Boxing champion Leo Santa Cruz reveals his father’s fight with cancer

Leo Santa Cruz knew that his father, Jose, was a tough man, but the depth of that fortitude was revealed last month when Leo and his siblings gathered with their dad and spoke through tears to deliver sobering news.

“You’ve got cancer,” the children told the elder Santa Cruz, 56, detailing that it was Stage 3 myeloma -- bone cancer at the spine that would require chemotherapy and surgery.

“The first thing he said is, ‘This is nothing’ -- no tears, no nothing,” Leo Santa Cruz said Wednesday, speaking publicly for the first time about his father’s illness. “We were all crying, but he says, ‘No matter. It don’t scare me. I’ll beat it.’ ”

The elder Santa Cruz relied on that type of defiance and drive to lift his family through a challenging life in Los Angeles.

After watching the activity at a boxing gym in Mexico as a young adult, Jose Santa Cruz became so obsessed with the sport that he vowed he would make one of his four sons a world champion.

While working in the Southland at such jobs as cooking and painting, he made it an afternoon routine to accompany his young boys to a boxing gym for training. The older boys, Antonio, Jose Armando and Robert, couldn’t fulfill the title mission.

But Leo, now 27, won a bantamweight belt in 2012 at the StubHub Center, and turned to his father-trainer with the prize, telling him, “Here, this is yours.”

Nearly four years later, Leo Santa Cruz (32-0-1, 18 knockouts) has won belts in three divisions, and he’s just started working out in La Puente in preparation for a July 30 World Boxing Assn. featherweight title defense against super-bantamweight champion Carl Frampton (22-0, 14 KOs) of Northern Ireland.

The bout, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., will be televised by Showtime as part of a push to make Santa Cruz one of the sport’s most prominent names.

Each step of the way -- every fight -- Jose Santa Cruz was there in his son’s corner, often wearing a cowboy hat, large gold chain and a shirt liberally unbuttoned from the top.

“He’s my world. He’s always been by my side ever since I’ve been small,” Leo said. “I can’t imagine not having him with me. It’s something I wouldn’t be able to handle. Him suffering everything to bring us here … to get to this point, we want to enjoy everything he worked so hard for, to see it all pay off.”

Jose Santa Cruz has lost 30 pounds and attended an April 30 fight at the StubHub Center in a wheelchair. On Monday he started chemotherapy treatments, a process expected to last 30 to 45 days. That will be followed by the spine surgery and recovery.

“Then, we think he’ll be 100%, that he’ll be able to go to my fight. … That’s right where I want him,” Leo said.

On Wednesday, Antonio supervised Leo’s training session in their father’s absence. Antonio was Jose’s second in Leo’s corner for the past six fights.

“He tells me, ‘You know what to do, I’ve already showed you. Just push him, push him hard enough so he can’t do the same things he’s been doing. I shouldn’t have to tell you anymore,’” Antonio said, quoting Jose. “That’s what we’re doing now.”

“But especially now, we’re sad. We need him here. I’m used to my father saying, ‘Do this to him! Slap him!’ I want to hear it, to know it’s right. So it’s kind of difficult to know exactly what to tell [Leo] because [Jose’s] not here.”

Leo said his father’s presence -- “he knows the right thing to do” -- can’t be measured. It was there in February, when Santa Cruz claimed his 142-punch slugfest against contender Kiko Martinez in February at Honda Center.

“Box! Box and move!” Jose ordered.

“I started doing that and it was just me hitting him,” Leo said en route to claiming a fifth-round technical-knockout victory.

Leo said he’s praying at his La Habra Heights home where his father stays with him, and has handed to Jose a gold medallion given to Leo by World Boxing Council President Mauricio Sulaiman, who had it blessed by Pope Francis on a recent trip.

“The way he tells me things [in training], screaming, it gets you mad, but you know it’s for your own good,” Leo said of his father. “He’s not screaming now. He has to be relieved from stress. If he comes to the gym, I know he’s going to be stressed. He needs the rest. That’s more important.

“What I want is for my dad to be there when I fight. The doctors know the date, they’re pushing it … telling me, ‘You just and go train hard, and by fight day, you’ll have him there.’

“It would be hard without him. He wouldn’t want me to get down.”

Leo said his dad’s cancer fight has reversed their motivational roles.

“You always told us to be strong and tough when we were growing up. Now it’s your turn -- your time to go 15 rounds,” Leo told Jose.

Jose’s pain struck during a family vacation to Hawaii that Leo paid for. Jose relished a luau and family fishing trip, but was in so much discomfort during the final days that he stopped eating and stayed in bed.

Even so, Jose told Antonio he’d never enjoyed any days more than those.

Leo heard that Wednesday and said, “There’s a lot more of life to enjoy.”