Caleb Truax spent most of his life as a team player. A 2002 Osseo High School graduate, he played football and baseball for the Orioles, and even played Division II college football for Virginia State University before deciding to hang up his cleats due to a knee injury. But when he put on a pair of boxing gloves and stepped into the ring for the first time as a 20-year old at a Toughman Contest, Caleb was all by himself staring at an opponent who desperately wanted to lay him out. “Just one on one, it doesn’t get any better,” says Truax, now 26. “When you win, it’s all you. There’s not a better feeling in any sport that I’ve been in than once you get your hand raised at the end.”

Truax, who was named Boxing Digest’s “Prospect of the Month” last April, has had his hand raised a lot since he started boxing six years ago. As an amateur in 2006, he was the USA Boxing State Champion, the Region 1 Champion and the Upper Midwest Golden Gloves Champion. In the last three years as a pro, he’s compiled a perfect 14-0 record (including nine knock outs), highlighted last November by a unanimous 10-round decision over Kerry Hope for the WBF International Super Middle Weight Championship.

The “Whole Package”
Ron Lyke has studied his fair share of boxers. The owner and head coach of Anoka-Coon Rapids (ACR) Boxing Gym has been around the sport for 45 years, both as a former pro fighter and now a trainer. But he hasn’t seen any as naturally talented and complete as Truax. “Right off the bat, you could see he was good,” says Lyke, who met Truax when he first started training for Toughman Contests at ACR. “By his third, fourth fight he was fighting upper-Midwest champions and experienced guys. He caught on so quickly, it was unreal. People thought we were lying.” They weren’t, but Truax’s natural talent would only have taken him so far. It’s what’s swirling around inside his head that makes him special, according to Lyke. “Intelligence is a great thing because you got a lot of guys with talent, but they don’t think,” Lyke explains. “But (Caleb’s) smart; he can think, too. He don’t just go in head first. He’ll get a guy with the same talent, and he’ll use his head and knock the guy out. You’ve got to use your brains. It’s not all brawn. He’s a natural athlete, too. Just all around, he’s the whole package.”

Truax is also the rare example of a boxer who is a college graduate, two titles that get the reputation of contradicting one another. Aside from earning his alias “Golden” at the University of Minnesota, he earned a degree in Sociology with minors in Political Science and African American Studies. The same intellect and diligence Truax used to study books, he now uses to study opponents. “His major strengths are his intelligence and his work ethic,” says Truax’s promoter and former pro fighter Tony Grygelko. “I think with those two things you can do pretty much anything in life, whether it’s being successful in boxing or being a successful politician. I think he eventually wants to go into politics. The kid’s got a work ethic to be anything he wants.”