ANAHEIM — If I’d met Diego Aviles the first time anywhere beside a boxing gym, I would have assumed from his handshake that I was meeting a member of the student council. The direct eye contact and impeccable manners? Something you’d expect a young man to employ in a summer job interview. I wouldn’t have expected that this good-natured guy regularly beats the snot out of anybody.
Much less everybody who’s crossed his path lately. Wouldn’t have imagined that the kid who graduated from Magnolia High in May also became a National Golden Gloves champion that month, perhaps just the second from Orange County if his coach’s research is right. Wouldn’t have ID’d someone so humble, someone so quick to share credit, as a future contender who in April was identified and honored as a Rising Star by the National Boxing Hall of Fame.
Wouldn’t have pegged him as a soon-to-turn-pro pugilist who won five national championships between the ages of 15 to 17 and who was robbed recently of an opportunity to compete at the U.S. Olympic boxing trials by fate and the fact that he turned the now-necessary 18 years of age two weeks too late.
Because Aviles is not the biggest guy, OK? All of 5 feet, 5 inches, he’s a youthful 112-pound flyweight who will try 118 pounds on for size (and for fun) in a couple weeks at USA Boxing’s National Junior Olympics in Wichita, Kansas, beginning June 22. But watch him spar for 60 seconds and you’d get it too: This fearsome boxer-puncher wit.
