The name Austin Trout rings like the title of a movie. And the life of this man has played out like one. A soft-spoken God-fearing mama’s boy from a humble background, working hard in secrecy towards a crazy notion to take down a seemingly all-powerful evil overlord. Just like The Last Dragon or any number of other film classics. On rare occasion, this enduring myth is made flesh with a little talent, a lot of hard work and a restless dream.
Growing up in hardscrabble Las Cruces, New Mexico, fighting would come as naturally to young Austin as breathing. “There are two factors you need for a fistfight," he says. "Space and opportunity. In a little town with a bunch of desert, there’s a lot of both.” Trout’s mother was a devoted aficionado to the art of boxing, so they would attend fight parties together and boxing matches always played on her television: Tyson, Holyfield, Roy Jones, Hopkins, Pernell Whitaker, even the throw-backs like Ali vs Frazier. While she respected Ali’s leadership beyond the ring, she favored the savvy, strictly-business approach of Joe Frazier. When asked if his mother’s tastes had influenced him to follow in the footsteps of Smoking Joe, Trout said, “I didn’t like to get hit, so I’m probably more like Ali.”
Trout’s growing fascination with the Sweet Science wasn’t confined to the real world. He daydreamed of moving to Philadelphia. According to his favorite movie, Rocky, and his childish imagination; that is where boxers came from. His love for fighting lore extended to kung-fu movies and ninja cartoons. He might have just as well packed his satchel and ran away to the East to study the code of the samurai; learning to be wise and strictly principled while kicking ass.
But it was no farther than the local restaurant where his life would abruptly change. Over a cheeseburger platter with Mom, the waiter happened to mention that he was a boxer. Trout was surprised to learn that there was a gym just around the corner—one he’d walked past a 100 times but never even noticed. That building had always seemed abandoned, but he was told that the fighters entered through the back. Immediately, his mom took him down to check it out.
At the P.A.L. gym, he was paired up with other ten year old's but quickly found that the other fighters he met sparring in the ring may have been the same age and size but had already been training for five or six years, and had all the moves down as second nature. None of his old neighborhood friends were into boxing, and he was the only black kid in a gym that was almost exclusively Mexican. That said, he was never bullied and with tireless enthusiasm he lost no time in catching up, winning respect with his tenacity. Trout would discover that Chicano culture held boxing as sacred, and he would learn to practice the discipline with the maximum of dignity. If he had acquired a reverence for the craft in his mother’s milk he was in good company.
The first few times Mom would escort him to the gym. But she didn’t have too much free time to spare, busy working hard to raise their little family on her own. Trout’s father, who she had met in the Army, had moved back to St Louis. Trout would walk to the gym alone, or run. There he would encounter no shortage of mentors. The head coach was Joe Chavez. He spearheaded the exercise program and oversaw the group runs. Full story here in our print magazine or get the ebook here.
Written by Glen Beck