Photo: Vincent Ethier – If you like to compare, Santana will attempt to secure a 3rd consecutive knockout against an opponent who went the 10-round limit in his first visit to Canada last year, facing Mazlum Akdeniz.
Luis Santana (10-0, 4 KOs) will be back in the ring on March 7th, at home, at the Montreal Casino. In a scheduled eight-round duel, the Montrealer will face off against the super tough Cristian ‘El Gato Gordo’ Bielma (19-6-2, 7 KOs), where he will not try to get his career back on track, but rather shifting it to the next gear.
Context: Yes, the 26-year-old tiger is undefeated in 10 fights, including 5 victories in 2022-2023. Yet, it’s as if the boxing gods have been against him in the past two years. In December 2022, his fight fell through when his opponent showed up in Shawinigan with a hugely overweight by nearly 40 pounds. In September 2023, he triumphed in Gatineau, but against a replacement opponent to whom he had to concede nearly ten pounds. Finally, last November, it was his turn to withdraw, injured just days before the Montreal event.
But hey, “it’s part of the game,” as my former pee-wee baseball coach used to say. Back in boxing, Santana knows the game too well to be discouraged.
“There are things we can’t control, like overweight guys, injuries, it happens and that’s how it is. Me, in any case, next month: I’m coming in strong.”
The silent assassin
A quiet force is Luis Santana. Among the twenty-some athletes of EOTTM, even though he is among the half who speak French, he remains one of the most discreet. Always under the media radar, he is still largely unknown to the general public. Boxing fans know the athlete, but very few know the man behind him. Knowing the boxer, in fact, is to know him in general.
“I am disciplined, I am a gym rat as they say, because every day, I am there. So [even on social media], I have only that to show, because it’s all I do, it’s my life,” says the athlete from the Pound 4 Pound Boxing Club, training under the supervision of Vincent Auclair or, when the latter is abroad guiding the amateur national team, under Rénald Boisvert.
The moral of the story is that ‘STB’ is not chasing after glory. A phrase that perfectly describes his mentality is one that Artur Beterbiev launched a few weeks ago in Quebec: “In the gym, people know me, that’s enough for me.”
From the beginning
If he dedicates himself completely to boxing, it’s because the sport has also given him a lot. At 13, he began to spend a lot of time in the streets of his neighborhood, Saint-Michel in Montreal. Too much in the eyes of his older brother, who decides to take him to the Champion Boxing Club. Once there, he met guys like Steven Butler, Roodsy Vincent, and many others who encouraged him to continue.
Thirteen years later, half of his life, the rest belongs to history, and who knows what the next 13 have in store for him. “I don’t like to project too far ahead. Boxing is boxing, it’s a combat sport, so you can never predict too much,” he analyzes, always brief but equally thoughtful.
The dream scenario?
Still, when asked what he would do in his “ideal world,” he talks about staying active and maybe even moving to 10-round fights by the end of 2024 or early 2025. Then, we can start talking about rankings.
So close, yet so far, to go from hopeful to world contender, Luis Santana is aware that he will need to accumulate victories in 2024. Ironically, for the past two years, he has also realized that he needs to take it one fight at a time.
It seems contradictory, but it’s not really.
In the short or long term, it all starts with March 7th.
