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Swanson: Autistic boxer Daniel ‘Boone’ Moses is a real champion

April 29, 2025

Daniel “Boone” Moses trains six days a week with trainer Deon Elam at New Era Boxing Gym in Reseda. (Photo by Evan Moses)

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Daniel “Boone” Moses trains six days a week with trainer Deon Elam at New Era Boxing Gym in Reseda. (Photo by Evan Moses)

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RESEDA – Turn the TV off. Close out of your social media apps. Memory hole whatever blanket statements you might have heard lately about autism and what people with it can or cannot do. And come on, try to hit Daniel Moses.

“Hit my face!” is what he tells sparring partners, new-school guys whose hearts sometimes don’t seem to be in it. “Right in the kisser!”

Let him be clear: “I don’t like getting hit in the face. But if I want to make sure I get hit less, I gotta drill.”

So, go ahead, partner. Hit him in the face – or, well, try. It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it?

You don’t see autistic boxers like Moses every day; you might not see one any day. Neither do you see fighters confounding opponents with the old Philly Shell defense, all shoulders and elbows, leaning on those block-slip-slide-roll-counter movements that originated in the 1950s and ’60s with Moses’ all-time favorite fighter, George Benton.

No, that was a surprise, said Elijah Villalpando, Moses’ opponent in an amateur bout last month at a Golden Gloves tournament in Pasadena.

“I wasn’t expecting him to have that old-school, slick style,” said Villalpando, who won that three-round fight by decision, handing Moses, 26, his first loss in three fights, all this year. “… what impressed me most was his IQ. He’s a smart fighter and it was fun sharing the ring with him.”

Block, slip, slide, roll, counter. It’s like a dance you’ve seen in old documentary footage that no one does anymore … until someone starts doing it again and reminds everyone how cool it will always be, how fun it is to watch.

But as tough as Moses is to hit, it was equally hard to miss him before that fight with Villalpando at Victory Park Recreation Center.

It seemed like every third person crowded into that brick multipurpose space wanted to say hello, to share a moment with the young man whose local legend is ever growing.

And I know, normally, Moses would have loved to stop and talk boxing with them, like he did in 2016, when he introduced himself to Hall of Famer James “Buddy” McGirt, reciting the former world champion-turned-champion trainer’s résumé for him, an encounter that started a conversation that’s still going.

But, no, on that Saturday afternoon in Pasadena, Moses wasn’t there to talk boxing, he was there to box.

And he thought he was running late, at least until organizers announced an intermission before his scheduled bout. That gave everyone in Moses’ camp a moment to take a deep breath. He had his hands wrapped and then huddled with Deon Elam, his trainer at New Era Boxing Gym in Reseda. Elam told him to use his feints, keep moving, don’t change anything up: “Do what ‘Daniel Boone’ does.”

Then Moses shared a moment with his mom, Ita, standing forehead to forehead with this lovely woman who raised two autistic sons – Daniel and his twin, Evan – to go after their respective passions, boxing and photography. Pursuits made possible by years of patient, determined speech, behavioral and occupational therapy. Every day after school until 5 or 6 p.m., Daniel said, and that was before regular homework. Routine that helped instill discipline that’s paying off for them now as it would for any of us wanting to get better at what we love.

And so, after years of treating the gym like a second home, training, sparring and, lately, using his National Academy of Sports Medicine personal training certification to teach private lessons and heavy bag classes, Moses is getting his shot in the ring for real. And he’s made the most of it, starting off right, with two wins at 176 pounds in January.

IN HIS CORNER

Ita, Elam and McGirt – who gave Daniel his nickname, as Daniel likes to say it, “Daniel Booone!” – are three of the most important members of Daniel’s Boone Squad, a small army of supporters in his corner.

There have been more coaches, Javier “El Gaucho” Diez and the late Stan Ward, a standup guy who once was considered among the best young heavyweights in the world, and who also trained Elam.

And many more. A Rose Bowl swim instructor and Glendale Community College kinesiology professor, therapists and Rachel Charles, a family friend and publicist who gave us a tip about Daniel and who has stayed in contact through March Madness and the start of the NBA Playoffs, making sure I didn’t forget about him.

As if anyone could forget about Daniel.

He’s gregarious and he’s charming, honest and funny – “mom is Mexican and my dad’s Jewish, so I got the best of both worlds; I am JuMex … like that juice in the market!” And big on impressions. A real cool dude.

His shell defense might be tough to penetrate, but Daniel himself is an open book, with most of his chapters dedicated to boxing.

“I’m completely obsessively compelled,” he said. “In Canada, they have Boxing Day after Christmas; for me, boxing day is every day.”

He initially sampled boxing as a spectator – of a video game. At around 8 years old, he loved watching Evan play “Punch-Out!!” on the Wii video game console at home.

“You play as a little 17-year-old, 5-foot-5, 110-pound kid from the Bronx, New York, named Little Mac,” Daniel remembers. “And he’s fighting these giant, grown men – 6-foot-4, 6-foot-5, late-20s, 250 pounds – and he’s beating the crap outta these guys! … I thought to myself: ‘If Little Mac can do it, I can do it too.’”

In real life, Daniel’s first exposure to the sport was even more unlikely, coming while he was part of the special needs swim program with Rose Bowl Aquatics. One day, as a change of pace, Diez showed up, bringing along mitts to introduce the youngsters to a new sport.

Ita remembers watching the kids line up for their first boxing lesson and seeing 11-year-old Daniel light up when it was his turn. So they got him into Diez’s boxing class, where Daniel earned his first nickname – “Mr. Power” – and gained confidence and purpose at a time he was having trouble fitting in at his first school, where kids weren’t eager to give an autistic kid with a stutter a chance.

FULL-CONTACT LOVE

Physically, too, Ita said boxing helped settle Daniel.

“It was like night and day, he was able to really focus and concentrate,” Ita said. “That was one thing that was a challenge for him, sometimes being able to stay focused, sometimes following more than two directions was hard to process – but there was something about being engaged with his whole body that he loved.”

She said occupational therapists explained proprioceptive input to her, that sense of self-movement, force, and body position, and it explained so much about her sons’ go-to activity at home: Literally climbing the walls of a narrow hallway – “like Spider-Man, on all fours” – scooting their way up and up and then … letting themselves fall. Over and over again.

Daniel found that proprioceptive sensation by boxing. Evan used to get it in mosh pits, before injuries convinced him to step away from the fray and into position with a camera. These days, Evan makes money photographing musical acts throughout the region, big and small, with an artist’s eye and exquisite timing to match Daniel’s in the ring, tempo that helps counter his still-improving hand speed.

As Evan threw himself into the concert scene, Daniel dove into boxing history. He memorized fighters’ résumés and logged countless hours studying boxers of every generation on YouTube. Evan, of his brother’s boxing knowledge: “He’s a savant about it.” Elam: “A boxing encyclopedia.”

So when Daniel met McGirt for the first time at Pullman’s Gym in Burbank, he walked right up to him and said, “Pardon me, are you Buddy McGirt?” And the old boxer looked at Daniel and asked: “How the [expletive] do you know who I am?”

“I said, ‘You’re two-time world champion. You fought Pernell Whitaker. You fought Meldrick Taylor. You fought Simon Brown …” Daniel was, of course, also able give a rundown of the career of Joey Dawejko, the fighter McGirt was with that day.

McGirt said he was astonished: “I said, ‘When I stopped fighting, you wasn’t even born.’ ‘Yeah,’ Daniel said, ‘but I did my homework.’

“And I said to myself, ‘This kid is special.’ And then I seen him box. And he boxed a kid one day, a kid was literally trying to hurt him – but Daniel handled himself so well that I was like, this [expletive] can fight – I mean, he can fight!”

They’ve been best of buddies since, McGirt teaching Daniel what he knows, and counseling him, pumping him up or, sometimes, simply lending an ear. And Daniel makes his mentor laugh. McGirt is based in Florida these days when he’s not with one of his boxers fighting abroad, like in England, which is where he was when I caught up with him over the phone. Buddy’s on the phone a lot, actually; he and Daniel speak every day – “five times a day!” McGirt said.

“But that’s OK,” he said, “because I love him to death. I love the kid, his brother, his mom, his dad. And here’s my thing, if you have a problem with Daniel Boone, then there’s something wrong with you.”

McGirt’s goal is to get Daniel to work a corner of a pro fight with him someday. Elam’s goal was to get Daniel fighting amateur bouts. Daniel’s dream – besides meeting Ronda Rousey, the mixed martial arts legend who, as a kid, dealt with a neurological speech disorder – is to become the first autistic world champ.

Pity the fool who doubts Daniel Boone. But before he’s recognized as world champ, what Daniel’s doing already to champion neurodivergent athletes in his sport is worth its weight in boxing history.

“You cannot take away the fact that fighters came from dire circumstances, you know?” Daniel said. “But I have my own struggles I’ve dealt with; I was a kid with autism.

“A lot of fighters did not have to deal with speech and language deficits, social skills deficits, having trouble reading social cues or understanding social cues, speech and language, reading and writing. I bet you every fighter could probably do that better than I ever would.

“Being autistic, that’s like having a weight. There’s certain things that everybody neurotypical can do that I can’t, and that was the big struggle, going to school and having trouble learning like everybody else. That is not something that you can just get over … [but] boxing really opened things up for me, and I realized I just want to be able to go in there and fend for myself.

“Yes, I have my deficits. But it was also a gift to find something I absolutely loved to do and now, 14 years later, boxing is still here with me. … It was destiny for me. It found me, I found it.”

Swanson: Autistic boxer Daniel ‘Boone’ Moses is a real champion Orange County Register

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Swanson: Autistic boxer Daniel ‘Boone’ Moses is a real champion

IN HIS CORNER

FULL-CONTACT LOVE

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