Fort Worth has lost its foremost boxing father; legendary trainer Paul Reyes is gone

Paul Reyes didn’t start boxing until he was 16 but he would remain in the ring, or next to the ropes, for the next 70 years of his life.

Reyes, who was named the Boxing Trainer of the Year in 1986, trained two of the most successful pro athletes from Fort Worth, title belt champions Donald Curry and Paulie Ayala.

The long time trainer died on Saturday night in Fort Worth at the age of 85. According to family and friends, he had been in failing health in the last week.

Boxing is awash in characters who are covered in tattoos, and contradictions. They are the spine of the sport, the reason it will never die. They pour their life into it. Reyes was all of boxing; the people who care enough to get a kid into the gym, because it’s a better alternative to their options on the street.

Reyes was one of those central casting trainers who was revered throughout the boxing community, and in the parts of the city where he was born and raised.

“When I was a kid, he would pick up Donald (Curry) and his brother Bruce, and all of the kids in the neighborhood, and he would pile us into his ‘68 Impala and we would all go to the gym,” Reyes’ son, Vincent, said in a phone interview. “My father was not a man who saw color at all. He really didn’t care.

“Back then it was really rare to have a Hispanic trainer training Black fighters. He just wanted to work with fighters.”

Reyes was late to the sport, but like so many who try it they can’t give it up.

“Any time I went to the gym, he was there. Every time,” Fort Worth resident and former Golden Gloves fighter Paul Ramon said. “He always encouraged me and gave me pointers. He was just an amazing trainer. To do what he did, from where he came from, is incredible.”

A graduate of Trimble Tech, Reyes was drafted by the Army in the late ‘60s. After he returned from his tour, he started working for General Motors but that was mostly as a means to cover the bills so he could work with boxers.

“The fighters kept coming to me,” Reyes said when he appeared on the ITR Boxing podcast, four years ago. “Evidently they felt I knew something.”

Along the way he was introduced to a young Donald Curry, when he was 7, and became his full-time trainer.

Curry should have been a part of Team USA’s boxing squad in the 1980 Summer Olympics. At the direction of President Jimmy Carter, the U.S. boycotted the games in Moscow because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.

“When Don was about 12 or 14 years old I realized he was going to be a special fighter,” Reyes said.

“The Lone Star Cobra” would go on to win the WBA welterweight title, which he held from 1983 to ‘86. He was the undisputed title holder in 1985 and ‘86. He was the WBC light middleweight title holder from 1988 to ‘89.

In 2018, Curry was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Reyes should have one more of his fighters in that Hall of Fame, Ayala, who started fighting for Reyes when he was 4 years old.

The pair worked together for a while before Ayala joined another gym. They were reunited after Ayala semi-retired to work in the post office, in the early ‘90s.

In 1999, Reyes was Ayala’s trainer when he defeated Johnny Tapia in a thrilling 12-round fight for the bantamweight title. The fight was later called the 1999 Fight of the Year. Ayala would remain with Reyes for the remainder of his career, which included a rematch win over Tapia in 2000.

A trainer normally doesn’t land one title belt winner. To have two, from the same city, is the equivalent of lightning strikes hitting the same tooth pick.

Reyes was a fighter’s trainer. He was mostly a coach, but he had a lot of “dad” in him.

When reached for a comment, Ayala had to take a break to compose himself before he could express his thoughts.

“During my time with him my relationship with my dad wasn’t great, and Paul was the voice of reason,” Ayala said in a phone interview. “I respected his advice, but one thing as a trainer he would always go above and beyond what a trainer normally does. That’s what made it an even more special relationship.”

The last “name” fighter Reyes worked with was Roberto Marroquin, of Dallas. Reyes had most recently worked with his son, Vincent, who currently runs a gym in Fort Worth.

Along with Vincent, Reyes was a father to Paul Jr. and daughter, Sindee. Reyes was married three times, and Ayala noticed when they worked together in the ‘90s his trainer deliberately made a dramatic change.

“Paul used to go out a lot, and just hang out late. He wasn’t getting into trouble, but that’s what he would do,” Ayala said. “He found a church, and that’s where he spent his time.”

Even while he lived in Dallas, Reyes would make the drive to Fort Worth to go to his church to remain an active part of a community where he unintentionally established a legacy like few do in a profession that became his calling.