Guadalupe Medina may be a rising contender, but her coach initially didn’t want to train her

Women’s strawweight boxer Guadalupe Medina might be nearing a title shot, but her coach didn’t initially want to train her. 

Medina, the Maywood, California based boxer with a 9-0 (2 KOs) pro record, took to boxing after following her brother, Amed Medina, to the boxing gym. As her trainer Edgar Jasso explained, whatever Amed did, she’d follow. If he played basketball, then she would also. “I started boxing at the age of eight. I just tagged along with my brother. Since he was doing it, I did  whatever he did. I tagged along,” Medina, 21, told BoxingScene. “Ever since the first day, I just fell in love with it. I fell in love with the progress I can make.”

Medina was eight years old when she first stepped foot into a boxing gym. She didn’t train with Jasso, but he was at the same gym training other fighters. Roughly five years later, Jasso was working with amateurs. Her brother started training with Jasso, but it wasn’t a seamless or easy transition. Jasso at first didn’t want to train her. 

“I started working with her when she was 13 or 14 years old,” Jasso said. “I really didn’t want to train her, because at the time, we really didn’t train a lot of females or we didn’t actually do that at all.”

Medina remembers this as well. 

“He clearly shut me out and said he didn’t train girls. He thought girls were too much of a responsibility,” said Medina.

“I would tell her that I wasn’t sexist or anything like that, but I honestly didn’t know if training females was a fit for us,” Jasso said. “She never stopped coming and she never stopped showing up to the gym”

The turning point came when Medina won a marquee amateur tournament, the 2019 Junior Olympics District tournament in Compton, California. She would be awarded best overall boxer. Medina knew she had secured her spot after that. 

“Once you tell somebody that you’re not going to work with them and they still keep showing up on a daily basis, that kind of tells you something,” Jasso said.

Now Medina, who is signed to 360 Promotions, has no shortage of interest in her career. She is coming off an eight-round unanimous decision win last Friday over Agustina Solange Vazquez at the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez, California.

Medina’s win over Vazquez served as a step-up in competition as Medina is moving very fast in her young career. Vazquez, 4-3-2, an Argentinian boxer now residing in West Hills, California, had an amateur pedigree and despite a blemished record, served as Medina’s toughest opponent on paper.

“I felt great. It was my first eight rounder,” Medina said. “There was growth from my last fight, which I love to see obviously. I want to keep growing in every fight. I want to keep seeing improvements. A lot of things we did work on in camp, I was able to demonstrate during the fight.”

With the win over the 22-year-old Vazquez, the depth of her division now becomes the conversation. Medina is ranked No.1 in U.S. according to BoxRec and also by that same record keeper as a top-10 fighter in the world. Medina is 21 entering the title picture sooner than most might have expected. 

“Honestly, I think we’re not very far,” Medina said. 

In fact, Medina had already been offered a title fight, but that would have meant that the team would travel to Germany. Jasso thought the travel and atmosphere might be a lot at this point in her career, though Jasso was clear to point out that he had no doubts about her skill and ability for such a fight. 

“After every fight they always ask me, what did I think of her performance?” Jasso said. “I always say it was good, but there’s always room for improvement. I’m always looking for more from her every time and that’s just what’s going to get her to where I want her to go.”

Lucas Ketelle is the author of “Inside the Ropes of Boxing,” a guide for young fighters, a writer for BoxingScene and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Find him on X at @LukieBoxing.