Marqus Bates doesn’t need boxing. 

A 35-year-old married father of a teenage son, Bates works as a union truck driver, and it’s a steady gig, but there’s still something in his chest and his gut that makes him put on the gloves and get into a sanctioned fistfight when the phone rings with a request for his services.

On Saturday, at Memorial Hall in Melrose, Massachusetts, Bates will enter the ring for the 13th time as a pro to face Christian Danilo Guido. Like any professional worth his salt, he expects to win, but he also expects that this is just another steppingstone to bigger and better things. 

“I see myself doing pretty damn well,” said Bates. “I know I started back in boxing a little bit late because I went through some things, but with my trainers that I have now and the group of people I have with me, I feel like I could take it very far.”

***

A photo on Bates’ Instagram page shows him shaking hands with Bernard Hopkins at Marvin Hagler’s memorial in Brockton last June. It wasn’t just a meeting between a couple of boxers, one active, one retired. Instead, it was an affirmation that Bates’ hope to take his career as far as he wants it to go isn’t just a dream, but a goal based in reality.

“In my mind, anything is possible,” he said. “But it makes me believe even more when I see a guy like Hopkins. We have similarities - he lost his first pro bout, I lost my first pro bout. He did five years, I did three. So with him going as far as he did, that makes me believe in myself ten times more.”

***

When Bates was a freshman in high school in 2002, his sporting ambitions focused on basketball, not boxing. Then in an instant, everything changed.

“I was living in Brockton,” he recalls. “It was my freshman year and basketball season was just about to be over. I came home from a game and my mom told me. I had just seen my dad the week before because he was at my basketball game. It was a major turning point for me in my life.”

What his mother told him was that his father, Foster Bates, had just been convicted of the rape and murder of Tammy Dickson in 1994. 

  

“He was wrongly convicted,” said Bates of his father. “They're actually going through the stuff right now to overturn his case and it's looking pretty good. But back in 2002, he was sentenced to life in prison.”

Soon, basketball became an afterthought for the teenager.  

“I was very good at it, but I didn't continue on with it because of a coach who discouraged me,:” he said. “My last game, it was the beginning of the State tournament and I quit. I didn't even go to the game. And throughout high school, football was probably my dominant sport and I didn't play because my father was sentenced to life in prison and I didn't want to play that because he wasn't here.”

Bates’ younger half-brother, Trevor, did take to the gridiron, eventually playing in the NFL and earning a Super Bowl ring while on the New England Patriots in 2017. As for Marqus, he went in another direction, with a pair of disappointing losses to the same fighter in the Golden Gloves leading him to abandon boxing after eight amateur bouts and head down the wrong path.  

“I got discouraged and I went back to the streets, selling drugs and doing knucklehead stuff,” said Bates, who ended up with a three-year stretch in prison. He was 24 and the father of a son he would not see. It was rock bottom.

*** 

Bates’ son is now 14 and he’s the center of his dad’s universe. He’s also the reason why Bates decided that his stay in prison was going to be his last one. It’s not easy to break that cycle. But he did it. 

“I can't say it's easy, and I can't say it's hard because for me, I had no choice,” Bates said. “When I got locked up and I came home, it was right before my son's sixth birthday. Those three years of not being able to see my son, to hold my son, to take care of him and watch him. When I got out, I wasn't going back. And whatever I had to do not to go back, I was gonna do that. I struggled like no other, but I was able to stay clean and stay firm and stay on my path that I formatted for myself. I just told myself, no matter how hard it gets, we can't go back to the same madness because we know where that leads to. So let's try this other road. We don't know where that goes, but I'd rather try it. And I stayed on the road that I'm on right now and I had to do it.”

*** 

When Bates got out of prison, his first priority was being a father. Next was securing a steady job. Then he had to satisfy the athlete that was still inside of him.

“I didn't want to be that 50, 60, 70-year-old man living with the regret of not doing something that I was good at,” he said. “I came home right before my 28th birthday and I told myself, you know what, I'm gonna go back to boxing and I'm gonna get back into it because I don't want to live with the regret of not doing it. I didn't play football, I stopped basketball. And I didn't want to live with that regret of knowing that maybe I could have been something. Or maybe not. But at least I gave it a shot and I chased my dream. I have this passion in me, and when I was in the streets, I couldn't really focus on that and let that out. Now that I have my mind right, I got a good support system - I got my wife, I got my son, I got my family, and I got a good team behind me with boxing, now I can let it go. I can do what I want to do, no matter if I'm 35 or 40.”

***

On September 16, 2016, Bates turned pro and was stopped in less than a round by Miguel Ortiz. By the dawn of 2018, he was 2-2, but five consecutive wins followed. And while he’s gone 1-2 in his last three, he hopes that this Saturday’s bout is the start of something. What that something may be is unclear, but it will most certainly be a situation where Bates will be the B-side against a hot prospect expected to beat him. Bates is aware of that, and he’s fine with it. He’s seen worse than some hotshot kid with an unbeaten record.

“I'm very comfortable because I know that's exactly what it's gonna have to be,” he said. “And since it has to be like that, then give it to me. I'm ready to go for it because all I need is that shot. And when that shot comes, I will be ready for it.”

***

Marqus Bates doesn’t need boxing. He’s already won his toughest fight. And with his wife and son, he’s got all he needs. Especially his son. 

“It's all for him,” said Bates. “Years ago when I got in trouble, I got taken away from him, and when I came back home, I've been trying to show him that dad is a good man, that I'm a good father, and I want to be a role model for my son so he can look at me and see that my dad was down and now he's up. I know he has other people he looks up to, but I want to be the first person that he's able to look up to.”

That’s a given. But what about boxing? What if he parlays his current 8-4 record into some big wins, a big fight, and one day, a world title? Sure, it’s a long shot, but what if he does get there?

“I've been through a lot, and to see what I've been through and to get to the destination that I set for myself, I may get there and when I get there, words are not gonna be able to explain the feelings and the emotions that are gonna run through my body,” he said. “Just to know that I climbed from the dirt all the way to the top, even if it's just for a moment, to know I did it is gonna be the best feeling in the world besides having my son.”