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This guy is no ordinary Joe
Joe Pedrojetti, the founder and co-owner of the Bulldog Boxing Club, began the club six years ago with just two boxers. Now his club has more than 100 boxers who are making names for themselves across the country. By Don Hunt Joe Pedrojetti is a kind, gentle man with a quick wit and a keen sense of humor. His personality defies a tough upbringing. Born and raised in Hawthorne, Nev., a town of about 5,000 on the edge of the Sierra Nevada Mountains 130 miles southeast of Reno, Pedrojetti learned quickly to fend for himself. Not many weekends went by without Joe and his father, Jim, heading to an uncle's home to gather with family and friends and listen to boxing matches on the radio. Out in the backyard, the young boys would conduct their own boxing tournament. Joe would defeat his first opponent or two, but would invariably run into an older cousin named Ed "Skeeter" Hammock, who would pound him into submission. "He was four years older and he showed me no mercy," says Pedrojetti, the founder and owner of Medford's Bulldog Boxing Club. "He throttled me." Life wasn't much different at Mineral County High School, enrollment 800, where fights seemed to break out daily. Hawthorne was the site of a Navy ammunition depot and the town featured a mix of Italians, Hispanics, blacks and Indians. Toss in the kids from a nearby Marine base, and it made for a "combative environment," Pedrojetti says. Sports kept young Joe on the straight and narrow, however. He played football, basketball and baseball as a freshman in high school and no longer had time for boxing. But when his basketball coach cut him for showing up without shoes to start his sophomore season, boxing re-entered Pedrojetti's life. "We had one store in town that sold athletic shoes, but they didn't have my size," says Pedrojetti, who had started on the JV team as a freshman the year before. "We had a new coach. He didn't know anything about me and he cut me. "I didn't say anything to anyone, but I was devastated." With time suddenly on his hands, Pedrojetti began to hit some speed bags his father had set up in the basement of their home. He also began to visit the Marine base, which had more extensive equipment. Boxing was still no more than a hobby when Pedrojetti graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of Nevada-Reno, but that would soon change. It was at UNR that Pedrojetti met a legendary - if somewhat unscrupulous - coach named Jimmy Olivas. Under Olivas' guidance, Pedrojetti won two national collegiate championships and lost only twice in three years. One of the losses came when Olivas took Pedrojetti out of the school infirmary to fight. "I guess he didn't think I was that sick," Pedrojetti says, "but I was too weak to win a fight." Olivas had done something even more unprincipled when he put Pedrojetti into a varsity bout during his freshman year - a no-no in those days. The rule violation meant Pedrojetti couldn't compete his senior year. He thought about turning pro, but instead finished his schooling, obtained a degree in education and joined the Army. One year later, he found himself in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, where he developed a sports program. Pedrojetti earned a bronze star for running a basketball league on an outdoor court that was strafed by the Viet Cong. "They thought the court was a helicopter pad and they shot mortars at us every few nights," Pedrojetti says. "We got knocked around a little." After his stint in Southeast Asia, Pedrojetti returned to Nevada, where he taught government and history and coached football and wrestling at his alma mater beginning in 1973. He spent four years at Hawthorne, Nev., and then moved to Winnemucca, Nev., where he ran into an old friend named Mark Winans. The two had been in the same fraternity at UNR. They became next-door neighbors in Winnemucca. They saw each other often in the gym, where Pedrojetti was the head wrestling coach and Winans the head basketball coach. They went to the same church. Each would have been content to keep teaching and coaching, but they heeded some advice from Winans' father, Charlie, who owned a furniture store in Fallon, Nev. "He told Mark and I that if we spent as much time and effort in business as we did in coaching, that we couldn't help but be successful," Pedrojetti says. So they moved to Ashland on a whim in 1978 and opened a furniture store using Joe's first name and Winans' last name: Joseph Winans Furniture. "We thought Mark Pedrojetti sounded too much like a pizza place," Pedrojetti says with a laugh. Neither had any selling experience; they didn't even know how to keep a set of books. But they implemented their coaching principals and it wasn't long before their business took off. They moved their store to Medford in 1984. "We worked hard, but we also had fun," says Pedrojetti, noting they had no help for the first four years they were in business. "We'd play stickball in the back of the store and everything was a competition. We'd take a sleeper from the truck into the store and time ourselves." Winans died of cancer on June 10, 1994. With coach Pedrojetti at the helm, the store has continued to flourish. Reach reporter Don Hunt at 776-4469, or e-mail dhunt@mailtribune.com |
