Hundreds of eyes trained on Joseph Rivera as he stepped into the ring, donning his trademark black and gold cape, for the eighth professional fight of the 22-year-old’s career.

Among the viewers was Jesse Sifuentes, who had recorded a song for Rivera, his friend and idol, to strut into the ring. The two grew up together at the 713 Boxing Gym near Aldine, opened by Rivera’s father a decade ago. As Sifuentes’ father bounced in and out of prison, he turned to the gym for solace.

“It’s like a family,” he said.

The crowd at Houston’s Arabia Shrine Event Center on Nov. 23 was electrifying, reminiscent of a bygone era before sportswriters began lamenting boxing’s decline. It featured the past and future of the so-called sweet science, with up-and-comers including the son of Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield, one of boxing’s all-time greats. The father was in attendance, his famously maligned ear by Mike Tyson intact. Spectators arrived in limousines, drinks flowed and scantily-clad women flashed pearly whites and other body parts.

It was a big moment for 713 Boxing Gym, which Rivera’s father, Joseph Sr., started when his son didn’t enjoy the club where he was training. Not only could this fight help cement the young boxer’s professional reputation, but it followed a devastating few weeks in which someone broke into the gym and stole valuable equipment and irreplaceable trophies and medals. The plight went viral once Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. donated and sent his legions of Twitter followers to the GoFundMe account.

This night, Rivera was in the coveted closing spot. His opponent, Ariel “La Guerra” Vasquez, was older, stockier and had 44 fights under his belt. From the hardscrabble capital city of Managua, Nicaragua, Vasquez seemed tougher than the baby-faced Rivera, nicknamed “La Tormenta,” or storm, for both his hurricane-prone hometown of Houston and his fierce jabs.

The much-hyped event had kicked off with a touch of disappointment when Vasquez could not make weight, so instead of the scheduled title fight, the two were competing only for their professional record. But that did not dampen the enthusiasm of Rivera’s most devoted fans: the boys and girls of 713 Boxing Gym.

“I’ve always looked up to him,” said Sifuentes, 26, who met Rivera when they both were young teens getting into boxing. Sifuentes’ father had been a professional boxer before he landed in prison, and the boy felt drawn to the sport to connect with him in some way.

“I was missing a father figure,” he said.

‘Off the street’

He found it in Rivera’s father, who helped refocus the boy’s anger. Sifuentes’ mother had him at 14 and raised him and his three siblings alone. Often there were financial problems, but Coach Joseph told Sifuentes not to worry about paying at the gym if he couldn’t afford it. When Sifuentes didn’t think he would be able to go to prom, the coach and the gym organized fundraisers so Sifuentes could pay for a limousine, tuxedo and a class ring.

“He kept me out of the streets,” Sifuentes said. “He pushed me to my fullest potential, to the best version of me.”

He and his coach shared another coincidental link.

As a young adult, Rivera Sr. had mixed with a rough crowd in north Houston and in 1996, he was charged with the unauthorized use of a vehicle after police found him and his friends inside a stolen car. He served five months in prison, where he got to know Sifuentes’ father.

Their paths diverged after Rivera was released. While Sifuentes’ father kept landing back in prison, Rivera changed course. He and his girlfriend became pregnant with Rivera Jr., but she left when he was 4. He raised the boy alone, before marrying his second wife and having three more children.

Rivera Jr. struggled at school. Small and slight, he was always bullied. One day he’d had enough and used what he had learned in boxing to punch out the bully. The surprise defeat scored him social points — and caught the attention of Gina Rigsby, then assistant principal at Reed Academy.

“She started sending troubled kids from the school to our gym because she saw what it had done for Joseph,” said his stepmother, 38-year-old Denise Rivera.

Rigsby, now the principal at Aldine High School, said she didn’t like boxing before she met Rivera and his father.

“I realized it was much more of a family sport,” she said. “Some of my worst-behaved kids under Coach Joe began acting a lot better … not only did boxing affect them as individuals, it also promoted excellence in the classroom.”

Some of that had to do with the coach.

“They respect him even more than their dads,” Rigsby said. “If they have dads in their lives.”

She found that boxing seemed to particularly help children battling rough home lives and other problems.

“When they box in the ring, it helps them get their demons out,” she said. “It’s something inside of them they have to overcome.”

Often called the “poor man’s sport,” it is a familiar tale embodied by some of the greatest boxers of all time.

“We can’t afford to play golf or tennis,” “Sugar” Ray Leonard once said. “It’s kept so many kids off the street. It kept me off the street.”

A sport in decline?

The sport has fallen into a bit of a decline amid outcry over its violent nature and its propensity for concussions, brain injuries and even deaths. Many TV stations stopped airing fights regularly. Still, last year, “Canelo” Álvarez of Mexico signed a staggering 11-fight, five year, $365 million contract with DAZN, a streaming service.

On Saturday, World Boxing Association heavyweight champion Andy Ruiz Jr., who grew up in Imperial, Calif.. will face Britain’s Anthony Joshua in a much-anticipated rematch. Ruiz grew up in a club similar to the 713 Boxing Gym as the son of Mexican immigrants in an impoverished part of California.

At Houston’s Arabia Shrine Event Center in November, it was as if boxing was still in its prime. Holyfield took interview upon interview and photos with fans in the changing room as he waited for his son, Evan, whom many laud as the “future of boxing,” to make his second professional fight.

“The only people that usually box are people from the ghetto, tough people,” Holyfield, who was raised in a crime-ridden housing project in Atlanta, said in a brief interview. “They are used to disappointment and pain.”

Evan Holyfield’s coach and manager, Maurice “Termite” Watkins, grew up the son of fumigators in Houston before turning to boxing, eventually becoming a pro. He said he also had been one of those children who was troubled before he found the sport.

Later, he helped lead the Iraqi boxing team to the 2004 Olympics. Now he heads the Fighter Nation Boxing Gym in Houston, where Evan Holyfield trains.

“A lot of kids get in because they can’t afford baseball gloves and bats,” Watkins said. “Kids just want to feel part of something, and if we don’t give them a place, someone will.”

It was Watkins who gave Rivera Sr. a set of foundational tapes that helped him train at his new gym. Watkins has followed the father-and-son boxing team since.

“You won’t find anyone more committed,” he said. “His kids have a place to go that is safe.”

It’s that fact that made the burglary so devastating. Rivera started the club with his own money, often going into debt over it. The equipment had been hard fought; the trophies even more so. Rivera has still not figured out who did it; he thinks the door was left open by mistake and someone who knows the gym broke in.

“All we wanted was our medals back,” he said. “The kids worked so hard for them.”

But the community outpouring of support —fueled by McCullers — was heart-rending.

“It meant so much,” Rivera said.

Like so many boxing clubs, his gym is a place where children seem to find refuge from all sorts of pain. Take Gerardo Guardado, who last year discovered his single mother had terminal cancer. The 14-year-old, the second-eldest child in the family, spent weeks sleeping next to her on the floor after that.

He had been diagnosed with ADHD when he was 4. Though doctors prescribed him medication, his mother instead enrolled him at Rivera’s gym.

“It gets all his energy out,” his mother, Veronica Granados, said. “It helped him with his anger issues.”

Now the teen hoped to turn professional like the gym’s biggest star — “I wanna fight, I wanna be like you,” he told Rivera Jr. once.

As his idol strutted into the ring, Guardado watched in anxious anticipation. Both boxers put up a good fight, but Rivera quickly took the lead after he punched Vasquez in the stomach, a maneuver known as the liver shot. The Nicaraguan never quite recovered, and four rounds in, Rivera was declared the winner to resounding cheers.

The coach picked up his son, swinging him around the ring. They might be a ways off from the Holyfield legacy, but this was a step.

“After the lights are turned off and the dust is settled, the team is coming back together hugging and celebrating,” Rivera Sr. reflected. “It makes everything worth it. It lets these kids know your dreams can come true.”

Dug Begley contributed to this report.

lomi.kriel@chron.com