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Seniesa Estrada Is Out To
Prove Her Moniker "Superbad"
By Igor Frank
East LA’s Seniesa Estrada is poised to do battle against her
fierce rival , Costa Rica’s Yokasta Valle for the supremacy
at minimum weight division . 10 round unification contest is
scheduled to take place at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale
Arizona on March 29th and will be televised by ESPN. At
stake are all four belts in minimum weight division IBF,
WBA, WBC and IBF.
Even though it’s a very meaningful fight for women’s boxing,
Thirty one year old Valle (30-2,9KO’s) says it’s just
business. However, 32 year old Estrada with the record
(25-0,9KO’S) feels this is Personal. She seemed to have a
real edge to her when asked about upcoming contest.
Her long time trainer Dean Campos explained the edge when we
visited Seniesa’s private gym in Bell Gardens. He said ; “
She is a born fighter who learned how to box as opposed to
being a born boxer, who learns how to fight.”
Seniesa has been fighting her way out of poverty into the
stardom ever since she was eight years old when she finally
convinced her daddy, former gangbanger named Puppet to take
her to a boxing gym.
Speaking of boxing gyms, Estrada’s private gym is the
cleanest boxing gym I have ever seen. And I have seen a lot
of boxing gyms all over the world including Odessa, Ukraine,
Ladispoli, Italy, New York, Floyd Mayweather‘s boxing gym in
Las Vegas and Maywood boxing club in Los Angeles. Seniesa’s
gym is immaculate. But that is where the differences end.
Inside the ring Estrada is a consummate professional, high
tuning her craft one punch at a time.
What I saw in the ring was awe inspiring .Under a watchful
eyes of her Trainer, Dean Campos Estrada went 14 fast paced
rounds with two amateur girls from East LA. I have seen
Seniesa spar before, once at Sergio Mora’s gym in Montebello
and other time in El Monte and she has always been very
talented and fluid, but what I saw in the ring this time was
precision and mastery. Every punch was deliberate and
precise ;poetry in motion.
“Dean kind of put a structure to everything that I was doing
without changing the way that I fight”, said Seniesa after
the sparring session :” he just corrected a lot of things
that I might’ve been doing wrong and a lot of mistakes that
I have been making that are amateur mistakes. Dean’s style
is basically all footwork. It’s all defense. So training
with him was pretty easy because we kind of just flow
together.”
But I have known coach Dean Campos before Estrada and he did
not train girls or women.
So I asked Seniesa how she was able to convince Dean to
train her.“ I am a big fan of Sergio Mora, said Seniesa:” I
love the contender, and I love his style and we trained at
the same gym with him. I would see the workouts he would do
I would watch him spar, and I would just be like wow I wanna
move like that. I wanna throw those kind of punches. So I
told my dad if I turned pro I want Dean to first work with
me. Well I wanted him to train me. I knew that if I was
going to take it to the next level and turn pro. I needed
somebody like Dean to teach me.”
What is amazing to me is that after training his daughter
through amateur ranks, Joe Estrada was able to put his pride
aside and ask another man for help.” The relationship with
my dad has always been so great.” said Estrada:” and it gets
even better because of that. you know he kind of stepped
aside and trusted Dean to do everything when it comes to
training and that’s pretty rare.”
Seniesa Estrada is a rare talent, and she is anxious to show
it in the ring on March 29th.
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