Boxers Marshall Martinez and Steven Luevano are blood brothers
BOXING
The cousins took divergent paths in boxing but still support each other at all times.
Eight years ago, boxing promoter Bob Arum was convinced he'd landed the sport's next legend when he signed Marshall Martinez.
Martinez had defeated Miguel Cotto (a future welterweight champion) in an Olympic qualifying fight, and U.S. boxing officials envisioned a gold medal dangling around the neck of the tough, hard-punching kid from Fontana.
Martinez seemed headed to the Sydney Games. But the fighter nicknamed "little devil" had to quit the U.S. team after he wrote checks stolen from another athlete's Olympic training headquarters' mailbox. Instead, he turned pro.
Arum snapped Martinez up for a $50,000 bonus and, as a favor, signed Martinez's cousin, a scrawny La Puente teen named Steven Luevano. "Luevano was nothing special," Arum said. "We signed him only in order to get Martinez."
As it turned out, the cousins' careers took divergent paths.
Martinez's boxing plans came to a stop when he was arrested in 2004 for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and sentenced to a four-year prison term. He's now back in the gym, trying to reassemble his life and career. Meanwhile, Luevano (35-1-1, 15 knockouts) will defend his World Boxing Organization featherweight title against Billy "The Kid" Dib on the undercard of the Kelly Pavlik-Bernard Hopkins fight Saturday in Atlantic City, N.J.
The cousins chat on the phone frequently and visit each other when possible. Martinez says they're like "brothers." Luevano said he tosses his cousin occasional reminders, "to stay out of trouble.
"If he was going to do something, he was going to do it, and no one could stop him," Luevano recalled.
"They were always close," said Luevano's mother, Dolly, whose sister, Margie Carmona, is Martinez's mom. "But they're different people."
When they were young, they were driven to East Los Angeles by Martinez's mother to train. They shared the same dream to one day fight professionally and become world champions.
The shy Luevano for years maintained a disciplined routine: "Wake up, go to school, carpool to the gym, do his homework, eat, go to bed," his mother said. When he was 17 and had a child with his wife, Marina, the pattern didn't change. Boxing would now have to support a family.
Martinez always lived off-script. As a child, he'd throw rocks at his cousins. In his late teens, he had volatile relationships with girlfriends, he'd hang out with other cousins who were gang members and he'd know where to party.
