at her when he killed her. He stood in front of her and shot his mom in the stomach, killing her. He said the reason he killed his mom was because as he got older, his dad would rape him with his mother in the room watching.
He told me that himself. I didn’t ask him to, but he just wanted to get it off his chest. He would never talk to anybody about it.
Our day room was really big, with a pool table, a ping-pong table, and a TV. Every night, we would go into the TV guide and see which movie we were going to watch. We would watch the movie before they locked it down, like about ten o’clock. The staff member behind the shack would lock it down after the movie was over. The staff members would always change shifts every week. You never had the same one all the time.
For some reason, this one particular staff member wanted to go home early or something. After the last TV commercial, he said, “Lock it down.”
“What?” We were almost at the most exciting part of the movie, the end of the movie! We’re like, “Oh my God!”
He locked us down early. We told him, “Listen, if you lock us down early again one more time, we’re not locking down. We’re not doing it.”
Sure enough, a month later, we got him again. Man, I forget what movie it was. We really wanted to see the end of the movie. He said, “Lock it down” before the movie was over. We told him we’re not locking it down.
He called the goon squad. The big door would open, and you could see the goon squad all geared up with chains and rubber bullets.
They said, “This is your last chance. Are you going to lock it down?”
Everybody got behind chairs, and it was a big riot. I got shot with a bean bag. I thought I was going to die because it was so hard and knocked the wind out of me. I got beat up a little bit. Eventually, we all locked it down. That’s the kind of life it was on a daily basis.
It was close to Christmas time, and I caught somebody in my cell stealing some stuff. I used my hands, and I beat him up. He was completely knocked out, lying on the ground. I turned around to look down the hallway to see if any guards were watching because I was going to drag him out of my cell. He woke up and stabbed me in my leg. I turned around and kicked him with my boot, and knocked him out. He was really out and bleeding.
I dragged him down to the end of the hallway and then cleaned up all the blood. That night, when we locked it down, I couldn’t stop the bleeding in my leg because the cut was just too deep.
At the time, nobody was working in the YTS treatment center. It was Christmas time, so they had to escort me to the local hospital in Chino. Two vehicles went, and I was in one of them. I was well-guarded; shackled with chains on my ankles, waist, and wrists.
I remember the drive, looking at all the Christmas lights on the houses. I hadn’t been outside of YTS in three years.
After years of fighting at YTS, I was still undefeated. There was talk about this gentleman who lived near San Francisco. He had just about as many fights as I had, 30 or more, and was undefeated. There was talk about setting this fight up.
“Let’s do it,” my coach said. “He wants to do it. They’re willing to come in! He’s willing to come to YTS and fight.”
He was the only undefeated light heavyweight amateur in California at the time. I only had six months to get out, so I might as well fight him on the street so my family could watch.
Coach Smith must have gone straight to the Superintendent because I got a summons to go to the Superintendent’s office two days later. Back then, nobody went into the Superintendent’s office. I don’t care who you were. You did not go into that office. What the heck is going on here? I’m six months short of getting free, so will he give me more time for something that I did?
Superintendent Otis B. Brantley sits down on this big leather chair, and as soon as I walk in, he says, “Sit down, son.” I sit down, and he leans forward, and right away, I knew what I was there for. He said, “Why don’t you want to fight?”
“Sir, the only reason why I don’t want to fight this guy is because I’m six months to get out, and I want my family to come to the fight. Other than that, I’ll knock him out.”
“That’s the only reason why you don’t want to fight him?”
“That’s the only reason. I don’t want to fight him because my family cannot come to this fight.”
Right then, he gave me a piece of paper and a pen. He says, “I want you to write down every family member, every friend, every cousin, anybody you want to come to this fight, and I will make sure they come in to watch this fight.”
I put down everybody, all my family members, my sister-in-law, my grandmother, everybody.
Everybody involved in amateur boxing in California was in on this fight. Anybody that had anything to do with amateur boxing knew about it. They knew this fight was going down at YTS.
The State of California Athletic Commission sanctioned the fight for three rounds, 2 minutes each. Three scorekeepers attended from the state. The boxing ring was moved from the boxing gym to the basketball gym because it was a lot bigger, and they had bleachers for people to sit on.
Before I fought him, I learned that he had a very good right hand. He was tough to bring down, never knocked out, and never lost a fight.
The weigh-in, right before the fight, was the first time that I laid eyes on him. He did a lot of mad-dogging during the weigh-in. I normally just keep quiet. I think he had a brother and sister who came, and his parents were there. He was Caucasian and might have been a little shorter than I was, but he was pretty muscular. He was 175 pounds — a light heavyweight.
My family all came to this fight. It was amazing because I didn’t see them until I got in the ring. Then I could see them, and I was like, wow. I saw a set of two guards sit behind them. The Superintendent made sure of their security. Other than that, all around them were just blue prison shirts. The noise was just amazing.
My sister-in-law was pregnant at the time. She was very beautiful and had a tremendous figure. But being pregnant, she had to use the restroom a lot. The guards had to escort her to the bathroom. You could imagine the inmates — the whistles and the calls as they watched her walk to the bathroom! That’s what I remember.
I had some friends at YTS who had gotten in trouble and weren’t able to come to the fight, but they were back in the cells watching it on closed-circuit TV. It was available for every cell. Everybody, all the guards, everybody in the whole facility was in on this fight and wanted to watch.
I always liked to go forward, and my opponent wanted to go forward, too. It was just a big battle. My left hook was there already, but what I practiced a lot with my coach was my right hand. I hit him with more right hands than my left because I was just so prepared with my right hand.
After the first round, I knew I was winning. I was in the zone. I wanted that championship trophy.
I was going for his head.
I went to my left hook after he was hurt with my right. Then I would throw in my left hook, and that would get him a standing eight count. He had standing eight counts in every round.
I don’t even remember him hitting me. I was expecting a little more than what I got because he was undefeated, just like I was.
I did not let up on him the entire fight. Every second of that fight, I was on him. I was in such good shape.
After the fight was over, I went to my corner. I had a good idea that I had won the fight, being that I gave him a standing eight count in every round. We went into the center of the ring, and the referee was holding one of our hands. The announcer was outside the ring. You could hear him on the speaker:
“Today’s winner is, from YTS, Tony “The Tiger’ Espinosa. I won on points in three rounds. It was so loud. I could feel my ears just… It’s just super loud.
My body went numb, and it was just really exciting. He handed me the trophy right there in the boxing ring.
He was the toughest guy I had ever fought.
After the fight there was a big, long, white table in a room where the guards would eat. I sat at one end, and Otis Brantley sat at the other end. We had steak and lobster, believe it or not. The loser of the fight went home. He wasn’t invited.
Two of my brothers were there — Tommy and Donald, and my sisters Sylvia, Liz and Michelle were there. And my grandmother got to go. I don’t think my dad went — he played drums for Jerry Lee Lewis and filled in with Johnny Cash sometimes.
I can remember everybody at the dinner passing around the trophy, just holding it and just looking at it.
I felt like I was going to go home with my family.
Superintendent Brantley told me that I could take my trophy to my cell.
Then, two days later, he summoned me back to his office, and I was told to bring the trophy. I went with the trophy, and he said, “Look, it’s too much. It’s too big of a risk, not just for you, but for somebody else to get it and use it as a weapon. Leave it right here on my desk, and when you get out, it’s yours. You deserve it. You come and get it.”
When I was released, I was so excited to be getting out, I didn’t remember my trophy. It totally slipped my mind. I got out in late ’87, I believe, or early ‘88.
I had several fights in Mexico — a couple of times in Tijuana and Ensenada and then Mexico City. It was just a different experience fighting in Mexico. When I fight here in the States, everything’s sanctioned. The scale that you get on for weigh-ins is a professional scale. In Mexico, you have a scale on the ground, like what you’d find in a bathroom, all rusty and 7 pounds off.
My first professional fight was scheduled for four rounds at the Hollywood Palladium against Sergio Guerrero on September 29, 1988. It was going to be televised around the world on Wide World of Sports. In this particular event, they would have three championship fights and a few fights on the undercard. They would have one fighter chosen as the fighter of the night — selected by professional judges.
Guerrero took my left hook, and I could not knock him out. I hit him every round with my left hook. I just could not believe this guy would not drop. In the second round, he jabbed me, and I got a cut on the top of my eye.
I was trying to wipe away the blood with my glove and trying to fight at the same time. Guerrero got a standing eight-count whenever I caught him with my left hook.
I won every single round unanimously on points.
At the end of the fight, they took me back and stitched my eye. I had a big band-aid across my face and went back out in the crowd to be with my family. At the end of the night, the State Athletic Commissioner announced, “The fighter of the night is Tony Espinosa!”
I could not believe it. They presented me with a gold watch and a certificate. That was my first professional fight.
It was March 1993 and I was still undefeated as a professional. I landed a fight at The Great Western Forum in Inglewood against Walter Pupu’a. The Forum is where the Lakers would play. Magic Johnson would be in my corner during this fight.
The winner would have a chance to fight Evander Holyfield for the belt, and a lot of money was involved. I almost had this guy knocked out with my left hook, and the referee gave him a standing eight count. But when I got a little dazed, the referee stopped the fight.
“Where’s my standing eight count?” I asked the referee. I was okay to keep fighting. “What are you stopping the fight for?” He could see I was totally pissed.
I got out of the ring, and Magic Johnson put his arms around my shoulders and walked me down the hallway to the locker rooms. He turned to me and said, “Tony, this was too dangerous for us to get involved. We could not do anything about it.”
I absolutely knew that it was fixed.
More than 30 years later, my fiancé and I were watching TV, and something reminded me of YTS. I told her this story about winning the boxing trophy in 1987 but leaving it behind on the Superintendent’s desk. When I finished my story, she said, “Why don’t I Google YTS?”
She Googled it and came up with David Reeve’s “Gladiator School” series.
She read article after article and came to one saying that in the administration building, it looked like somebody was cleaning up, and they left an old mop, a broom, a couch, and a boxing trophy from 1987.
I just flipped my lid. I could not even talk. It was so crazy!
We zoomed in on the photo of the trophy, and sure enough, it was the trophy that I had won in 1987.
We contacted David, the creator of Gladiator School, who took the photo. He responded immediately, wanting to help us retrieve the trophy from inside the prison. But David had taken the photo seven years earlier, and we were unsure if we would have any luck finding it.
He contacted this person and that person inside YTS, saying that the trophy had been moved to another building. He knew someone who had placed the trophy inside a box and moved it. The room it was in was dark, collapsing with water and mold; it wasn’t safe to retrieve it.
Everybody was losing hope in finding the trophy. It took months.
David was able to contact someone at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. They allowed him to return to YTS to look for the trophy in June 2024. With help from the plant supervisor at YTS and a network of former YTS staff, he was able to locate and retrieve the trophy.
We came to this day, 37 years after the fight, and with David’s hard work and our hope, I’m sitting here holding the trophy right now. My family, including many who were attending the fight, joined me in August 2024 to go back inside the YTS boxing gym and get the trophy.
It’s just absolutely unreal. It’s unbelievable. I can’t even feel myself right now. I feel like I’m sitting on a cloud.
When my son was five, we signed him up for Pop Warner football. It so happened that there was no announcer for the football games. I started announcing the football games for Pop Warner, and I have never stopped. I have never missed a game in 32 years.
Well, I have sayings during the game. There are a lot of times when a kid will get hurt, and they stop everything. The cheerleaders stop, and everybody stops. The football players get on one knee, and the coaches run out to the injured kid. Then he’ll get up and run back to the sideline. 99% of the time, that’s what happens. He gets up and runs to the sideline, and right away, I’ll get on the microphone and say, “Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot express how tough these young football players are. They’re like a Timex watch. They’ll take a licking and keep on ticking.”
They take a licking and keep on ticking. I’ve been saying that for 32 years.
Tony “The Tiger” Espinosa is the 1987 YTS boxing champion. He was incarcerated at Ventura County Juvenile Hall, Norwalk Reception Center and for three and a half years at Youth Training School in Chino, California. Today, he runs a successful plumbing company in Southern California, and plans to soon be married to his fiance, Teresa. He enjoys travel, cruise ships, and frequent trips to see family in Mexico.
Want to read more? “Gladiator School: Stories from Inside YTS” is a series on Medium:
The Closing of California’s Most Violent Juvenile Prison”
“We couldn’t show fear”
“Remember what they taught us?”
“How soon will I know?”
“The only way out”
“We were not afraid to die”
“That Hell they put me in”
“Fifty-five fights”
“Lost in the Halls”
“Putting in work”
“The last watch”
“The white horse”
“Battle scars”
“Home is where I’m standing”
“Internal affairs”
“Focus on their trauma”
“YA Babies: Suitable for parole”
“The boxing trophy”
David William Reeve is an independent writer and photographer who documents the lives of juveniles at risk. Visit davidreeve.net for more.
Contact: davidwilliamreeve (at) gmail (dot) com
