TEAM TITLE

Super Leightweight ABF Champion

Middleweight Contender - Bones Adams Boxing Gym - Las Vegas, Nevada

Welterweight Prospect - Impact Boxing and Fitness - Orlando, Florida

NABA Super Bantamweight Champion

Super Lightweight Prospect - Victorville, California

Rising Featherweight Prospect

Undefeated Super Bantamweight

Welterweight Prospect

Undefeated Super Bantamweight

Elite amateur and Professional Trainer - Impact Boxing and Fitness - Orlando, Florida

Elite Amateur and Professional Coach

Elite Amateur and Professional Trainer - Tom Yankello’s Boxing Club - Ambridge, Pennsylvania

Former Lightweight Contender, Amateur and Professional Coach

Amateur and Professional Coach

Former Light Heavyweight Contender, Amateur and Professional Coach

WBA Super Bantamweight Champion (2000-2001)

Owner/Coach

Owner/Coach

National and WBC Amateur Champion

Amateur

Amateur

Elite Amateur

Elite Amateur

Amateur

Amateur

Amateur

Amateur

Fat City Boxing Club was founded in 2011 by World Boxing Hall of Fame inductee Alvaro ”Indian Yaqui” Lopez, a world famous former Light Heavy-Weight Boxer who has received special recognition by the United States Senate and Congress for his achievements in the sport of boxing and for his work with at risk youth. Yaqui Lopez's Fat City Boxing Club was created to address the growing need to promote the physical, mental, and spiritual, well-being of at-risk youths in the community, many of whom face disproportionate risks and challenges. The GOAL of our program is to encourage positive behavior and teach valuable life lessons about responsibility, community service, pride, discipline, exercise and nutrition as well as stress management. We believe that the skills and lessons our participants learn will help them grow into positive well balanced adults. Ultimately Yaqui Lopez’s Fat City Boxing Club is trying to save lives.Fat City Boxing Club is open Monday thru Friday from 1:00pm - 6:30pm. Weekends are set aside for boxing events or for private lessons. Fat City Boxing Club is part of the Central California Association and of USA Boxing. Our amateur boxers compete at events year round. Most of the events we attend are located in Central or Northern California, but we do occasionally travel to Southern California and Nevada as well. Anyone is welcme to stop by for more info or just to check out our gym.

Like many young men, Yankello started boxing after receiving a pair of boxing gloves as a gift at the age of five. Boxing was in Yankello’s bloodstream, however. Tom’s father’s brother, Mike Yankello, was a Naval Boxing Champion and Tom’s mother’s father, Charles Vallecorsa, was an amateur boxer. Tom fell in love with the sport from the culmination of watching the movie Rocky, viewing boxing events with his family, hearing stories of how his Uncle Mike boxed in the Navy and how his Grandfather Charles boxed in the amateurs, and from his father creating a ring in his basement along with different types of bags which is where Tom spent most of his childhood past time. Yankello, who had been a talented boxer in the amateur ranks and considered by many local boxing followers as world-class, worked under area boxing trainers such as Jerry Magio, Ray Palladini, and BC Hall-of-Famer Carmie Price. Yankello was marred by freak shoulder and elbow injuries that resulted in four surgeries and kept him from his dream of ever turning professional. In 1991 Tom began training boxers. Now considered as one of boxing’s premier trainers, he managed and trained amateur and professional fighters first at the Beaver County Boxing Club and then later at Tom Yankello’s World Class Boxing Gym. Tom created a top boxing establishment catering to both amateurs and professionals. ​

During the 1970’s and 80’s Detroit was famous for automobile plants, cranking-out new cars, being the birthplace of Motown and producing world champions out of the KRONK Boxing Gym. The basement of the downtown recreation center served as the workshop to visionary trainer and teacher, Emanuel Steward. It was Steward’s survival-of-the-fittest training regimen and leave-it-all-in-the-ring approach to combat that built some of the most feared fighters in the sport’s history. Together, the “Motor City” and the over-heated, dingy gym cranked out 42 world champions, numerous gold medal wins and transformed a sweat box into a brand that would become recognized all over the world. The KRONK history and future legacy is undeniable. It just goes to show that there are individuals who touch the sport, others who change it, while some, revolutionize it.