One fight, two rings

By Cameron Wallace

The Cuero Record

For Ilanaa Cantu, Sept. 25 will always be a special day.

Special for two reasons: first, she watched her boyfriend, Jeremaine, win his first professional boxing match; second, after Jeremaine’s fight, he proposed to her.

“Jeremaine” is Cuero’s Jeremaine White (soon to be Whittington, but that’s another story). At age 39 he’s just starting his professional boxing career; an age when most boxers are either thinking about retirement, or actually retiring.

Fighting started very early in Jeremaine’s life. He was born in Cuero, but left when he was seven years old.

“This was 1989. I was run over by a lady who didn’t like the color of my skin, and told the police that if I was a dog, she would have stopped. It jacked my whole body up, and after that, we moved.”

This was when Jeremaine’s fighting spirit started. “Because of my injuries from being run over, I was told I would never play sports again. I stayed away for eight years, but all of my family is here, and my crew.  That’s when people told me, ‘you gotta play sports’. I was on the ‘98 Gobblers team that went to state. After I graduated, I tried the college thing, but it wasn’t for me. I was 19 years old, and I got into boxing.”

Jeremaine continues, “I was in it [boxing] for two years and was working on going pro. I was riding my motorcycle in Victoria one day and I had a wreck. I have two bulging discs in my back, and I had to get out of boxing. And I tried to get back in it, and had to get back out.”

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