PHOENIX – The temperature is already nearing 100 degrees as Elijah Garcia pulls up to train at Fighters First Boxing Gym at a little past 9 a.m. on a recent Saturday morning. There are no external signs that this building at the end of a dirt road 30 minutes outside of the Arizona capital is a boxing gym, until Elijah’s father George rolls up the storefront gate to reveal a fighting oasis in the desert.
The Arizona sky is a blue expanse that the clouds have forgotten, and the arid, dusty air blows hot like a rest stop hand dryer. Any complaints about the heat can be quickly resolved by reading the banner that hangs above the ring: “Nobody cares; work harder.”
“You’re lucky you got here when it’s so chilly,” the middleweight southpaw Garcia, 17-1 (13 KOs), says jokingly as he wraps his hands before a workout. “Last year we set the record for most days over 110 degrees.”
As suffocating and hostile as the desert heat can be for those unacclimated, Garcia admits it can be too comfortable training at his home gym. That’s why, ahead of his previous fight, he made the four-hour drive to Las Vegas for his first real training camp under new head trainer, Bob Santos. The following day, a Sunday, Garcia and his father were to head back to Las Vegas to begin training camp for his next fight, which could potentially land on the undercard of the Gervonta Davis-Lamont Roach Jnr rematch, whenever that gets scheduled. Although that card hasn’t officially been announced, and may not happen on the August 16 date that has been reserved by Premier Boxing Champions at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Garcia is getting ready so an opportunity doesn’t sneak up on him.
“I got my wife, my kids, I got everything I want here. If I want to wake up 8:30, 9 a.m., I can wake up later if I want to. Over there, Bob has his own routine that’s worked for him for a long time. All he cares about is winning,” says Garcia, adding that Santos also cooks for him and takes him to the mountains to run.
The realization didn’t come without consequences. Garcia’s comfort led to complacency ahead of his first pro defeat, in June 2024, against Kyrone Davis. Garcia missed weight by more than 3lbs ahead of their bout on the Davis vs. Frank Martin card, and Garcia struggled to make the next-day weigh-in as well at 10 a.m., weakening him further, just hours before he entered the ring to take the split decision loss.
“You gotta be in good shape, and having a good weight cut has lots to do with it,” said Garcia of the biggest lesson learned in defeat.
“Being able to go in there and fight a hard 10 rounds while exhausted, now I know mentally where I’m at. I can go 12 rounds, easy. Even though I lost, it taught us a lot and I think we’ve improved a lot more.”
Instead of being matched with a soft touch to get acclimated under a new trainer, Garcia was matched with his most experienced opponent yet, 2012 U.S. Olympian Terrell Gausha, this past March. Gausha dropped Garcia for the first time in his career in Round 1 on a timed right hand that caught him as he set to throw his own shot. Garcia rose up and fought through a badly bleeding nose, exacerbated by a congenital issue that he has since had surgically corrected, to win a tough split decision.
“If you go back and watch the fight and turn off the volume and turn off the commentating, I think I won clearly,” said Garcia, dismissing the criticism over the decision.
At just 22, Garcia has already become a grizzled veteran through ambitious matchmaking. Two years ago, Garcia earned his first eye-catching win, an eighth-round stoppage of Jose Armando Resendiz, who has since rebounded to earn an even bigger win, a split decision over former super middleweight titleholder Caleb Plant in May.
“I’m happy for Armando. I’m cool with Caleb Plant, but I just think it was the styles,” said Garcia. “I remember when I fought him, he was tough, nonstop punches, nonstop pressure, and if you’re not prepared for it mentally, he’ll beat anybody. It’s a great win for me.”
If Garcia seems mature for his age, it’s because he had to grow up faster than most. After picking up boxing at age 11, Garcia won the US national championships in 2017 as a 14-year-old. By 16, he had his first child on the way and had to find a way to provide for his new family. He dropped out of high school and became a pro boxer, though he was unable to fight in the United States due to his age. Instead, Garcia made the trip south to Mexico, fighting grown men at an age when most are worried more about who to ask to prom.
Garcia recalls signing a contract to fight, then having a busload of opponents to pick from. His father selected the biggest one and told him, “If you can’t beat this guy, you probably shouldn’t be fighting.” After five such wins in 2020 and 2021, Garcia was finally able to fight in the United States the following year, becoming a favorite of Premier Boxing Champions and earning spots on the promotion’s undercards.
The last day before Elijah’s training camp officially begins isn’t a particularly hard one. There is light shadowboxing, focusing on moving his head coming forward, plus step-back counters with uppercuts and hooks. George Garcia, himself a former pro boxer with a 13-1-1 (4 KOs) record, does a few rounds of pads, though he says it’s usually his son Elexus who holds for his heavy-handed brother.
There is some light-hearted reflection as George and Elijah express contentment with the city’s Major League Baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, electing to remain in town. They also laugh at how Elijah Jnr., now 4 years old, took a liking to WWE wrestler Jey Uso while attending the promotion’s recent visit in Phoenix, which also reignited Elijah Snr’s lapsed passion for wrestling.
At home, Elijah, his wife and two children – a boy and a girl – live on a two-acre ranch in Wittmann, Arizona, about half an hour north of the gym. There they raise sheep, chickens and goats. “We used to have cows, too,” said Garcia.
“Then you got hungry?”
“Exactly,” he chimes back.
“You don’t know how valuable life is until you take a life of an animal; then you really respect the animals and life in general,” he adds.
He finishes up his workout with a couple light rounds on the punching bag, followed by a couple more on the cobra bag, before calling it a day.
Although Garcia isn’t yet ranked in the top 15 by any of the four major sanctioning bodies, he already has his eyes set on the top of the 160lbs division.
“It don’t really matter to me,” said Garcia. “I know Carlos Adames is a champion – I’ll fight him. [Erislandy] Lara is a champion – I’ll fight him. Janibek [Alimkhanuly] is a champion – I’ll fight him. They got that No. 1 dude, Yoenli Hernandez. He’s pretty good – he just beat Kyrone. I have no problem fighting him for an interim title. It don’t matter who it is, I’ll fight my ass off.”
Part of what motivates Garcia to pursue the difficult life of a professional boxer is the bloodlines in his family. He’s a fourth-generation boxer on his father’s side, while his maternal uncle Jesus Gonzalez had been a top prospect to medal at the 2004 Olympics but turned pro instead under Top Rank, finishing his career with a 27-2 (14 KOs) record. Elijah hopes to become the family’s first world champion – and final boxer.
“Hopefully, I’ll be the first one to be champion on both sides of my family and that’ll put an end to it, done for,” Garcia said. “I don’t want my kids to fight or my grandkids to fight. It’s a tough sport – you’ve gotta be mentally strong for it. And if you’re not, you won’t make it too far.”
The sacrifices are never far from his mind, especially as he picks out gloves to pack away for camp. He leaves for Las Vegas without a set fight date or a set opponent, which is oddly appropriate given how uncertain the sport is at its core.
“It sucks that I gotta leave my family, it sucks that I can’t eat whatever I want, it sucks there’s a lot of things I can’t do – but I love it. I do it because I love it,” said Garcia. “I don’t think I could just step away from it. I feel like it’s a lot easier just working that 9-to-5 job and getting that pension, but this is something I love and something I’ve been successful at, and I want to be world champion.
“Once I win the world titles, I know everything else is gonna fall right behind it and I’ll have money for my kids to go to school and do whatever they want. That’s why I do it.”
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for jeetwin55.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at .
