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The transcription is a conversation between two friends discussing the boxing and MMA career of one of them, Brandon Estrada. Brandon talks about his background in MMA and his transition to boxing. He expresses his desire to go pro in boxing and make money to take care of his family. He also mentions his goal of changing his city and putting it on the map, like Terrence Crawford did for Omaha. Overall, the conversation covers Brandon's fighting background, his aspirations, and his determination to succeed. Hello everyone, I'm here with um... Hola, mi nombre es Brando Estrada, el boxeador de la ciudad de Fremont. I'm just kidding guys, I'm Brandon Estrada, I live here in town, I'm one of the boxers here in this town. Yeah, he's one of my close friends, he's one of the, what were you, one of the higher ranked amateur heavyweights for MMA at one point? Yeah, I was up there in the amateur range for heavyweight for a little bit. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Brandon, you and I are both fighters and as stated before, you know, you do a little bit of MMA, but can you tell me some more about yourself and your fighting background? You know, I started in MMA, obviously, head kicked a guy and I thought I was going to beat the, probably beat one of the amateur champions before they went pro. Obviously I stopped doing MMA in 2023, it was January. So I went to boxing because my parents like boxing, we come from a long line of boxers and stuff. It's like watching like Coco, you know, don't touch the guitar, you know. So we went to the boxing, to the boxing round and I liked it. I racked up six wins in my first year. So basically, basically I figured, I found my like peace, you know, but like people now in these days, they want me back in MMA. You know, I'm going to take a jab, I'm going to take a shoot, shoot promo, you know, like in wrestling, professional wrestling, like, you know, I like MMA. I mean, you guys are one of the toughest badasses out there, you know, same with boxing too, but the MMA guys, the kicks, the wrestling, the ground and pound, everything, you guys are tough. But look, if you've been out of the game for two years now and you want to fight, you know, I'm talking to you, you know who, you know, you can't, you can't come back to MMA if you're like just doing straight up boxing because it's just, there's more training to it. Same with boxing too, but there's just more adversaries, more wrestling, more Muay Thai, more Jiu Jitsu, more kickboxing, you know, you can't really, can't really do that. Yeah, 100%. You got to, you got to also change your stance back up because, you know, the boxing stance is really wide because they don't, they don't have to worry about takedowns, you know. Yeah, they don't, they don't, same, same thing, you know, just like it's, there's more into MMA than boxing because you got two fists and you got like 10 weapons in freaking MMA. Yeah, it's the ground, slams, there's fists, knees, elbows, feet, shins, you name it, like, you know, using your own body to hurt someone else. Yeah, same thing. Yeah. And then there's, you know, you got to adjust from any martial art for MMA, like the best stance for MMA, like logically to come straight from a sport and throw it into MMA would be a wrestling stance. Yeah, it's the one thing that, that's when I said that wrestling is such a good base, same thing in boxing too. I still, I still, sometimes when I get overwhelmed, you know, I sometimes I, I throw the game plan out and then I just wrestle, I pretend to wrestle one, you know, my last fight before I'm making down my weight cut down to 189 for cruiser weight and stuff. My last fight I tried to push him in the corner and I literally had to like double leg him into the corner. It was, it was, it was the day after my 21st birthday, no, no drinking yet or nothing, you know? So I needed to come out with the win, obviously I went a little, I went, we went pretty hard that night and I forgot about boxing, I thought I started wrestling. Nah, you smoked that dude though, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, I really smoked that dude, but the one thing when he walked into my uppercut, that shit was so funny, he walked in there. Oh man, that dude ate that. I thought he was going to go down. Yeah. I was done for. Like, his eyes rolled in the back of his head. Oh dude, I, I never remember that, it's like when I blasted him in that corner over there in that neutral corner, yeah, the neutral corner, I was like going off like two, three punches at a time and then I freaking came up with an uppercut and I missed it, but I hit him pretty hard with that left hand because I'm a south, I'm a southpaw, you know? So I came, I come with that left hand and I thought he was going to be done out there, but I hit him mainly on the body to slow him down because the guy was like 38, 38, 35 years old. He was swollen, that was a strong looking dude. Yeah, for being that age, oh my god. Oh man. Getting cooked. Before, cooked was like a, like a slang now. Man, I've been saying that for a while, it's a thing down in Florida, that's where I'm from. But, yeah, what are you aiming for, like what's your passion and love, what's your ultimate goal? Are you doing it for fun now, like right now, or what? Oh man, dude, such a, such a, such a subject sometimes, you know? Yeah. You know, when you work with a bunch of white, freaking old people, racist, hey man, I'm just throwing jabs and shoots in this interview right now, so let me get ready, you know? So, here's the thing, when people tell you you weren't good enough to wrestle on a varsity line, when you lost your varsity spot two weeks before districts because of this kid, and then you do it again your senior year, I had a confidence issue, that's why I started MMA. And then same thing with, same thing with boxing, same thing when I left MMA and went to boxing. Right. Here's the thing, I'm getting old, I'm literally 21, I'm saying this now, I'm getting old. If you listen to this interview, maybe in four to five years, I'll be 25 or 26. Here's the thing, though, with boxing now, one thing is, obviously, everyone wants to go pro. Yeah. That's everyone's goal. And it's easier to go pro in boxing because I saw a fight last week in the Haney Garcia undercard, and this guy had eight amateur fights, and he's boxing pro, and the undercard of probably one of the biggest cards, well, not one of the biggest cards, but just one of the bigger cards of the year. Yeah. So he had eight amateur fights and he's a professional, fighting in the Golden Boy promotion. So, the one thing is with boxing, I want to go pro before I turn 25 or 26. Right. And I want to make money, like, not like, I mean, you make some absurd amount of money in boxing when you start, not like the low level, like you can go to Golden Boy or you get these, like, big names like Top Rank or Golden Boy Promotions, PBC, or Queensberry out in fucking England. I ain't trying to go to England, you know, Tyson, Fiore. So, here's the thing with me, I want to become a pro and, you know, take care, obviously, take care of my family first. Right. I come from a poor family. In fact, I come from a poor family. I come from poverty. I come from immigrant parents, too, you know. They came here for the American dream. And the one thing is that the American dream doesn't exist no more, in America, no more. And the one thing is, one escape that I had is the boxing, you know. I was like, I can become next Tannis Crawford, next Samuel Canelo Alvarez, or the next, obviously, Tyson Fury, next Alexander Usyk. So, the one thing is I want to take care of my family first, obviously, and probably run for mayor. I'm just kidding. No, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to change, I want to, I want to, I want to change the city, you know. Look at Tannis Crawford. He changed Omaha. He put it on the map. Right. You can't have these high schoolers put freaking, freaking Omaha on the map because you're running track. You got four years. I got all this long last line of boxing still. I'm still an amateur. I only have ten fights, but they're going to grant me the nine for the cruiserweight division. So, they're going to grant me the fight for the ninth. So, they counted my ninth fight for cruiserweight. And the one thing is, I want to, after I compete at these national tournaments in a few years, and then see where I, where I'm satisfied at because boxing is just a different beast and a breed. It's not like MMA where you're like fighting every weekend. You have these promoters and these scouts and whoever, the talent recruits, you know. Same thing in boxing, but the one thing is, it's the power of social media too. Right. The power of social media. But, I want to take care of my family first, you know. Pay both my brother's college tuitions, parents' debts, and all that stuff, and just work hard as I fucking can because, and sorry about my language, but it's the truth. I want to work as hard as I fucking can so I can fucking take care of my family first because my friends will be like, bro, you can go pro in boxing because look at you. You, for a heavyweight, moving super quick and having this power. But, you know, one thing is, you've got to move down to cruiserweight or heavyweight because I find that super heavyweight, you've got to move down to heavyweight or cruiserweight so you can make some money, you know. But, you know, I've got to take care of my family first. Like, if this dream happens, I'm going to take care of my family first. Take care of all their debts. Same with my brothers too. You know, take care of all their college debt because college debt's not cheap, bro. I mean, you're drowning your freaking self. And the one thing is, you've got to like, I'm going to be straight up with you, bro. I mean, you've got to be doing some crazy ass shit, bro. You've got to be doing some crazy ass stuff to freaking get through college, man. And it's crazy. And I don't even go to college. See, I sound like freaking Nate Diaz out here, man. You've got to be doing some crazy stuff to like get through college and stuff. So, and this one thing is with the city. You know, this city, this city thing, I want to put this city on the map. But the one thing is, there's so many negative people in this freaking town. A hundred percent. I feel that, you know, based around fighting. Like, I feel like Terrence got the buzz that he did because where he came from. From North Omaha? Yeah. From Leavenworth? Right. Or Lattimore Street. I'm Lattimore. Yeah. Now, when you look at like, you know, there's great fighters like Drew Dover. He's like one of my friends. He's what, the number one. No, he's not. No, not, not. He holds something in the knockout. He holds the number one knockout for his weight. Yeah. The amount of knockouts. And no one really knows him. Like he just, like yesterday, literally yesterday, he just got added to UFC 5, the video game. And that's insane. Like. He should have been on like four and probably, maybe three, probably because he was on a startup, but they didn't do like the updates and stuff. Yeah. He was on three, but they had him as a like 77 overall. Oh, crazy. Then they had him on four towards like right when they dropped five. And he was like a 80. And now on five, they're giving him his recognition with like his punching power and all that. He's like a 95 overall. Yeah. So, yeah. With the city, I want to change the city. Yeah. I want to give back to my, like, see what Terrence Crawford did, dude. He gave back to the city. He has his own boxing gym. Right. Two of them. Two. Because he bought the freaking land. I saw it at the parade, bro. He bought the land. Behind, is it Spalding, right? Yeah. It's like on Spalding Street and then the intersection by the bus terminals. He bought that property for a dollar. I want to, look, I'm going to be honest with you. The Freedom Boxing Club, bro, we deep in the trenches. I mean, we're out of someone's garage. So, I'm back to square one where I started MMA. But, I mean, it's a legit club. I mean, we're USA boxing certified and everything. But, I want to give back and donate. And this is like, right now I got little hopes and dreams right now in my hand. I want to donate, like, a gym. Like, give back to my city. A gym that kids, I mean, I'm going to be honest with you. These kids nowadays are crazy. They wilding out here, bro. And it's not funny, dude. I mean, you're 14, 15 years old, dude. You're trapping. Dude, are you freaking kidding me? You're freaking selling drugs, dude, to make money. Are you freaking kidding me? Just wait a couple more years or start hustling, dude. Don't hustle like that because you'll be caught up at a young age. And the one thing is, the one thing that can change you is boxing and hard coaching. But now these kids can't take coaching no more. They can't. They're all soft. They don't like being told what they can and can't do and, like, how to do something correctly. Yeah, and it's freaking BS. I wish I can cuss on this freaking podcast and have my bottle of Hennessy and a freaking... No, no. I'm sorry. A little too far. But it is true, though, because I see it first thing in boxing and at the gym because kids don't like being told what to do. And it's crazy now these days because you can't be doing this shit. You're telling kids to get off the streets, stop selling drugs and all that stuff. That's why I want to change the city and to have something for those kids, you know. And the second thing is I want to give back to the school that I caused havoc at. I want to give back to them. You know, there's a whole list I can do. I want to give back to the school, you know, and give them something nice, you know. Give them, like, probably give them, like, actual food. I don't know what I want to do with that school, but they're just being remodeled and stuff. But I want to give back to the program, to the wrestling program and all that stuff and give back to all of them, you know. But the one thing is I've got to take care of my family first. I've got to take care of the debts. I've got to take care of the... Because I feel like right now, at my age right now, I work overnights and stuff. So I'm making some money right now in training at the same time. But the one thing is that's keeping me strong is, like, you know, I've got to lock the fuck in. I've got to lock the fuck in, bro. I'm sorry about that, cousin. Also, we're going to switch topics because we're running out of time. Oh, yeah. Sorry about the opening monologue. Let's get going. That's cauliflower ear. That hurt. So what's your opinions on sparring? Personally, that's my favorite way of training. Same with me, but it's like, here's the thing. Boxing and MMA, you can spar all the time. Plus, you get an opponent announced, and you can look them up on social media. Twitter, Facebook. Or anywhere, dude. So here's the thing, though. You can prepare for someone for two to three months until they have their next card. For me, I have to wait. I have to wait until the day of. I weigh in, and then I have to wait until I get matched. But the one thing is, when I spar, I spar like I'm going to fight someone. I'm going to rip the guy's head off, but I'm going to spar how I want to fight that Saturday. Because I can't go sparring after throwing jabs and stuff. And then I go to Saturday game plan. I'm not throwing nothing. I'm not landing anything. My intimidation ain't going. So that's the one thing I like about sparring. You're sparring to get ready for someone else that you've seen on YouTube or on a trill of TV on those fights. Or fightnet.com. I forgot what's the streaming service, but you can see them, how they fight. And then for me in boxing, you can't really. I think to get lucky, to see someone fight, is just like look them up. That's it. For example, like me, I fought this dude. I was supposed to fight a 6'7 guy. He played G-League. I don't know how the NBA minor league system works, but he played the league before you get up to the NBA. And I was focused on him, but turns out the tournament turned out to be I had to fight a guy first before I came in. How's it going? Hey, you want to join our podcast? Hey, man, you want to say something to the mic? We just had someone walk in here, bro. That's the thing though, because you have time to get ready for someone. I don't. I have to spar. I'm actually fighting someone. Yeah, see with us, the only thing that we really do when it's preparing for someone is we're really good at striking. We have like one of the top striking coaches in the world. Oh, yeah. Shout out to Danny. But yeah, so with us, we really only focus on one thing if they're really good at grappling. So we do these things called meat grinder rounds. Same with us. We call it machine gun. We do the pro rounds. We do the six or eight threes, six rounds, three minutes, six, eight rounds, three minutes. Oh, no, this one's different. Yeah. With us, we set up the guys that are about to fight, and we'll have them do butt grips. So they're sitting down, and you're on top of them, and then it's go from there, and then it's start off in the double, then it's start off with an underhook, then start off with a single, different positions that make you uncomfortable. And each time, you don't know who you're going to have. Coach just throws a random person at you. So with me being the 33 to 45, sometimes 50, coach will have anyone go with me realistically. The other day, since I'm in camp, I had a super heavyweight grab me, and I was like, oh, this is going to be fun. He has the double leg. And, yeah, I flew. I flew that day. Sometimes you got to put those hips back. Yeah. Make sure you cross face the fuck out. I'm sorry about the lingers. I'm really tired. I mean, I'm sorry. I work third shift, and I'm ready for bed. Yeah, we're sorry. We literally have done like two, three hours worth of recording. It's been messing up. We don't know what happened, but we're not going to say too much. We're just going to keep it going. We're almost done. Yep, yep. So what's your opinion on like hard sparring? Like there's low sparring. There's hard sparring. There's up sparring. Hard sparring is more like this is like your wake-up call sparring. Are you lacking hitting the bag? Are you lacking hitting the mitts? Are you lacking on the conditioning? I call it the wake-up spar. You got to wake up. I mean, literally, it's crazy how it works. It's because like once the coach says we're doing these like amateur, we do amateur pro rounds, I feel like you do amateur, there's more like punches because there's three rounds. And then once you hit the pro rounds, we call them pro days, like the NFL, you know, the pro days and stuff. When we get to our pro days, the six to eight rounds, we don't do like the 10 or 12s because that's a little too excessive. 36 minutes. When we get to those pro days, that's where you realize you got to wake up because you're really lacking on the conditioning and stuff. You're really lacking on those combinations, hitting down those bags. And it's not funny because I've been there too. Don't worry. You've probably been there too where like I don't want to spar these pro rounds and I'm sleeping. I'm lacking on my road work. I'm lacking on the bag. I'm lacking on the mitts. I'm lacking on the shadow boxing. So that's why I call it the wake-up spar. I don't call it a hard spar. I call it a wake-up spar. So I've read a couple things online and there's like a lot of opinion on like they think that hard sparring is bad. Okay, okay. Look, you little crybaby sissies. You probably have never freaking sparred a day in your life. If you're a scientist right now saying that, hey, sparring is bad for you because CT. I know CT is a thing. I eat that motherfucker for breakfast. But I'm sorry. I'm getting really tired so I eat that for breakfast, you know. I eat CT for breakfast. And here's the one thing. Here's the one thing because you scientists think. I know I love you guys because you guys do so much great things for us like vaccinations and keeping us healthy and doctors too. But here's the one thing though. You got to realize that we, us combative athletes, we are fighting for money. You're just fighting for, you're researching for money as well. Here's the thing though. I need to get ready. You need to freaking shut your mouth and sit down and just look at your microscope all day. I'm fighting for my life. You are just making a living out of it. Yeah, true. And another thing, like personally, I believe that as a fighter, you can't take a hit if you don't prepare for a hit. And when you look at, who is it? Who just got knocked out? It's Wonderboy. Wonderboy for that camp, he actually read the same article that I did. That's why I pulled it because I was looking into Wonderboy, looking at his techniques, you know, trying to get some basis for this interview. And for that card, he read that article. And he was like, okay, so I shouldn't spar. I shouldn't do this. And he ended up getting knocked out. Yeah, because like you can't really, you can't spar. And then you read this early, it's in the mentality too. Because you feel like if you read this, like I'm going to get knocked out, I'm going to get knocked out in your head. No, there's not got to be, there's one thing that you have to spar. There's no like, oh, I'm going to go to spar this camp. You got to spar because you can't simulate what you're going to do on Saturday night or what you're going to do on Friday night for those dynasty fights. You got to realize that you're sparring. You got to spar to get ready because you're going to be punched in the cage. You're going to be punched in the ring. You're going to be kicked in the cage. You know, you cannot say no to sparring. 100%. And I've also read articles that were on our same side. Like this guy, he said sparring is great for you because it does exactly what we're saying. Like it gets you ready for the fight. It gets you that mentality. It teaches you how to take a punch and all that. So I feel like we have the more better standpoint because from what we've seen with Wonderboy getting knocked out in this last fight, it's definitely needed. And he said that he didn't spar because of this article and he gets knocked out. And then he goes, yeah, I'm definitely never doing that again. Because he's only been knocked out, what, twice? Twice. And once was... Pettis and then... Yeah, that one was the last guy. Rokhmatov. Yeah. And he has well over... No, Rokhmatov choked him out of it. Yeah, Rokhmatov. No, no. But anyways, yeah, he has well over 200 fights. So it's probably just the one camp that he probably did not spar. One camp he didn't spar and he got knocked out. And the other one he was just short notice. Yeah, really, really short notice. Like a week. It ended up being a catchweight because he was off weight. And they gave him his money because it's not his fault. They gave him a week's notice and normally you get a couple months. But anyways, when do you feel like you're ready to spar or fight in general? I personally believe once you can flick water in your face without blinking, that's when I personally tell people you're ready. Because, you know, when you're getting punched at, the natural reaction is to flinch for most people or to close their eyes. Yeah, close their eyes. So here's the thing, though. I started in March of 2023. I didn't start sparring until like May of 23, obviously. Right. And then I had my first fight in June or July because we had a delay in my first fight because the guy pulled out because he didn't show up to the weigh-ins. So we had to wait until the next weekend, which was in July. So it took me about March, April, May, June, June, put an asterisk on June because we went into the next week because it was the 4th of July weekend. So it took me four months to get ready for a boxing fight. It took me four months, and I won the fight pretty decisively. So it took me four months to get ready for a fight. Okay. Yeah, that's about the timeline I'd throw it to. At our gym, it's really based upon – well, my gym. We don't go to the same gym. It's really based upon what Coach says. Like what he sees during practice, that's what gets it going. Like I've only been signed to this gym for about three months now, and my second month in, he was like, hey, you're fighting in August and in September. September's a little too early. Should we wait until like maybe January for the New Year bash at the pinnacle? It's going to be MMA, and then I'm going to do a Muay Thai fight. Oh, okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Not MMA back-to-back. Yeah, you are pushing that schedule a little too far. Yeah, it's a Thai fight because I came from a Thai gym originally. Yeah. Yeah, so when you're sparring, what exactly do you look for? I just look for my jabs and just get my combinations hooked, uppercuts, and just straight punches, you know, and try to work on my fundamentals and just my footwork and rolls, slips, all the fundamentals. It starts with the fundamentals, not like all that fancy bullshit, you know. I'm sorry about the language, but it's still the same thing. You can't be using that fancy bullshit all the time. You know, I can't be like Floyd Mayweather. I can't fill his shell all the time thinking I'm Floyd Mayweather thinking I'm going to make the $5,500 million the night. You have to go from the fundamentals, one-twos, hooks, jabs, to the body, to the liver, you know. So I feel like that's what I think about my sparring. I need to get my combinations going and just be relaxed and work on my speed and stuff because I'm throwing more power than speed, as the coaches say. Right. So with me, I try to find my range because I'm pretty short and most of the dudes in my gym are like 5'10 plus, a lot of them. And the guys that are around my size, we normally don't go because I'm a lot stronger than them. So I don't really go with them. So I try to find my range and I work on my quickness and whatever I worked on in practice. So I work on my slips. I'm really good at parrying, so I do a lot of parrying. Yeah, I've done some parrying too myself. Sometimes my parry's a little way out there, but it works effectively sometimes. I like to work on things that I already know too. Yeah, just refresh. Same with my combinations. I need to refresh on some of them and then on a bag. And then once you hit live, that's where you're like, okay, now we're doing it. 100%. Sometimes I'll even shoot a bad shot on purpose to put myself in that predicament. Yeah, put yourself in that situation if that happens. Like, oh man, I'm tired, I'm going to shoot. But oh man, that was a horrible shot. Frick it, we'll shoot. Sometimes you've got to have that mentality like whatever's going to get it done is going to get it done because at the end of the night, that's what you're really trying to do. But yeah, bro, we're well over time. I'm going to call it good. So thank you again, Jabez. I'm going to plug this out real quick. Hey, if you want to come to the Fremont Boxing Club, give me a couple rounds, you know. I'm just kidding, guys. Hey, you guys, make sure to like and subscribe. You know, just have a good year and make sure to finish the school year strong and go Warriors and kick some ass, you know. I'll see you in September. This is for Zion Howard, you know. I'll see you next Independence Day weekend in September. I'll see you soon, boy.