Pictures of the Year International

Along with their dogs, Mochi and Jiro, Gilbert Juarez (red shirt) and Michael “Mikey the Bull” Portales (right) work out with fellow Bullgang Boxing team members in the backyard boxing ring at Juarez’ home in Hayward, California on Tuesday, March 19, 2024. In 2019, Gilbert Juarez built a boxing gym in his backyard to help his surrogate son, Michael Portales, lose weight. Word spread and soon scores of boys were showing up at their Hayward, California, home. Many were running from something: turbulent families, problems in school, jail, drugs, gang warfare. Many carried an anger, or a sadness masked as anger, from the challenges of their lives. It was simmering, just waiting to explode, before they entered Juarez’s yard. Just as he did with Portales, Juarez has embraced them all. He estimates he has more than 20 fighters now who regularly train with their team they call Bullgang Boxing. Some have nowhere else to go, so they eat or sleep at his house, where he lives with his wife, Roselle, and youngest daughter, Bela, 11. A few have moved in for periods of time. “My wife calls them my lost boys,” he said. “Society is real quick to throw kids away. I’m not going to be another person that just throws people away.”