Since 1958, New York City’s National Puerto Rican Day Parade has served as a celebration to honor the millions of Puerto Ricans who live in the United States. The parade showcases the Puerto Rican people’s achievements, strength, and pride. Actors, music artists, politicians, educators, and athletes of Puerto Rican descent have proudly strolled down New York City’s Fifth Avenue, celebrating with millions of people from their native island.
In 2005, Miguel Cotto successfully defended his WBO junior welterweight title at Madison Square Garden before a primarily Puerto Rican crowd of 10,231. He was on a float strolling Fifth Avenue the next day at that year’s parade. That subsequently morphed into a weekend festivity that started with a Puerto Rican fighter headlining a boxing card at Madison Square Garden on the eve of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade.
In keeping with tradition, Top Rank will have Puerto Rican boxing phenom Xander Zayas headline an exciting card featuring nine fights live from The Theater at Madison Square Garden, NY. Super middleweight prospect Nisa Rodriguez (1-0) will battle 26-year-old Jordanne Garcia (4-3-3) from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to jumpstart the weekend’s festivities.
Rodriguez, 33, is a native of the Bronx, Puerto Rican by birth, and a diehard New Yorker. Oh, and she can box, too. She’s an eight-time NYC Golden Gove champion, so it’s fitting that she opens the festive weekend. In addition to her eight NYC titles, she’s a three-time national Golden Gloves champion and represented Puerto Rico in the Central American games. A modern-day renaissance woman, Rodriguez is a former schoolteacher, a mentor for troubled kids, raises a family, and currently serves as an NYPD officer for the Chief of Department working in assaults and homicides in at-risk youth. And she somehow managed to get into an entire training camp in preparation for her upcoming fight.
How does she manage all these things and still kick butt on fight night?
“It’s a lot of early mornings and late nights,” said Rodriguez to FightsATW. She continued, “I’m a cop first. I have to do the job first. Even though they’re very supportive and I appreciate everybody in the department, my job comes first. It’s waking up at five in the morning to do my road work, going to work, trying to get on my lunch break, most days I don’t eat lunch, do 12-hour days sometimes and then back to another training conditioning session. So, a lot of coffee and little sleep.”
The road to Rodriguez’s second professional match was arduous. Ironically, the Bronx native’s journey up to this point has resembled a country road tangled with forks and detour signs along the way. Despite all her success as an amateur, Rodriguez’s transition into the professional ranks was postponed and, at one point, an afterthought when she decided to pursue a career as a police officer. Rodriguez’s life is the kind of life most boxing movie scripts are written about. She was a “troubled” Bronx teen who was often getting into fights on the streets. By the time she was 17, she was a mother and a high school dropout. Sadly, for most kids growing up in the Bronx, that’s where the story ends.
However, Rodriguez’s life changed when her father took her to a local boxing gym. She applied the lessons she learned in the boxing gym to punch life in the face. Sometimes, turning the tide of a boxing match takes one punch. Rodriguez landed one good punch and completely took control of her fight against life. Nisa earned her GED and graduated from college. Then she wanted to show kids that they don’t have to accept their circumstances, that they too can take control of the chaos that, unfortunately, for some, comes with living within NYC’s five boroughs. So, she becomes a middle school teacher for eight years in the Harlem section of Manhattan.
Despite her best efforts to mentor her students and keep them safe, she would lose some of her students to gangs and violence. So, what does the fighter in her do? She took the fight outside the classroom into the streets. Rodriguez joined the NYPD to do her part to help protect kids by being at the battlefield’s front lines.
“I’m currently trying to go to these at-risk high schools. I feel like the high schools are the ones that you want to go to. If you look at the crime going on now, the rate of youth crime in assaults and homicide, I think it’s disgusting. It’s something as a parent, I think about, something that as a Bronx native, I think about. There is so much talent in the Bronx and Brooklyn; that’s where I’m working right now, Flatbush. There is no reason why we should have kids locked up, some in body bags, and have to apologize to mothers and fathers. As a community, we need to come back together, and that’s what I’m trying to do with boxing and the Police Department,” said Rodriguez.
After a three-year hiatus, Rodriguez made her much-anticipated pro debut on March 14, 2024. However, deciding to get back in the ring was the easy part; getting back in the ring was a totally different dilemma.
“I felt like it wasn’t going to happen because I was supposed to fight two times prior to that fight. I think they went through thirteen opponents. They didn’t want to take the contract, or the (New York State Athletic) Commission didn’t approve it. So, I was like, oh man, I hope this girl (Jozette Cotton) shows up. I just want to get the first one out; it’s been a while since I fought. I was just itching to get back in. You get discouraged. I was training, on top of having a full-time job, being a parent, being a mentor, and dealing with everything that was coming on. It’s a little demotivating. So, once it happened- we’re doing the weigh-in, and we’re doing everything- I’m like, oh, wow, this is happening. It was like my first fight all over again 18 years later,” explained Rodriguez.
Rodriguez won the fight by unanimous decision practically with one hand after injuring her right hand during the first round. “So, I in no way thought that Josette would be easy to walk around. She does the bare-knuckle fighting, so these eight-ounce gloves weren’t anything; it’s better for her. She did MMA; she could slug and got a little pop. In the first round, I hurt my hand. So, for three rounds, I used my left, body shots, and hook and thank God I’m so universal. I’ve been in the game so long that I’m used to it,” said Rodriguez.
Undeterred by the business of her life, Rodriguez said that the training camp for her fight against Garcia is going well. “It’s going good. My trainer, Jimmy Sosa, is doing the most to make sure that I transition from the amateurs to the pros. He knows that in the amateurs, it is all about punches in bunches, and in the pros, it is more about dominating. So, we’re getting out of that habit, that Olympic style of boxing,” said Rodriguez.
It’s fair to assume that every boxer’s dream is to one day fight at the world-famous arena Madison Square Garden, also known as “The Mecca of Boxing.” For a New York boxer, it’s a badge of honor. Although Rodriguez isn’t a stranger to fighting at Madison Square Garden, fighting on Puerto Rican Day Parade weekend adds a different flare to this fight for the gritty Boricua fighter.
“I mean, it was surreal. The same dressing room that you get ready as a professional at the Hulu Theater is what you did in the Golden Gloves. It felt so good to be back in the “Garden.” And now, for June 8th, Puerto Rican Day weekend, I’m back again. I grew up watching Miguel Cotto all my career. I love Tito (Trinidad), but Miguel Cotto was the one I adored and looked up to—and then watching Amanda Serrano, one of the biggest in the game. One of the women that I know personally, I watched her fight in the “Garden,” and trying to keep the tradition, I feel like it is something being passed down, “said Rodriguez to FightsATW.
Regarding her opponent, Rodriguez lets her team worry about that. She shows up ready to fight. “My team knows that I have a lot on my hands. So, they do all the homework. I haven’t watched any of her fights. I have to keep working the distance, showing up when I have to and brawling when I have to. Because I’m hardheaded, it’s the Puerto Rican in me; I want to brawl, and sometimes it gets me in trouble with my trainer,” expressed Nisa.
Rodriguez’s journey to this point hasn’t been easy, to say the least. Looking back, how does she feel about the person and fighter she has become? “I feel like every successful fighter in this game has a story. I know that I came from an area where I wasn’t meant to be where I am now. I was hanging out with the wrong people. And a lot of them, I can’t say, are with us or in the streets. So, I’m fortunate enough that someone took the time to take me in, especially at a time when women’s boxing wasn’t a big thing. I had a lot of people that believed in me, and because of that, I try to pay it forward. That’s why I find no limit in what I do on my job,” said Rodriguez.
What was next for Team Rodriguez after this match, and how soon can Puerto Rico and New York have their next world champion? “This is going to be the last four-rounder. I’m begging my trainer that I need to jump to six and eight rounds. So, maybe by the end of this year or the start of next year, we will be going for a couple of titles. I have a good couple of years left, and I want to make sure I make the most of it. I’m going for everything. Whatever’s out there, I’m going for it. I don’t have time to waste. I don’t have time to play with,” said Rodriguez passionately.
“You’re going to have a good night of fights. It’s Puerto Rican Day Parade weekend, come out and support. Whether you’re Puerto Rican, Mexican, or Dominican, this is all Hispanics coming out. There will be a big following of NYPD, so come in and check out New York City Cops and Kids; we’re trying to do something big in New York. It’s time to take our streets back. We want to do a gym in every borough. There should be a free program for every child. So, let’s do that. Check out the website https://www.copsandkidsboxing.com; let’s take those streets back,” said Rodriguez as we wrapped up the interview.
My Take
Boxing’s best athletes can perfectly blend artistry, intelligence, and grace to navigate and overcome a cruel and unforgiving environment. Nisa Rodriguez has been doing that most of her life, inside and outside the ring, like having to work a twelve-hour shift in the rough streets of NY and then step into a twelve-round sparring session while still finding time to be a mom, a wife, and a mentor, or fighting through a collapsed lung during a match. Rodriguez has faced every adversity life and boxing has thrown at her, and she never stopped punching.
While June 8 is only her second fight and a stepping stone to fulfilling her dream of becoming a world champion, for Rodriguez, it’s an event that encompasses everything she is: a fighter, a proud Puerto Rican and New Yorker, a cop, and a philanthropist.
Muhammad Ali said, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” As long as there is a child who needs a mentor, a student who needs guidance, or a boxer who needs a gym to call home, Rodriguez’s rent will always be due, and she has proven she will do whatever it takes to make sure it’s paid on time.
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