Fabian Velardes is a male middleweight

Middleweight

Middleweight is a division, or weight class, in boxing. Early boxing history is less than exact, but the middleweight designation seems to have begun in the 1840s. In the bare-knuckle era, the first middleweight championship fight was between Tom Chandler and Dooney Harris in 1897...

 boxer

Boxing

Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...

 from Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

. As an amateur Velardes competed for his native country at the 2003 Pan American Games

2003 Pan American Games

The 14th Pan American Games were held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, from 1 to 17 August 2003. The successful bid for the games was made in the mid-1990s, when this country had one of the highest growth rates in Latin America....

 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where he was stopped in the quarterfinals of the men's welterweight division (– 69 kg) by Cuba's eventual gold medalist Lorenzo Aragón. Velardes made his professional debut on February 5, 2005 against Alberto Gustavo Torres.