Feb 2, 2016 5 min read

After demolishing Aaron Martinez in six rounds two weeks ago at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Sammy Vasquez Jr. is one step closer to realizing his dream – becoming the second boxer from Monessen to win a world championship.

Vasquez, 29, is old enough to remember the first champion, Michael Moorer. He recalls a chance meeting with Moorer at a gas station when he was a child.

“He went to school with my dad,” Vasquez said from his home in Colorado Springs, Col., of the former heavyweight champion. “He was coming out of a gas station by the Speers Bridge and stopped to talk to my dad. He bought me a pack of gum.

“It’s definitely something I’ve thought about – becoming the second champion from Monessen.”

The win over Martinez pushed Vasquez (21-0) into position to achieve that goal. He’s now ranked the world’s ninth-best welterweight, and the lefty will face Cesar Miguel Barrionuevo (29-3-2, 20 KOs) of Argentina sometime this spring in the World Boxing Council’s welterweight tournament for its vacant belt.

Barrionuevo defeated Azael Cosio over the weekend, knocking him down five times en route to a fifth-round KO in one of the elimination fights for the title, which was vacated when Floyd Mayweather Jr. retired last September.

If Vasquez can beat Barrionuevo, then he would be in line to fight the winner of a match between a yet-to-be-determined fighter and Danny Garcia that also will be contested this spring. That fight would occur in the fall with the WBC championship on the line. Amir Kahn was expected to be Garcia’s opponent but the former champ announced Tuesday that he will move up two weight classes to fight Saul Alvarez, with the winner getting a title shot with middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin.

That could open the door for Ray Robinson, who had been expected to be part of the championship tournament, to get back in. Robinson had to pull out of a fight in January after suffering a back injury in a car wreck.

All of the other shuffling doesn’t matter to Vasquez. His spot is assured.

“I’m in pretty good position,” Vasquez said. “I’m a step away. I’m blessed to be there.”

Not bad for a kid who only took up boxing as a way to learn how to defend himself from bullies.

According to Vasquez, he was being picked on by bigger kids on the bus ride home from school and kept moving away from them, only to have them continue to torment him.

Vasquez’s father, who is his promotor, suggested his son take up boxing. So at 9 years old, Vasquez, who was one of 14 children in his family, began training with Ryan Rimsek in Donora. Rimsek still serves as his mitt coach.

The journey to this point for Vasquez would take him through two tours in Iraq as a member of the Army National Guard, where he served as a member of the Quick Response Force and as a Calvary Scout and reaching the rank of sergeant, all of which made him one of the most mentally tough fighters in the business.

But Vasquez always keeps what got him started in boxing in the back of his mind.

“I’m definitely anti-bullying,” he said. “If there is any way that what I do can help put that message out there, I’m all for it.”

While in the military, Vasquez continued to hone his craft as a boxer. He competed in the Army’s World Class Athlete Program, winning a pair of gold medals in the Armed Forces tournament.

He was good enough to be an alternate for the 2012 Olympic team, an opportunity he passed on to turn pro.

It seems like a good decision at this time.

The fight against Martinez was the latest in a string of matchups that has allowed Vasquez to rise in the rankings.

“I expected more; I expected more from him,” Vasquez said of the fight against Martinez, which was televised nationally on Fox. “I thought it was going to be a much tougher fight based on who he had fought. He had fought for championships. But overall, I was happy with it.”

Vasquez has seen the venues where he has fought get bigger, along with the purses, and now is on the verge of realizing something about which he once could only dream.

He’s come a long way since his first pro fight in 2012 at the Courttime Sports Complex in Elizabeth.

“It was more of a dream,” Vasquez said of his rise to the top. “Only so many people get a chance to fight for a world title. There are only so many people who are actually able to get ranked in the top 10 in the world.”