David A. Avila – West Coast Bureau Chief

David A. Avila was born and raised in the boxing breeding grounds of East Los Angeles. Inspired by his own father who fought in the Olympic Auditorium during the 1950s, David decided to write about boxing, beginning with coverage of an Oscar De La Hoya bout in the Olympic Auditorium.

He also participated in amateur boxing sporadically for 10 years before turning down a pro boxing career in lieu of a potential baseball career. While at UCLA, he realized baseball was not going to work out so he turned to journalism. Then boxing dragged him back into the fold as a writer where he began covering the sport for the LA Times after a couple of years in the newsroom.

After the Times, he helped launch Uppercut Magazine in 1999 and now is a sports columnist specializing in boxing for the Riverside Press-Enterprise and La Prensa newspapers. He previously wrote for Maxboxing and WBAN. His great grandfather Battling Ortega fought more than a dozen world champions from lightweight to light heavyweight beginning in 1916. Avila lives in Riverside, California.

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