DENNYS REYES BELIEVES DESTINY BROUGHT HIM TO VALHALLA

This Friday night’s Grand Casino Hinckley, MN lead in to the main event between 32 year old Cuban born Minneapolis resident Dennys Reyes (2-1, 1 KO) and Tim Taggart Jr. (6-4-2) is expected to be full of action and feature plenty of heavy punches. Reyes may be a new face to Minnesota boxing fans but he brings a wealth of experience having boxed as an amateur from the age of 8 to 15 back in Cuba. While Taggart is a familiar face to local boxing circles, Reyes has only been seen in a local ring once which came against Taggart’s teammate Cayman Audie last December at Canterbury Park in Shakopee. What fans in attendance witnessed that night was a bombs away, four round multiple knockdown affair which saw the hand of Reyes raised by decision.

Reyes nearly lived in the ring growing up and fought between 200-300 times with most of those hours in the gym having been spent with childhood coach Gregorio Maso Ramirez, a two time silver medalist from Cuba according to Valhalla owner James Clark. Minnesotaboxing.com asked Clark if he could share a backstory on how Reyes found his way to Valhalla Combat. The story below is pretty amazing! The Grand Casino Hinckley will be the place to be tonight to witness the heavyweight showdown between Dennys Reyes and Tim Taggart along with THE REST OF THE SHOW HERE. If you cannot make it live, watch the stream at www.Facebook.com/minnesotaboxing.

Read the story of Dennys Reyes and Valhalla Combat as told by James Clark below.

It’s kind of a crazy story how Dennys got to our gym. Let me start back in 2008 when I opened up the gym, back then it was the crystal fight club.

I was open for a year, we were winning our fights (MMA fights) but I was showing them wrestling takedowns and ground and pound, so we were winning that way. Thomas Jones had just gotten kicked out of the C.O.D. and walked into our gym. He really did a great job working with us on boxing, and we started knocking people out on the feet!

He was there for about 3 years, but then tried to sell cocaine to an undercover police officer, and was sent back to prison. So the year was 2014, I put an ad in English on Craiglist for a boxing coach/pad holder. I got about ten responses from the ad, but they were all kung fu guys, and they were useless.

So I put an ad in Spanish, and who answered it? The brother in Law of Gregorio Maso Ramirez! Gregorio was a 2 time silver medalist from Cuba. He had a 228-12 record in world competition. Was on the 1984 and 1988 Cuban Olympic teams that boycotted the L.A. and Seoul Korea games. In 1992, he was the head coach of the team that won 7 gold medals.

Gregorio defected in Venezuela and got to Miami from there. Then from there he came North to Valhalla when he got in contact with me through his brother in law. He was with us for three years, and also did some great work. He also had some legal issues that took him away from us for a while. But I kept in contact with Gregorio all the time.

Fast forward to 2020, (boxer) Vincent Downwind told me about a bouncer who worked with him at some night club. He said he is a very good boxer but is still working on his English. I said bring him, we have people here who can talk to him in Spanish. Dennys came in, and within a few sentences I knew he was from Cuba (I lived in Miami for 6 months, and Gregorio was with us for 3 years. So I was accustomed to the Cuban dialect of Spanish).

He was surprised not only that a gringo could speak Spanish, but knew Cuban Spanish (which even some native Spanish speakers have a hard time with). I told him that I lived in Miami for 6 months and that we had a Cuban boxing coach with us for 3 years.

Dennys was curious, he asked me who was the Cuban boxing coach? I told him Gregorio Maso Ramirez. Dennys sat down, I thought he was going to faint! He had not seen Gregorio since he was 15 years old. He was Dennys’ coach from 8 years old until he was 15. Gregorio was the one who worked with Dennys the most, taught him how to box!

Dennys thought the Cuban government had either killed Gregorio or had thrown him in jail.

Anyway, Joshua had become really close with Gregorio and so is Dennys; so those two have become really close to one another. They both fought on the same show Dec. 4th, are fighting on the same show Feb 18th. Both are fighting their 4th pro fight on Feb 18th. Dennys was saying that it was destiny that he came to Valhalla to get reconnected with his coach and to meet Josh and me.

James Clark, owner of Valhalla Combat