Sigala, Albuquerque martial-arts icon, dies

When his longtime friend and mentor Bill Packer died in 2005, Tony Sigala was disconsolate.

Of Packer, he said in an Albuquerque Journal story, “He was probably the most honest man I’ve ever met. Sincere in everything he did. Courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, indomitable spirit. You name it, he had it.”

Over the 20 years that followed, Sigala — while determinedly his own man — essentially became to the Albuquerque martial-arts community what Packer had been: respected, admired, a leader, a legend.

After a career as a fighter, trainer and mentor that spanned more than a half-century, Sigala died on Aug. 23. He was 78.

“He was just a completely honest person and a hard-nosed country boy from Moriarty,” Pj Coy, Sigala’s grandson, said in a phone interview. “He stood for what he believed in. He helped the helpless.

“He made sure every day, preached in his Karate class, to have the dedication, to have the perseverance to stand for what was right.”

The story begins in Sigala’s hometown. As a teen, Sigala was a starting basketball guard for the Moriarty High School Fighting Pintos. Coy said his grandfather for years held the school record for most points scored in a single game.

Sigala turned to martial arts in the early 1970s, becoming a kickboxing world champion under Packer’s guidance and earning a top-10 national ranking in full-contact karate.

On one occasion, as he related in a 1987 Journal story, he was a spectator at a boxing event when one fighter failed to show up. He volunteered to fight, got his butt whipped and, then and there, resolved to add boxing to his résumé as a trainer.

By the mid-1980s, Sigala had put his fighting career behind him and had opened gyms on west Central and in Belen. His gym today is located on Coors NW.

Steve Garcia, who runs Power & Glory boxing in Albuquerque, trained as a teenager under Sigala as a kickboxer. He remembers his old coach as equal parts tough and … well, not exactly tender. But caring.

“(That) was back in the old-school days, when we had some tough coaches that really taught us how to take care of ourselves,” Garcia said. “Always telling us, ‘Hey, there’s no such thing as ‘can’t.’”

As a 15-year-old, Garcia recalled, he once was matched against an opponent a decade older.

“I was scared, and (Sigala) was like, ‘No, you can do it,’” Garcia recalled. “‘You’ve just got to go out there and do it. You’ve got the balls to go out there and do it.’”

Garcia went out there and did it, winning the fight.

Sigala, especially in his later years, with a seemingly permanent scowl underneath his bald head, could be intimidating. But, Garcia said, “He had a huge heart.”

Garcia compared Sigala to longtime Albuquerque boxing coach Henry Anaya Sr., another member of the old school: “They show you their love the hard way.

“One thing for sure, Tony loves his family.”

Two of Sigala’s five daughters, Cathleen and Brandy, followed their father into the martial-arts business.

Cathleen, who goes by “Cat,” said her father — who made his living teaching martial arts — never turned anyone away for inability to pay. But those who didn’t have money paid in other ways.

“He’d put them to work for it,” she said. “Cleaning the gym, cleaning the windows, pulling weeds. … He was making sure they found value in the lessons. And that was a big lesson, I’m sure, for those young kids.”

Coy, like his mother, is a martial-arts black belt.

“Pretty much all of us are black belts in this family,” he said. “Not really by choice but by demand.”

It was not pre-ordained, but almost so, that Cat would follow her dad into martial arts as a career.

“I was just brought up in the gym, and we really didn’t have a choice,” she said.

It was never easy.

“He said I spent most of my time in the bathroom in timeouts when I was a kid. But anyway, just from day one, when I was young, I was teaching classes, and that’s all I know.

“I just wanted to make my dad proud.”