Top of The World : Gabriel and Rafael Ruelas Took Different Routes to Their Championships

BIG BEAR LAKE —  On a piece of mountaintop peeking over the clouds below, the Ruelas brothers--bound by blood, sport and now, by championships--are together again.

In a gym, of course.

Rafael, the lanky International Boxing Federation lightweight champion, is in the ring stalking a sparring partner as he prepares for his title defense against Billy Schwer in Hong Kong on Oct. 22.

Gabriel, the newly crowned World Boxing Council junior-lightweight champion, has just driven up from Sylmar and is watching his younger brother’s dark eyes.

“I think Rafa likes to prove,” Gabriel says with a smile. “He feels that he has to prove more to people because of the way he is, because of his physical look. Like when we started boxing, my

sisters, my family, they didn’t want him to do it.

“Same with selling candy. I think I was the first one that started selling candy, and I told him, ‘I’ll give you the money and you do the homework.’ But it was a challenge for him, and he went and he was the best candy seller.

“There will always be a challenge for him.

“Me, I think I have more natural talent. I think he works harder than I do. I work hard, but I do things in the ring that it’s like I’m not even trying to do, but I anticipate something and I do it.”

The brothers--separated by only 10 months--have been packaged as a team from the beginning. They came to the United States from a small ranch in the Mexican state of Jalisco together to live with a sister, and, this year, in spectacular action bouts, have won world titles together.

When Gabriel was training for his title bout against Jesse James Leija, Rafael joined him here. Now, with Rafael at work, Gabriel has left his girlfriend and son behind to join Rafael, at least for a few days.

As they pose for a camera on a sofa with trainer Joe Goossen, Gabriel cannot help but tease Rafael about people thinking that Rafael is the older of the two. Rafael shrugs, like somebody who has heard this line of humor before.

“I have 13 other brothers and sisters, and I love them, but I could be without them,” Gabriel says. “Rafa, I don’t know what it would feel like if he wasn’t there.

“Even though I am older (24 to 23), I have never thought about me being older than him. Because we’re so close in age. I’m sure he doesn’t look at me as the older brother. We’re like the same age, and in a way, the same person.”

*

The story has been told often of how the brothers appeared on the boxing scene seven years ago: One day in 1984, 13-year-old Gabriel showed up at the North Hollywood gym his brother Juan trained at, trying to sell candy. Gabe liked what he saw, and asked Goossen if he could stay and be a boxer.

Goossen agreed, and Rafael, though much skinnier and far more successful at school, decided he wanted to be a fighter too.

Early on, it was clear that although they came as a pair, they were hardly a matched set.

“Gabriel is such a free spirit that you have to keep directing him and redirecting him, and once you get him pointed in the right direction, he goes out and does it,” Goossen says. “Rafael is almost like, wind him up and go.

“Rafael is much more conservative. Gabriel will go to the gym and he’ll leave sweat shirt after sweat shirt behind, his shoes, jackets, and he could care less, he’ll just go out and buy a new one. But that borders on insanity.

“Rafael, he wouldn’t misplace a shoelace. He’s much more meticulous and conservative with what he does.”

A little more than a decade later, Rafael is still skinnier, Gabriel is still more carefree, they are still with Joe and his brother, Dan, the promoter, and they are quickly becoming two of the most marketable fighters in the world.

In what may still be the fight of the year, Rafael won his title in February in a war of attrition with then-champion Freddie Pendleton. Ruelas was knocked down twice in the first round but never wavered from his swarming attack style, beat down Pendleton and came back to win a decision.

Then on Sept. 17, a sneering, scowling Gabriel overpowered the highly regarded Leija from the opening bell, flying around the ring and eluding Leija’s better shots on his way to an easy, flashy decision.

“They both appeal to all kinds of fans,” Goossen says. “Some like the brutalizing attack of Rafael’s. Some like this kind of left-field style of Gabriel’s, where he kind of wings it as he goes along.”

The brothers have fought on more than 20 fight cards together, and, although Gabriel has said he’d prefer not to fight on the same night as his brother, the plans are to join them in twin title defenses sometime in January.

The brothers recognize that their fighting styles mirror their personalities.

“Differences between us? It’s night and day,” Gabriel says. “He likes to study. He reads books. Me, I never liked any of that stuff. In school, he always hung out with the ones that got A’s, and me, the ones that got F’s. I didn’t graduate. He graduated a year earlier than he was supposed to.”

Says Rafael: “I guess it was evident in the fight against Azumah Nelson, where Gabriel sort of slowed down a little bit (and lost a decision in 1993). He had it in him to keep going, but I don’t know what it was, maybe he just felt content. He fell into a comfort zone instead of pushing to go above and beyond.

“I’m always pushing to go beyond where I’m at right now. Even though I feel great that I’ve gotten to where I am, I don’t want to stay where I’m at. I want to keep going up.

“I was like that at school. And when we were both aiming to learn English, I was always the one who pushed myself more. And I’m thankful I’ve been very successful at everything I’ve pursued so far.”

For Rafael, the future beyond Hong Kong almost certainly includes a showdown with Oscar De La Hoya sometime in 1995, and if he wins that, his style and growth potential could bring him into Julio Cesar Chavez financial territory.

“I feel I’m the best there is at 135 (pounds),” Rafael says. “I’m here, sitting on the throne, and I’ll wait for whoever comes up to me. And then we’ll get it on.”

Gabriel, so fresh from winning his belt, is much more comfortable talking about the past, about all the sacrifices made, the broken right elbow he overcame in 1990, the pitfalls avoided.

“We didn’t just wait for destiny to happen, we made it happen,” Gabriel says. “And it cost us a lot. A lot of things, if I had to do it over again, hmmm, I’d think about it. Because I missed out on a lot.

“I’m surprised how seriously we took it when we were amateurs. It’s hard to take it so seriously when you’re a kid, but we did.

“I don’t have a lot of friends. I lost most of my friends when I started boxing, because they get tired of asking you to go to eat or to a party and they know the answer’s going to be, ‘No, I’m training, I’m fighting.’ And they get tired of even asking.

“I think we missed out on being kids because we always trained. Even though we were 12 and 13, we trained like professionals. We never celebrated Christmas until, like, two years ago. We didn’t know what to do. We were, like, I know you put up a tree, but what else?

“I shouldn’t be complaining, I’m a world champion now. But again, I know it only gets harder. At least I know that.”

Rafael sees it differently.

“Sometimes I think about it,” he says of the sacrifices. “But you have to look at the other side. We’re experiencing things that very few people in the world get to experience.

“Here we are, we come from a very small ranch, and we’re now world champions and thousands and thousands of people watch us fight and they look up to us. It’s just a great feeling.

“You have to look at that side of it. We’re still young. And if we continue to succeed, we’ll earn a lot of money. . . .”

*

Heavyweight prospect Jeremy Williams is the latest to join the Ruelas camp, and although his cockiness wouldn’t seem a quick fit with the brothers and Joe Goossen, he strolls around the Big Bear house comfortably and in obvious respect of what the Ruelases have done.

“They’re at a point in their lives where I want to be,” Williams says. “These two guys are some of the coolest guys I ever met in boxing. Joe’s instilled a lot of principles and morals in those two guys, and they just exude it.”

Goossen says that by the time he got them, both boys already had all the heart and courage they needed, instilled by early mornings on the ranch working with their father.

“When we were 7 years old, and we first got here, we didn’t really have parents,” Gabe says. “We didn’t see our parents for seven-eight years after we left them. It was really hard to come up here to the States. So I kind of forgot about them. We didn’t have pictures. I would cry at night because I wouldn’t remember (his mother’s) face. And our sister, the one who was taking care of us, she had to work all day.”

Once they started boxing, Goossen acted as a surrogate parent and guardian, going to school when Gabe got into trouble.

“He always took our side,” Gabe says happily now.

Once they started boxing, everything else came naturally.

“Boxing is our life,” Gabe says. “We put our whole body and soul into boxing, and look what happened.”