Fitchburg flyweight Ricardo Espertin is locked in for this week's National Golden Gloves

FITCHBURG — Ricardo Espertin is a fighter.

When he was in his teens, that meant engaging in bareknuckle fisticuffs in the streets. Then, following the tragic death of his newborn son six years ago, Espertin donned gloves and entered the boxing ring to channel his anger in a more socially acceptable manner.

“It helped me focus and distracted me from the outside world,” Espertin, 24, recently said here in the North County community he and his family have called home for the past two years after having grown up in Worcester.

Locked in since, Espertin has developed into one of the top amateur boxers in his weight class in the United States.

The 5-foot-5 flyweight, who won the elite 112-pound division at the 75th New England Golden Gloves Tournament in Lowell in March, will compete this week at the National Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions at the Cox Business Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“I’m very excited,” said Espertin, who sports a 16-7 record and is ranked seventh nationally among flyweights by USA Boxing, making him one of just two fighters from Massachusetts to crack the top 10 in the 13 weight classes.

Espertin was born in New York City, which his grandfather — a former boxer himself — emigrated to from the Dominican Republic, and moved to Worcester when he was about eight years old.

He had a brief athletic career at Burncoat High, where he he was a member of the Air Force Junior ROTC program for his first three years of high school.

“I liked it,” Espertin said. “I was actually inspector general, I was commander of the saber team, and I was able to go leadership camp and show the younger kids how to do things a certain (the right) way, how to mature from their age. It was a lot. It was a lot.”

And while things were going in the wrong direction academically during that time, Espertin hustled to get his grades in order and graduated on schedule in 2016.

“I got caught up with all the stuff with friends and everything,” he said. “Then my senior year, I had to get on task because I didn’t want to fail. So I did what I had to do.”

Three months prior to turning 18 and four months shy of graduating, Espertin and his then girlfriend suffered a tragedy when their son, Prince Samuel, died 30 minutes after his birth on Feb. 11, 2016, in Worcester.

Gone but never forgotten, Espertin has a tattoo on his left forearm of a teddy bear wearing a jeweled crown with Prince Espertin written in script above it and the date 2-11-16 below it.

“I had gotten into a lot of fights in the streets, acting the fool, and after my son passed away, that made me get angrier,” Espertin said. “It turned me angrier, and I wanted something that could take my focus off of that. Something I could just go to and let everything out.”

Seeking solace and an outlet for that rage, Espertin reached out to Irvin Gonzalez Jr., with whom he attended Burncoat High and is now a professional boxer, and asked about the gym he trained at. Gonzalez invited him over for a look, and before long, Espertin was competing in the ring.

Espertin rose quickly through the ranks and lost a split decision in the 108-pound final at the United States Olympic Trials in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in December 2019.

“I fell a little short,” he said. “I was obviously pretty mad, but I learned from it and kept moving.”

Espertin, who works the overnight shift at Patriot Beverages in Littleton, moved to Fitchburg a couple of years ago and has settled in nicely with his longtime girlfriend, Shirley Perez, and their three children. There’s Aubriella, 10, who can’t get enough of singing along with the radio; Amileo, 9, who loves to draw; and Evalina, who is 8 months old and learning to crawl.

As for why he continues to box while in a better place these days, a smiling Espertin doesn’t hesitate to answer.

“It’s the love of the sport, man,” he said.

—Contact Rich Garven at rgarven@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @RichGarvenTG.