Frankie Baltazar's Last Fight

By Frank Kiki Baltazar

October 24, 1991: Frankie is to fight Charlie “Mad Dog” Young for Don Fraser at the Marriott Hotel at Irvine, Ca. We arrived early for the same fight day Weight-in. Contract weight was 143 give or take. Frankie was right on the money at 143. Mad Dog came in 148, five over the contract agreement. The CSAC only allows a fighter to lose two pounds on the day of the fight, so that meant Mad Dog could only come in at 146, still three pounds over. Don Fraser is ready to have a heart attack as he is about to lose his main event. Don asked me if we would fight Mad Dog at ‘46, I said yes,” but that we get 10 % of Mad Dog purse”, the CSAC inspector jumped at that and said “no way are you getting 10 % of Young’s purse”, I told the inspector that if the fight was to go on we were getting 10% of Young’s purse and that if he read his rule book he would find out that we could get it, he called out to his flunky to get him the rule book, he read the rule book and he say “yes you can get 10 % and the CSAC get another 10 %!”. Poor Mad Dog just lost 20 % of his purse. After the inspector and Don Fraser explain things to him, he agree to lose two pounds, don’t think he understood about the 20%.

Mad dog came to the fight without a corner, so he asked Hall Of fame Corner Man Chuck Bodak and Jerry Boyed if they would work his corner, that he would pay them he said. Jerry Boyd in 2004 had a book published “Rope Burns” under the pen name F.X. Toole. The Oscar winning movie “Million Dollar Baby” was made from that book.

Two or three hours later Mad Dog made 146, so the fight is on. Later on in afternoon, I was sitting with Pat Russell who was to be the main event referee at the hotel's coffee shop; as we were sitting there Mad Dog came over to our table to talk trash, about how he was going knock Frankie out. I told him that that was okay with me. That either way I would walk out with the winner, he asked me “whatcha ya mean, whatcha ya mean?”; I told him; you and Frankie are my fighters, he tells me “I am not your fighter”. I than told him that for tonight’s fight I owned 10 % of him, Pat Russell told him that that was true; he then walked away muttering.

The fight went all Frankie’s way. He stopped Mad Dog in the ninth round. After the fight in the dressing room I told Frankie that we needed to talk about his boxing career and where he was going from here, well the rest is history.

Afterward I was in the hotel bar having a drink with some friends and fans of Frankie when Chuck Bodak and Jerry Boyd came up to me and asked me if I have seen Mad Dog, I said no, what happened I asked them “The S-B didn’t pay us”..... The Mad Dog was long gone…