Eddie Vela

Born on September 14, 1973 in Laredo, Texas.

Oh, yeah. I mean, Jenny, what can I say? She's like one of ours. You know what I mean? She sleeps at my house. She lives there, And its just a little circle - me and my wife, Jenny, just everything going into her.

We hit all the nationals from 21 to 22. 20 we won the nationals, 21 we won the nationals and we still didn't get picked to get to the USA team. We beat the girl that had, that was in the favorite to be in the Olympics twice and no call. Like, man, Jenny. It's hard to get in. It’s either you're part of them or you're not. They see where you're from, your attitude, the way you act, the way you express yourself. The way you carry yourself sometimes. But us, we just kicked ass, man. We just kept on, you know, beating the top girls out there in a dramatic fashion. And that's what we kept doing. Stayed focused to the plan. We kept focused on the winning.

All of a sudden we're going to the Valley because we were, at that time we were traveling a lot. Houston, Dallas, the Valley for sparring. Just looking for the top girls. Who were the best girls in the Texas area, and that's who we're going with. So we're coming back from the Valley. We're here by, we hit 1017 throu gh Hebron through the back. We get a phone call, Jenny gets a phone call, a phone number she doesn’t have, she doesn’t know. Jenny, we want you here. We want you to come over here and so forth. And. It’s the USA team! What the hell, Jenny? And we're like, okay, it's the USA team, it’s the USA team. And boom, long story short, boom. She got called in.

After that, I mean, man we just never looked back. And then boom, here we go, she makes the USA team. First tournament. Ecuador. Boom. She wins gold. Right away, the first tournament. Boom, outstanding female of the tournament. We’re like what? Boom. This is real, this is getting boom, this is like, you know, everything's going great. And the following year, boom, a loss. And then the next big fight, boom, another loss.

We really had to figure out why and what happened. And, and everything needs to be right. You know, the conditioning, the training. Of course, the game plan going into the fight. You know, so we, we regrouped and we fixed all that. I'm like Jenny, it's okay. It's alright, these are learning experiences. We didn't have - even if you won gold in that one tournament, you wouldn't have gotten a ticket to go to Paris. These are learning experiences. You got to put them all together and figure out why we lost there. What did we do wrong? So when it comes all together, that's what these are for. That's why you're fighting international fights. That's why you getting international experience.

And sure enough, when it come down, it came down to the Pan Ams and there she goes. She comes home with a golden ticket. Oh, that was, that was ten years in the work, you know what I mean? It wasn’t, it wasn’t no, like they say, no jog. That was like a long marathon.