How Chris Arreola Became the Nightmare
By
Brent Matteo Alderson

During the summer I went to hang out with Chris Arreola and his trainer Henry Ramirez at the gym and made a comment about him having the same nickname as Samuel Peter, “The Nightmare,” and asked him why he chose that particular moniker since it was already in use and he responded, “I didn’t choose that nickname, it was given to me a long time ago, even before I won the (2001) National Golden Gloves.  One day I went to get a haircut and it came out all weird, it was like an afro-hawk before that was in style so I went home and shaved my head, but when I was younger I had a lot of acne, so when I shaved my head there was all this acne you could see and people used to tell me, ‘damn you look like Freddy Krueger,’ and then that changed to just Freddy and people would be like ‘hey Freddy,’ and then finally somehow they just ended up calling me the Nightmare.”
Later on after Arreola finished training, I was talking about how once Jack Dempsey had to walk across the Nevada desert to fight someone in the back of a bar for a twenty dollar pay day and told him about Dempsey’s match with Jack Sharkey.
“Dempsey lost the title the year before in a shutout so he had to fight one of the top contenders to get another title shot.  So Sharkey is beating the crap out of Dempsey for six rounds then in the seventh Dempsey hits him low and Sharkey turns to complain to the referee and Dempsey knocks him out with a left hook.  Well afterwards, all the writers were knocking Dempsey and he responded by asking, ‘What did you want me to do? Write him a letter?’”   
Then Henry Ramirez who is very knowledgeable about the history of the sport interjected, “Come on Alderson, stop talking about guys that were fighting before my grandfather was born.”
And then Arreola stated, “I could knock Dempsey out!”
Then I looked at Arreola and said, “I don’t know about that Chris, Dempsey is one of the greatest heavyweights of all time.  He was one of the deadliest punchers in the history of the sport. He was ferocious.  Mike Tyson even idolized Dempsey and shaved his sides like him.  Dempsey is a legend; he made millions of dollars in the 1920’s and banged all the leading actresses in Hollywood. He was the man!” 
Then after contemplating the matter for a moment Arreola finally acknowledged Dempsey’s greatness and shook his head in an affirming manner and stated, “Yah he was a smart guy!” 

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