After all life has thrown at Abner Mares, fighting seems easy. | Photo: Suzanne Teresa/Premier Boxing Champions
Joy was once a handful of day-old goo Abner Mares had sifted out of a large trash container that sat behind a grocery store in poverty-laden Hawaiian Gardens, Calif. That was the existence the former three-division champion once knew, day-to-day, picking trash and eating scraps.
Every so often, the fetid smell of rotted garbage would be tolerated by mining a box of day-old ice cream.
“That’s how I lived -- like an animal,” Mares told Sherdog.com, “and people wonder why I fight the way I do.