Self-taught coach builds boxing home in Sunset Park

Raúl Mizhquiri knows a thing or two about fights.

On a Friday night, boxers of all ages and backgrounds train at Raul’s Boxing House Club on Eighth Avenue in Sunset Park. Between the steady thud of gloves on heavy bags, there’s an atmosphere of hard work mixed with familiarity, more like a gathering of friends than a cold training hall. Some are there for a good workout; others hope to become professional fighters.

Since 2020, several of Raul Mizhquiri’s fighters have competed nationally and internationally, earning multiple accolades. How does a self-taught trainer without a record inside the ring make a name for himself in boxing?

It’s not common, but it’s not unprecedented.

Enzo Calzaghe, father of undefeated champion Joe Calzaghe, was named Trainer of the Year by Ring Magazine and the Boxing Writers Association of America in 2007 despite having no record as a fighter. Angelo Dundee, with limited amateur experience, trained 15 world champions, including Muhammad Ali. Ray Arcel, who reportedly never fought professionally, trained more than 20 world champions.

In Mizhquiri’s case, what he lacked in a ring record he built outside it, over two decades, fight by fight, until the result was a boxing gym rooted in the heart of Sunset Park.

“I look back and I still don’t know how I did it,” said Mizhquiri, 47, speaking from his gym between sparring sessions. “I don’t know how I did it.”

A seed is planted

It began 20 years ago, shortly after Mizhquiri arrived from his native Ecuador. A trainer in Manhattan planted the seed of boxing, then suddenly disappeared after a year of training.

Still, the 17-year-old Mizhquiri was left impressed by what he had learned, including the ability to tell whether a good one-two had landed cleanly just by hearing it.

Later, he kept training and found another coach who put him into sparring during his first week at the new gym.

“And they beat the hell out of me. They hit me hard,” Mizhquiri said, laughing. “I remember I was bleeding and I went to the coach and said, ‘Hey, I’m bleeding.’ And he told me, ‘What do you want me to do? You want me to stop the damn sparring? Finish the damn round!’”

That was when he realized he was in the right place, on the right path.

But life got in the way of his boxing. He married, opened a restaurant, divorced, opened another restaurant, and married again.

He put his boxing career on hold, but boxing never left his mind. At home he would hit a bag, or train his kids. More than once, he said, even his wife encouraged him to pursue boxing.

“This isn’t for you”

Working at a taxi company, Mizhquiri met someone who would become his first student, after seeing a video of the young man sparring. Mizhquiri shared some tips, and the young man was so excited that he asked Mizhquiri to train him, even offering to pay for a gym membership so they would have a place to work.

“I had reconnected again. I had reconnected with the sport,” Mizhquiri said.

That first student stopped training after a few months, but others joined the sessions. With several students under his guidance, Mizhquiri considered applying for a trainer’s license with the Boxing Commission. He asked other gym coaches about it, but the response was immediate.

“This isn’t for you,” one coach told him, “because nobody will respect you, because you weren’t a fighter.”

Boxing in a basement

Soon after, in 2017, the gym owner asked Mizhquiri to join his team. When Mizhquiri wasn’t interested, the owner asked him to leave the gym.

That setback led him to set up an improvised training space in the basement of the building where he lived.

For nearly three years, the basement was where aspiring boxers trained with Mizhquiri after he finished his workday. The gym grew little by little; one trainer gave him a heavy bag. Other tools and materials were salvaged. At night, he trained anyone willing to work hard, and more students joined his evening sessions.

Things were going well until the building owner asked him to clear out the basement. That led to a move into the new Raul’s Boxing House Club in September 2019.

Nothing but dreams

In boxing gyms, trainers often display their achievements through trophies, medals, championship belts, or photographs. It’s part of how they establish credentials. People came to the new gym looking for training, but in 2019 Mizhquiri still didn’t have important victories on his résumé.

“I had nothing. I didn’t even have a frame on my wall,” Mizhquiri said, laughing. “I had nothing. I think I only had dreams.”

Then in March 2020, six months after opening the new gym, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the city to shut down indoor activities, including all gyms.

Somehow, Mizhquiri managed to keep training a few boxers. In that time, he reviewed and adjusted his methods.

“I worked so hard those two years that in those two years I made four fighters,” Mizhquiri said.

Two of those four competed on a boxing card on Long Island in 2021, when indoor activities were allowed again in New York. They won. It was Mizhquiri’s first major achievement on the circuit.

Coming full circle at Madison Square Garden

A year later, despite Mizhquiri’s booming business, he was still largely unknown in New York’s boxing circuit. But the work of the prior years changed everything: two of his fighters competed in the first Ring Masters tournament (previously known as Golden Gloves) after gyms reopened in 2022.

Organized by USA Boxing Metro, the tournaments require amateur boxers to advance through a series of bouts until reaching a final at Madison Square Garden.

The experience was “very special, you could say extraordinary,” said Estuardo Rodríguez, then a Sunset Park resident, who faced Daniel Wilkins of Staten Island in the final.

In the opposite corner, Wilkins’ trainer in the 2022 Ring Masters final was the same person who years earlier told Mizhquiri: “This isn’t for you.”

Nearly 10 years later, Mizhquiri proved coaching was for him. Rodríguez lost the final by split decision, but it was a defining moment for both him and Raul’s Boxing House Club. From that point, the gym began to establish its name in the boxing world.