Borderline
Former contender Antonio Escalante stages a quiet return to the top

Story and photos by Chris Cozzone

“When you’re at the top, everyone’s with you,” the words pop out of former No. 1 Contender Antonio Escalante like jabs on a double-end bag.

“But when you’re down, they’re gone.”

Losing the excess baggage – hangers-on – might not be a bad thing for the border battler who came so close to a title shot, so close to being the first world champion El Paso has ever had, that he could taste it.

This, he knows.

“I have to think for myself now,” he says.

It wasn’t that long ago that Escalante’s name was on the lips of every El Paso fight fan. Rated by all four alphabet soup bodies and promoted by Golden Boy, he was just waiting for the call that would say, “You want to fight for the, er . . . a world title, Tony?”

The call never came.

Instead, he got the call to fight a former world champ in a fight that the border had been screaming for since both pugs had turned pro. Drying out to 122 was no longer working, so fighting Daniel Ponce De Leon, who’d grown up in Chihuahua while Escalante is originally from Juarez, seemed to make sense, especially since it was a featherweight eliminator for one of the ABCs.

Unprepared, Escalante was slaughtered in three. Six months later, he started over against Alejandro Perez – only to suffer a shocking first round kayo, in what was supposed to be the climb back.

End of story for Escalante.

Or was it?

Dropped by Golden Boy, Escalante quietly returned to El Paso. Refusing to do anything but his way now, he began to creep back. On a low-key card in Las Cruces, N.M., Saturday night, promoted by Zeferino Entertainment and headlining heavyweight David Rodriguez, Escalante, 25-4, 16 KOs, will land what he hopes is his second comeback win when he takes on the unheralded Rynell Griffin, 6-6-1, 2 KOs.

The first get-back bout was in September, when he obliterated Pipino Cuevas, Jr. in two minutes-and-change at the County Coliseum. Like Cuevas, who’d lost three straight bouts, Griffin is expected to check out early. The New Orleans fighter has dropped four straight.

Escalante shrugs, “I’m still in my comeback – this and the next fight. I really wasn’t sure who I was fighting until last week.”

Escalante doesn’t have much to say about his opponent – he really doesn’t know much about him other than he’s a southpaw, but he does know a loss will finish him, at this point.

Escalante says that he doesn’t really want to talk about everything that has happened, either, though he’ll have no problem telling you that he did not agree with the training regimen Ronnie Shields had him on in Houston, prior to Perez; that he’d been rushed into accepting the De Leon fight without proper time to drop weight; and that his trainer, Louie Burke, did his job, but that he was the one, not Burke, who doubled the gym work, weakening himself to the point of exhaustion before stepping into the ring.

“It’s a waste of time to tell everyone you talk to, the reasons, the excuses,” he says. “I’ve been behind people when they’re talking about me, saying, ‘He should just retire. He’s finished. He’s shot.’

“It’s an unforgiving sport and there can be unforgiving people. So I have to do this for myself now. I have to do it my way. I have to give it another chance.”

For Escalante, that means training at home in El Paso, running in the mountains and being surrounded by family and friends, with trainers he’s been with since his amateur days. It means fighting like Antonio Escalante – not trying to brawl just because the fans want to see a war, and not trying to be a cutesy stylist because a particular trainer thinks he should change.

“We’re here for a short time – this career is not forever,” says Escalante. “Do I think I can get there again? Yes, I can get there. I’m a strong guy. If I can’t make it, I’ll hang up the gloves and do something else. I’m aware of that.

“But I’m also aware of what needs to be done, and how. I’m thinking for myself now. And I’m comfortable.”

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