Looking back on how his life has played itself out, there probably could have been numerous occupations and hobbies that Ryan Bates could have found himself involved in besides the sport of boxing. Not only does Bates have an undying love for the sport, he has also experienced first hand many different aspects of the sport from helping coordinate huge shows in Las Vegas, collaborating on his own weekly talk show dedicated to the game, as well as fighting actively himself. Bates’ devotion to the sport is what keeps him going on a daily basis but it wouldn’t have come to him without taking some big chances in his life.
Growing up in Southern California, Bates came from a good upbringing and doesn’t have too many hardships or rocky stories to share with anyone. Throughout his childhood Bates would move around all over California and remembers taking in everything that the state had to offer from the luscious beaches to Disneyland.
A self described ‘traditional good kid’, Bates admits that he was shy and that his asthma prevented him from competing in a variety of sports. He ended up trying his hand at acting before becoming hooked on boxing as a youth. His discovery of the sport is something that would forever change his life.
“That probably hit when I was probably around thirteen, right before we moved,” Bates recalls of discovering the sweet science. “I saw Mike Tyson on the Wide World of Sports on ABC and they showed a highlight reel of him and I was just hooked. Everyone said that he was a monster but I saw what he was doing and he was doing it perfectly. It was like an art and you couldn’t help but watch.”
Anyone watching Tyson would have reason to be compelled due to his ferocious and unrelenting style in the ring but for Bates there were many other factors that came into play. Aside from having an obvious admiration of everything a fighter’s life entailed, he too had the passion to test his own abilities.
“It was a challenge,” he points out soundly. “It wasn’t what I was supposed to do. I was a little quiet white kid and I probably should have taken up something that was considered safer. I just realized that it was what I wanted to do. I just loved the one on one challenge.”
Despite having the love and desire for boxing as a teenager, Bates didn’t get around to chasing his dreams nearly as soon as he would have liked. The struggles of life managed to get in the way and before Bates knew it time was passing him by.
“Honestly and I don’t talk about it very much but for me it was all financial,” Bates says of his struggles that momentarily sidetracked him. “Here I was, a clean cut white kid and people saw me as a target and didn’t think I was serious about trying it. My parents also didn’t back me in doing it so I had to support everything myself. I never really could do that.”
As he got caught up in the daily rituals of life Bates could easily be forgiven for letting go of his passion and focusing on something else that would have come much easier to him. Still, Bates found a way to push on and slowly but surely there would be signs of hope that would keep him moving along.
“I knew I wanted to do it and there were a few times where I said that if I didn’t get closer to my goal this year then I am done,” Bates recalls. “Every time I told myself that I looked at myself at the end of the year and I was closer to my goal so I didn’t give it up. It actually turns out that when I was in Orange County I was in a little bit of a depression. I moved up to Northern California to clear my mind and I realized it was because I wasn’t boxing. I moved around a lot. I remember being in Orange County, but it slowly was becoming a predominately MMA county. I wanted to box, so I eventually moved to Las Vegas.”
Las Vegas is full of people who have relocated to the Valley in order to take a second chance at life. Bates fit the mold completely and remembers vividly what the move to Nevada entailed in his life.
“I moved out here in January of 2008,” Bates says looking back. “I was living in Sacramento before that. I figured out that I really wanted to take a chance with my boxing thing. I was 26 at the time and just moved out because I wanted to take a chance. I knew that it was a long shot but I didn’t want to be that guy who said ‘I could have’. I at least wanted to try. From that point on I just wanted the hell out of Sacramento and Vegas was the place.”
When Bates first moved to Las Vegas he didn’t have a job, a place to stay, or much money to his name. Still, just being around the new environment gave him hope that he could make it and he found a way to survive and continue on. Reflecting on why Vegas was so important to rejuvenating his life, Bates doesn’t try to make the city out to anything other than what it is.
“It is a city of second chances,” he states. “You can come out here with twenty bucks to your name and put ten dollars in a slot machine and instantly you have thousands of dollars. It’s a city of people who come out to take a gamble on life. I came out here without a job and I was crashing with a friend and I just took a gamble. I also hate the mornings and I’m just naturally a night person.”
Las Vegas and the world luck go hand in hand and little did Bates know he had a healthy dose of it waiting for him right around the corner. While his initial employment opportunities came to naught, he eventually found himself aligned with one of the top promoters in the boxing industry, Top Rank. Looking back, Bates still can’t believe how the opportunity came about.
“It was essentially luck,” Bates claims. “When I fist moved out here I picked up a job at Caesar’s Palace but I was laid off because of the economy right after I started. They got bought out by new investors. My friend was talking to me one day about how he wished he could have worked accounting at Top Rank. I told him that he should have applied but he didn’t think he had the experience. I told him that if he put in his resume I would put in mine and that’s just what we did. It turns out that the first positions that they had was for publicity and my travel experience came in handy and I got the call back. I felt really bad for my friend but very happy to have the job.”
As he began his work for the promotional company Bates remember learning much on the job and seeing a much different side to the sport. Much of it was new to Bates but he soaked everything up with a fresh mind and ambitious outlook.
“Originally when I went to Top Rank I was working directly under Lee Samuels, who is the director of publicity,” says Bates of the man who would serve as his mentor. “I did a lot of book of accommodations of travel for press conferences. When all the fighters went on their media tours I was back at headquarters setting up the rooms and all the travel information. I was eventually moved to marketing and ticket sales, which was a whole different world. I dealt with a lot of ticket agents and brokers. That was completely new to me.”
The boxing industry is a cutthroat business and one must have thick skin if they are going to handle all of the ins and outs of the fight world. Bates remembers the atmosphere in the office could often be very high pressured but at the end of the day, work is work no matter how you cut it.
“The office was like any other office without the pretense,” Bates says smiling. “In other office environment people always talked and said good morning. In our office people didn’t have time for that and if somebody was having a bad day you would know about it. It’s the only office I ever worked in where I heard people down the hall screaming ‘You son of a bitch!’. For the most part people got along though. Everyone has their exceptions but it was pretty good family.”
There’s only so much somebody can know from the outside and being on the inside will give anyone a completely different outlook. What surprised Bates the most about his new foray into the sport was exactly how much organizing and effort was put into making the simplest of things happen.
“It’s a hell of a lot of work just to make one fight happen, let alone one card,” Bates states. “I remember when they were getting ready for Pacquiao vs. De La Hoya and then you were dealing with another promotional company. And they were just going back and forth on numbers. There were a lot of ‘yes’ and ‘no’s’ thrown around as far as where the venue was going to be and how the press tour was going to run. By the time the main event gets signed you had to get around to setting up the undercard and doing all your press work. De La Hoya-Pacquiao took place in December of last year and we started working on it around July or August. It can often be a long process form beginning to end.”
While working in the boxing field is a different experience, any job will come with its share of perks and Bates’ position within the company was still extremely rewarding. At the end of the day Bates claims that the human element he often experienced was the most rewarding part of his position with Top Rank.
Bates with Francisco "Gato" Figueroa
“The best part was working with fighters,” Bates says of his fellow boxing brethren. “If the fighters were happy then I was happy. Just getting a chance to talk to the fighters and getting a chance to know them beyond the boxing spectrum was awesome. I remember getting chatty with Matt Vanda before his rematch with Chavez Jr. I got pretty close with Nonito Donaire and I remember one day my whole job was just taking care of Freddie Roach and making sure he got to all of his interviews. I had a great time with stuff like that and it was a lot of fun.”
Life would take a different direction for Bates and he would eventually move on from him position at Top Rank. Despite not working out completely how he would have liked, Bates took away many positives form the experience and also was able to learn much about himself as a person.
“I learned that I am not suited for an office atmosphere,” Bates says. “That was one of my first concerns when I took the job because I don’t like offices. I like people and face to face positions. What I did learn about myself is that I am dedicated to the sport of boxing. I remember one time I was going downstairs with a co-worker and I told her that we were heading to the Yuriorkis Gamboa fight out in Primm. She looked at me asked how I could stand to watch boxing when I’d been working on it all week. I simply told her ‘because I love it’. That’s just what it boils down to.”
Despite no longer being aligned with Top Rank, Bates is still heavily involved in the sport as a journalist, radio host, and aspiring fighter himself. Bates currently covers the sport for 411 Mania and it’s a role that he admits he sometimes gets wrapped up in, but still truly appreciates.
“I started with a guy named Luis Cruz,” Bates says. “He had a small website, it’s not even functional anymore, called HACnews.com. Ramon Aranda of 411 Mania saw my work and he offered me a position on the site but I stayed with Luis at the time because loyalty was always a big thing for me. But after Luis’ website went down I talked to Ramon again and we agreed to give it shot. He brought me on board and I started working some columns for him and that’s what it lead to.”
As a writer for the site Bates is responsible for giving live coverage of events in the Vegas area as well as penning both news and column pieces. Bates appreciates the position because it allows him to show different sides of his personality while also letting himself develop as a journalist. Still, on a piece by piece basis, Bates doesn’t know which side of him is bound to come out.
“It depends on if I am working on a news piece or a column piece,” he claims. “If I am working on a new piece I try to stay as level headed as I can. I try to stay completely unbiased. It’s when I write the columns that I let myself come out. I’m not afraid to take people down a notch and I’m also not afraid to make fun of people but hat’s only because I make fun of myself. I like poking fun at myself because life is too short. We can’t take it seriously the whole time.”
As he pushed forward with his position at 411 Mania, Bates soon became interested in taking his talents to the radio. Never one to be shy about his opinions, Bates became interested in what a radio show would mean to him. But again, it was something that had to come with many steps before coming to fruition.
“3 More Rounds is our pod cast which was sprung from 411 Mania,” Bates says of his show, which he co-hosts with Aranda. “Basically it came about because one of my friends who fights MMA got me turned on to a radio show that he was doing. I thought it was a pretty fun format because they interviewed the fighters and got the information but they also went outside of the cage with a lot of their questions. We hit up those people about a spin off show and we were live on their site for about five or six weeks before eventually launching the show via pod cast straight from our website, which we’ve been doing for a year and change now.”
On the show Bates and Aranda discuss the weekly occurrences in the sport of boxing as well as brining on a wide variety of guests in the boxing world. Recent guests have included Chad Dawson, Jermain Taylor, Israel Vazquez, Nonito Donaire Jr. and several others. While the show serves as a great hobby that allows Bates to tap into his passions, he concedes that he would like to take it to another level in the near future.
“We’d love to take it to the radio. We’d love to get it on satellite radio so we don’t have to censor ourselves. I think that’s one of our short term goals.”
Perhaps the reason that writing for 411Mania and co-hosting ‘3 More Rounds’ comes so easily to Bates is because boxing is what his life revolves around. Currently an aspiring amateur training out of J-Sect Boxing Academy, Bates has visions of one day taking his fighting instincts to a world wide level.
“I want to be champion of the world,” Bates says getting straight to the point. “I think if you are going in there not thinking you want to be champion of the world then there are easier ways to make a buck. Some people try boxing because they want to get fit and that’s cool but I really do want to take it professionally and see how far I can go with it. I tell people that I’m the long shot but if you bet on the long shot and it wins then it pays off real good. Right now I’m still getting ready for my first amateur fight and that’s more than a lot of people can say. I’m getting great training from my trainer Jose Gonzalez. He was a 2003 national collegiate champion, I believe at 132 pounds, and we’re looking at early next year for my first fight.”
Whether Bates makes his championship visions a reality remains to be seen but his story is still very much inspiring, whether he wants to admit it or not. Just the fact that Bates was willing to break the mold and take several chances on his life that others would have shied away from is a story in itself. While his remaining chapters are still waiting to be written, Bates admits first hand that his love of boxing has changed him completely.
“It’s given me so much more confidence. I don’t go looking to pick fights but I can walk down the street and no that I’m not scared. I don’t mean to say that it’s a social status but it kind of is. You get tied into a brotherhood that runs so deep with boxing writers, amateur boxers, and professional boxers. I have professional boxers asking me how my amateur career is going and what other sports can say that? I’m definitely glad that I’ve taken these chances in my life.”
Anyone interested in signing up for Bates’ 411 Mania newsletter can let him know at HeavyweightBoxer@gmail.com. An archive of Bates’ work can be found at http://www.411mania.com/user_profile.php?user_id=3701
Chris Robinson can be reached at Trimond@aol.com and www.Facebook.com/CRHarmony
