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The lights are low and centered on the boxing ring at Cicero Stadium.
After the eighth bout, Eric Ross, 29, steps down from the stands and heads to the locker room to get his hands taped up. His head bobs back and forth to house music playing from his Apple AirPods as he dresses and warms up with stretches and jump rope.
Walking back toward the stands, the first beads of sweat form on his temple.
In its 100th year, Chicago’s Golden Gloves tournament attracts fighters of all kinds of backgrounds across eight weight divisions and three skill levels.
[ 100 years old, the Chicago-born Golden Gloves are continuing to mold boxers and inspire lives ]
Ross has the unwavering support of his family and an advantage over many in his super heavyweight division. The boxer out of Matador Boxing Club in South Deering has two previous Golden Gloves titles from Chicago and won the national tournament last year.
In the stadium, there’s not much room for boxers to warm up. Underneath the stands, Rodney Wilson, Ross’s trainer and a three-time Golden Gloves champion, calls out punches for Ross to throw as attendees weave past.
Wilson’s assistant, Perdure Carter, says his fighter has a good chance of winning the tournament again. “He’s dedicated,” he says. His strength is his jab, Carter adds. His weakness: “I don’t see any.”
As the 14th fight of the night gets underway, Ross begins to ease up. His match is next. Fighting out of the blue corner, Ross wears the blue gloves given to him by tournament officials.
His opponent, Andres Merlos, comes out of the red corner with red glovesand is one of the few boxers that night who didn’t belong to a club.
When their match begins, Merlos throws his weight at Ross, pushing him to the ropes. Ross, 6′7″ and weighing just over 203 pounds, is leaner where Merlos is broader. Ross responds with jabs when he can.
A minute into the fight, Merlos throws his body against Ross for a third time. Ross jabs and finds an opening to land a left-handed power punch on Merlos’s unguarded face. Merlos falters and collapses in less than a second. The referee calls the fight at a minute and 53 seconds.
From the crowd, Edward Ross cheers as the referee raises Eric Ross’s hand to declare him the winner. The 63-year-old Garfield Park native says his son got his fighting instincts from him.
“I’m not bragging,” he told the Tribune. “I have a lot of scars on my hands but not on my face.”
Wilson says Ross did well in the fight, and praises Merlos’ strategy. But after not fighting for four months because he had to work, he says Ross is rusty.
Ross is satisfied with the bout and says his opponent “fell for it.”
“I was baiting him with my jab,” the whole fight, he says. Now Ross advances to the finals on April 13, where even Golden Gloves officials think he’s a favorite to win.
With a record of 11 wins and one loss, Ross says his understanding of the sport and refusal to look for hard knockouts right away is what sets him apart from other boxers.
“I learn from other people’s mistakes,” he said, noting that a knockout looks cool, but jabs are something he can win on points.
Edward Ross grew up in public housing at the former Rockwell Gardens. “You gotta know how to fight, or you’ll be embarrassed,” he said. In exchange for fighting bullies, he took money and snacks from the neighborhood kids, calling himself the “bully beater-upper.”
When he met Eric’s mom, Mary Staples, she was a “fighting lady.” Edward Ross said she wouldn’t consider herself a tomboy, but she would fight for her older brother when they were kids — and that’s what caught his eye.
The couple moved to Grand Crossing before Ross was born and lived near 71st Street to raise their family.
Edward Ross said he taught all his kids how to fight but didn’t teach them to be aggressive. He sees that trait, of protecting himself and others, in his son.
Brian Ross, older by nine years, played a role in raising Eric that was almost like a father. Edward and Brian Ross would coordinate times when they would drop him off and pick him up from school.
“I knew he was a fighter,” Brian Ross said, remembering when his brother fought three bullies outside his high school. Eric was never the aggressor but knew how to defend himself.
When Eric’s family met with the principal after the fight, the principal told Brian Ross that if he ever got into a fight, “I want (Eric) there.”
Eric said his brother changed his life by waking him up and getting him to school each day, developing relationships with his teachers and principal, and assisting him with homework. But even then there were limits, Brian Ross said. “I can’t do the tests for you.”
Eric’s first passion was basketball after his older brother took him to the McDonald’s All-American Game in 2010.
Seeing his brother lead his high school basketball team to super sectionals convinced Brian Ross that Eric had the athletic prowess to make it out of the neighborhood. Years later, it still takes him time to explain the force that has driven him to watch over his little brother.
“I saw something in him, that maybe even he didn’t see in himself,” said the elder Ross brother.
Eric’s career took off after high school, playing basketball for four different colleges before graduating from Shorter University in 2017. He played for a lower league in Germany for two seasons, averaging 30 minutes a game and 14.6 points.
But his basketball career would not last. In 2019, Eric could’ve renewed his contract but opted out. With three kids at home in Chicago, he said he missed his family too much.
With a move back home to the Englewood neighborhood, Eric Ross decided he would pick up boxing and try to go pro. At first, he struggled to find a gym and a trainer that would take him seriously, but eventually, he learned about the Matador Boxing club at Trumbull Park gym. There, he got paired up with Wilson, a boxing legend in his own right with three Golden Gloves titles in Chicago, and a national title from his heyday in the ‘80s.
In the ring, Wilson was surprised to learn Eric Ross had never picked up gloves before 2019. With just three months of training, Eric Ross wanted to challenge himself and fight in the Golden Gloves. With a bit of hesitation, they went for it.
In 2019, Eric Ross qualified for the senior novice super heavyweight title because it was his first Golden Gloves tournament and he had never fought before. He won by split decision in the preliminary round and won by technical knockouts in the semifinal and final.
Eric Ross loves boxing so much, in order to make it work out financially, he started driving trucks seasonally. Now he has his sights set on fighting internationally and recently made it as far as the semifinals of the Olympic qualifiers for Paris 2024.
It was worrisome for Edward Ross to see his son fight in the ring at first. “You never know if it’s going to be a good day or a bad day,” he said.
His son has become his own person with a good and genuine heart, said Edward Ross, who is happy to see him also accomplish his goals inside the ring. “He’s the type of person to make sacrifices for someone and they don’t even know it.”
For Brian Ross, he said he sees glimpses of himself in his brother.
Years later, he remembers the rides to school where he felt like his younger brother was ignoring him. But all those times he was on his phone, Eric Ross said, deep down, he was listening.
“My goal was to stand in the shadow, and say well done,” Brian Ross said.
