HAVERHILL — He has less than 11 minutes of professional boxing experience.
But Methuen’s Andrew Perez sounds like a seasoned pro when he talks about his life – both in and out of the ring.
“To me, the concept of age is something very special. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t party, I’m really committed to the sport of boxing,” said Perez, who returns to the ring after 27 months away from the game on July 27. “I consider myself to be a full-blown professional in and outside of the ring. I may be 32 years old but I don’t feel 32. Physically, I feel a lot younger than 32, and mentally I feel a lot older. I’m able to make decisions that won’t get me into trouble at 32 years old.”
Just 3-0 with three knockouts, Perez will be part of Boston Boxing Promotions’ Summer Fight Night as he faces winless Max DaSilva.
If you watch Perez, a former wrestler and self-proclaimed band geek (saxophone/clarinet) at Lawrence High School, bounce around the Haverhill Downtown Boxing Gym, you know he’s back where he wants to be.
And he has been for about six months now.
“My wife (Allis Peguero) and I are high school sweethearts, and we’ve been together 15 years. About a year and a half ago, my daughter (Averie) was born very ill. I immediately had to stop boxing, had to focus on my family, and I had to ensure that her health came first,” said Perez.
At that point, things were rolling for Perez. He was unbeaten and untested in the ring and striving for success in his real life, working for the government in the technology/engineering field.
“I had to put boxing on the back-burner and ensure that I was there for my family and my daughter. That set things back a bit as far as boxing goes,” he said.
While things settled in with the family, the 5-foot-8 Perez put on weight. He was hungry for a ring return, and called on the folks at Haverhill Downtown Boxing, namely director Ray Hebert.
“They welcomed me with open arms after a long layoff. (Hebert) said come on down, my doors are open to you,” said Perez, who is being coached by the club’s husband and wife team of Domenica and John Giordano. “It’s an honor to be here and be a member of the Haverhill Downtown Boxing Gym.”
Fighting is something that has always been in him, so the will to return was there.
“Fighting is something I’ve always been passionate about since I was a young boy. I came to Lawrence from the Dominican Republic when I was eight years old. Growing up in Lawrence, fighting was just a normal thing. You’d go to the basketball courts and fight. We’d go to the park and fight. It was almost part of the culture,” Perez said. “As I continued to get older, I kept getting better and better. I participated in judo as a kid and in wrestling in high school. It was in wrestling where my passion for combat really picked up. (Coach Rob Niceforo) instilled discipline in me. It was something at the time I was lacking. With becoming a wrestler, I learned what it meant to show up every day, even when you don’t want to.”
Starting over, though, at 32, there’s more than just the will to do battle that is driving Perez. He’s there, fighting not just for his family, but as a role model.
“We’re still fighting and still trying to be better, but the main objective is to show the young generation that it can be done. The objective is to be able to influence the youth, those kids in the Merrimack Valley, not just Lawrence, so they can look at someone like myself and see if I’m doing it, then they can too,” said Perez. “With them being able to see we all come from the same roots, they can be motivated by that. To this day, my mom lives in the projects. That’s OK with me. I have no shame in saying that. It made me who I am today.
“My daughters (Audree and Averie) are the light in my eyes. They are why I fight, why I show up every day.”
The work in the gym and devotion to the game are showing through. Perez is not back to his original fighting weight of 170 for this upcoming fight, but he’s well on the road back.
“Being away from it put a lot of things into perspective. In a sense, it felt like certain people forgot about me. I had to start all over again,” said Perez. “I had to lose almost (70) pounds to get down to the 200-pound weight class for this fight. I was 260 or 270, now I’m down to 205, and I will be 200 by fight night.”
One of the Haverhill Downtown club’s shining stars, fellow unbeaten Nicky Tejada likes what he’s seen, and come July 27, he’s expecting big things out of Perez.
“His energy, the way he presses forward, he’s tough to stop,” said Tejada. “If you want to back him up, good luck! He’s the type of fighter I love.”