By Rick Farris
By the time Dwight Hawkins turned twenty-three, he'd been a professional boxer nearly eight years. Hawkins had engaged in over 40 pro fights, many in the hometowns of some of the greatest boxers of the era. In order to get fights the Hawk had become a globe trotter and had traveled to Scotland, Venezuela and, of course, Mexico.
Mexico has always produced the finest of lower weight boxers and this was especially true during the years Dwight was active. The tough part about fighting in Mexico is that it was hard to win there. Even if you were good enough to beat the exceptional Mexican talent, the officials would find a way for the Mexican boxer to win. Boxing is serious business in Mexico and it's more important to Mexican boxers to be the champion of Mexico than it is to hold a world title.
Dwight Hawkins couldn't get important fights in his hometown because nobody wanted to risk suffering the effects of a match with the Hawk. So, Hawkins would face the best fighters that Mexico had to offer in places such as Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Juarez, Tampico, Mexicali and Tijuana.
Less than three weeks after the death of Davey Moore, the Hawk traveled to Monterrey, Mexico to take on one of the greatest featherweights in history. Vicente Saldivar was, without question, one of the best 126 pound champions to ever lace on a glove. He retired unbeaten in 1967 after defending the featherweight title eight times and then came back to recapture the crown three years later.
If facing a great fighter such as Saldivar in Mexico was not enough, Hawkins would do so just days after the death of his closest friend. The cards were not stacked in Dwight's favor. Of course, they never were.
After losing to Saldivar on April 19th, the Hawk would remain inactive thru the rest of 1963. The following year I would enter the world of boxing and as luck would have it, I would meet Dwight Hawkins. Not only would it mark the beginning of my boxing career, it would also be the start of a winning streak for Hawkins.
I'll never forget the way Johnny Flores would speak of Dwight Hawkins. Flores had a number of top fighters such as heavyweight contender Jerry Quarry and lightweight Ruben Navarro, however, when he spoke of Dwight Hawkins it was with the greatest of respect and I would soon learn why.
I'd train at the Johnny Flores Gym during the week, but would take the bus into downtown Los Angeles on the weekends to workout at the legendary Main Street Gym. Amateurs were allowed to work out until 11 am. on weekends but then would have to clear the floor for the pros.
I'd always hang around the gym for a couple of hours to watch some of the greatest professional boxers of the era workout. One of them was Dwight Hawkins. To this day I have never seen a more devistating body puncher than the Hawk. Dwight's body punches were so brutal his sparring partners had to wear a padded water ski vest to protect their ribs from the impact. I'm not talking about amateurs, but highly regarded main eventers who knew better than to risk their health for the sake of a workout with Hawkins.
I'll never forget the Saturday I saw Hawkins batter a rough featherweight contender named David Sotelo in the gym. Sotelo had hung in with Dwight for four rounds, however, as the fighter stepped out of the ring he was literally talking to himself. Sotelo was obviously incoherent after the beating he had taken.
A few weeks later, something happened that hit Hawkins almost as hard as the loss of Davey Moore: The Watts Riots.
If you had any idea how much Dwight Hawkins had put into the youth of Watts, the kids who struggled daily living in the projects of Imperial Courts and Jordan Downs, you'd understand.
Upon hearing the news of the trouble in Watts, Hawkins immediatly jumped into his car and headed for Imperial Courts, hoping he could diffuse some of the tension. However, the police had that part of the city barracaded and would not let Dwight enter the war zone. As he turned to leave he saw a group of young men take a trash can and toss it thru the window of a men's store. Hawkins parked his car and confronted the youth's as they attempted to loot
the building.
As a couple of the young men came out of the building with a stack of clothes, Hawkins asked them, "Hey man, why are you doing this? Don't you think this is dumb"? One of the bigger young men dropped the clothes he was carrying and took a step toward Hawkins, as if to start a fight. However, one look into the serious eyes of Dwight Hawkins told the youth that he best not take another step closer. Instead, he picked up the clothes and ran off with the other boys laughing.
A year later, after the riots were long over, Hawkins continued his work at Imperial Courts. He organized another boxing program and would spend his own money to provide boxing equipment for the kids at the project.
By 1966, Hawkins had remained unbeaten since the loss to Saldivar two years previous. During that time, Saldivar kayoed Sugar Ramos to win the World Featherweight title. In his first defense of the crown, Saldivar scored a 15th round knockout over a tough Los Angeles contender named Raul Rojas.
Rojas was a talented West Coast featherweight and was managed by Jackie McCoy. McCoy had been a top bantamweight back in the 40's and was one of the most respected manager-trainers in boxing. Jackie was not only a great teacher, but a well connected handler, whose boxers automatically became "house fighters" at the Olympic Auditorium. Promoter Aileen Eaton and Jackie McCoy had an unofficial alliance. McCoy's job was to provide the talent and Eaton would use her power to promote the talent into a world championship.
In 1966, Rojas was 24-years-old and after losing to Saldivar, had run up a string of victories that kept him at the top of the world ratings. Dwight Hawkins wanted nothing more than a chance to fight Rojas and was not afraid to make his desire known in public. After one of Hawkins' spectacular KO's at the Olympic, Dwight openly challenged Rojas in a televised post-fight interview. "Hey Raul, I know you're not chicken, so why don't you fight me right here at the Olympic to prove who is the best featherweight in Los Angeles". Hawkins' plea fell on deaf ears. Jackie McCoy was not a fool and neither was Aileen Eaton. The following year Rojas would defeat Enrique Higgens of Columbia to win the WBA Featherweight Title. Once again, Dwight Hawkins was left out in the cold.
Johnny Flores and Hal Benson took Dwight back down to Mexico where he would take on Mexican Featherweight Champ Aurileo Muniz in Tampico. At this point, Dwight Hawkins was at his absolute best, in his "prime" as boxing people say.
Muniz was rated in the top ten by The Ring Magazine and was second only to Saldivar among Mexican featherweights. In the seventh round, Hawkins knocked out the Mexican Champ. After the referee counted ten over Muniz, Flores grabbed Hawkins' robe and climbed up the steps into the ring. The local fans were upset that their fighter had been flattened and began to throw debris. As Hawkins and Flores awaited the decision they could see that there was some sort of commotion going on across the ring and Flores went to investigate.
The ring announcer grabbed the microphone and declared the fallen Muniz the winner on a technicality. The Mexican officials at ringside told Flores that he had violated the rules by entering the ring before the decision was announced. Now how's that for stretching it?
Flores was irate and filed a grievence with the Mexican Boxing Commission. About a week later the Commision changed the final verdict to a "draw." Today, the record reads that Hawkins and Muniz fought to a ten round draw on Arpril 7, 1967. However, the truth is Muniz never made it out of the seventh round.
Three weeks later, Hawkins scored a tenth round knockout over Jose Garcia in Las Vegas. This took place exactly a month before The Hawk would engage in one of the greatest fights in the history of Los Angeles boxing.
On June 1, 1967, Hawkins would fight top rated featherweight Bobby Valdez before a near capacity crowd at the Olympic Auditorium. It was promised that the winner of this bout would get a shot at Vicente Saldivar's world title before the end of summer. I'll never forget this fight. I was sitting with my dad and grandfather, about three rows from the ringside.
Both Valdez and Hawkins were hungry for a shot at the crown and went toe-to-toe in the most brutal prize fight I've ever seen. In the end, both fighters were bloody and had tasted the canvas. Valdez got off to a quick start and had the edge in the early rounds but Hawkins' vicious body attack started to take it's toll in the second half. Dwight had Valdez reeling in the final round but the courageous former Navy champ, from San Diego, hung on to the final bell. The bout was rightfully declared a draw and would be voted as Los Angeles' Fight of the Year for 1967.
Although the scorecards showed an even fight, the greater damage was done by Hawkins. The fight took everything out of Bobby Valdez and he was never the same again. Dwight just seemed to get better. Aileen Eaton sought an immediate rematch but Valdez's manager, Wes Wombold, said "no way". Since Hawkins was ready to fight and Valdez could'nt, he believed that he might finally get a shot at the title. However, Aileen Eaton told Flores, "no winner, no title shot". A few months later, Bobby Valdez retired.
Hawkins won his next four fights, two by KO, before leaving the country one more time to take on another unbeaten future world champ. This time, The Hawk would be headed for Tokyo, Japan.
Kiniaki Shibata is perhaps the best Japanese featherweight of all-time. On March 27, 1968, just two days before his twenty-first birthday, Shibata climbed into the ring with number three rated Dwight Hawkins at Tokyo's Kurokuen Hall. The unbeaten young Japanese contender had a record of 21-0 (15 KO's) and was looking past Hawkins to a match with his countryman, the great Fighting Harada. Harada had just lost the bantamweight title to Lionel Rose and was moving up to the featherweight division.
Unfortunatly for Shibata, he would have to get past The Hawk first. It was'nt going to happen. Hawkins beat the Japanese boxer to a pulp before putting him to sleep midway thru the seventh round. Shibata was unconcious so long that he had to be carried out of the ring on a stretcher. A couple of years later, Kiniaki Shibata would knock out Vicente Saldivar and win the World Featherweight championship.
I'll never forget the night Johnny Flores walked into his backyard gym after returning from Japan with Hawkins. He was carrying the front page of a Japanese newspaper and there was a huge picture of Shibata being carried out of the ring on a stretcher. Flores was very happy because the Japanese loved Hawkins and were offering big money for him to fight there.
A few weeks later Hawkins would return to Japan and take on another world rated Japanese featherweight, Rokuro Ishiyama. Hawkins flattened the Japanese featherweight champ in two rounds.
More popular than ever, Dwight Hawkins was once again invited back to Tokyo. In his next bout, Dwight Hawkins would be matched with the greatest Japanese boxer ever, former two-time World Champion, Mashiko Fighting Harada.
On June 5, 1968, Dwight Hawkins would step into a Tokyo boxing ring for the third time in just over two months. Fighting Harada was more than a former world champ, he was a Japanese legend. Hawkins and Harada went toe-to-toe in the center of the ring for ten rounds. Neither fighter would take a backward step and thruout the bout their heads crashed together opening cuts over the eyes of both boxers. At the end of the fight, Harada's white satin boxing trunks were red with blood. An American reporter in attendence told Flores that he'd counted more than eighty head butts during the fight.
The fight had been close but it appeared as if Dwight Hawkins had once again defeated a Japanese boxer. However, Harada was'nt just any Japanese boxer and the hometown officials were not going to allow their national hero to lose. Harada was awarded a split-decision win over Hawkins and was now in line for a shot at the new featherweight title holder, Johnny Famechon. Famechon had won the title following Vicente Saldivar's sudden retirement the previous year. However, ten rounds with Hawkins had taken a lot out of the Japanese great and Harada would lose twice to Famechon in two attempts to win the 126 pound title.
Despite the loss to Harada, Dwight Hawkins remains a celebrity in Japan to this day. It would be in Japan where Dwight would meet and marry his current wife of more than thirty years.
Back in Los Angeles, Jack Kent Cooke opened a beautiful new sports venue right next door to the Hollywood Park race track. Cooke named his state-of-the-art arena "The Fabulous Forum" and would use it to showcase the two professional teams he owned, The Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA and his hockey team, the Los Angeles Kings.
The Forum was one of the finest sports arenas on earth and could hold more than 18,000 fans for a boxing match. Legendary boxing promoter George Parnassus would take on the responsibility of promoting boxing matches at The Forum and Johnny Flores hoped this might offer his fighter Dwight Hawkins a chance to fight for a world title. There was no hope of Hawkins getting a title fight thru Aileen Eaton, who refused to allow any of her Olympic Auditorium "house boxers" to fight The Hawk.
After scoring a unanimous decision over a Filipino-Hawaiian named Jet Parker in Honolulu, Dwight Hawkins would face another tough Los Angeles based featherweight in his Forum Debut. On November 4, 1968, Dwight Hawkins and "Irish" Frankie Crawford would headline an all-start card that also featured the U.S. debut of future Welterweight Champ Jose Napoles and Dwight's stablemate, Ruben Navarro, the "Maravilla Kid" from East L.A.
This was a fight that had Hawkins concerned. I remember that all of the boxers fighting on the card would train daily in a boxing gym set-up in the ball room of the Alexandria Hotel in downtown L.A. George Parnassus' office was at the Alexandria and on weekends I'd finish my workouts at the Main Street Gym and then hurry over to the Alexandria to watch Hawkins, Crawford and the rest of the fighters on the upcoming Forum card workout.
I was sixteen at the time and remember sitting next to Hawkins as he wrapped his hands prior to one of the workouts. Hawkins was not worried about defeating Crawford but he was concerned about Frankie's dirty style. Crawford was one of the dirtiest fighters in the sport and I overheard Hawkins tell Navarro that if Frankie tried any of his garbage he would get it back worse. Dwight Hawkins did'nt need illegal tactics to win, but was well versed in the art of dirty fighting, if necessary. At the time Crawford was being managed by televison star Robert Conrad, whose TV series "The Wild, Wild West" was number one in the ratings. Conrad was a "wanna be" boxer who lived vicariously thru Crawford and took great pleasure in working his fighter's corner.
Crawford was a legitimatly tough world class contender whom had defeated lightweight champ Mando Ramos among others during his career. I remember attending the fight with my father and was a bit disappointed that our seats were not a little bit closer. However, thanks to a pair of binoculars, I had a very good view of what went on in the ring that night. In the first round Crawford hit Dwight with an uppercut below the belt and Hawkins landed on the seat of his pants. My binoculars were focused right in on the face of Hawkins and I knew that Crawford was about to pay dearly for this. Hawkins jumped to his feet and, from that moment on, handed Frankie Crawford the worst beating of his career. In the eighth round, Crawford was literally knocked thru the ropes and nearly fell out of the ring. If it were not for the ringside press who put there hands out to catch Frankie, he'd have rolled to the floor. Crawford struggled to get to his feet but could'nt beat the count of ten. Hawkins not only KO'ed Frankie Crawford, but did so in spectacular style. I would have to say that the funniest thing about this was the look on the face of Robert Conrad's -- the actor was in shock.
Hawkins would win several more times after defeating Crawford, however, was getting no closer to a title fight. Nearly thirty years old, time was running out on Dwight Hawkins. He'd been fighting professionally for nearly half his life and had more than eighty fights undr his belt.
The Ring magazine rated Hawkins number one in the world and an elimination match was set up to determine the next challenger for World Featherweight champ Johnny Famechon. Once again, Dwight Hawkins would be matched with yet another unbeaten future world champion. This time Hawkins would fight Venezuela's Antonio Gomez in a ten round title elimination bout on the undercard of the Lionel Rose-Ruben Olivares bantamweight title bout at The Forum.
While training for the Gomez fight, Hawkins sparred with bantamweight champ Lionel Rose one afternoon at the Alexandria Hotel. However, it would be a one time experience because The Hawk's devastating body shots bruised the Austrailian's ribs. As a result, Rose was forced to miss sparring for the next couple of days to allow his ribs to heal.
Before a packed house at the Fabulous Forum, Dwight Hawkins would fight his heart out for the very last time. At the end of nine rounds Hawkins had a slight edge on the scorecards of all three officials. It looked like Dwight Hawkins was just one round away from the title fight that had been alluding him for more than a dozen years. However, in the tenth and final round, Dwight Hawkins went down from a solid left hook to the chin. The Hawk struggled to his feet by the count of eight and told referee Dick Young he was "OK". However, Hawkins was not OK and Gomez battered Dwight against the ropes. Hawkins took a number of solid shots but refused to go down. The leg that Dwight had almost lost as a child was still supported by the elastic band he'd used so many years before when he began boxing as a child. The Hawk's legs were unsteady, but he was on his feet and trying to fight back.
With less than a minute remaining in the fight, Hawkins long time manager Johnny Flores, threw in the towel. Flores would later tell us that it was the hardest thing he ever had to do during the half century he had worked with boxers.
A few moments later I saw something that I had never seen before and will likely never see again. As I walked toward the dressing room area to see Hawkins, I saw tears in the eyes of some of the toughest boxing personalities in the sport. Many of them were in the house a dozen years earlier when Hawkins, only a teenager, had KO'ed Jose Becerra.
I've never felt so bad over a boxer losing a fight as I did that night in 1969. I felt empty inside and could'nt help but wonder, "What's next for Dwight Hawkins"? I would get the answer the following day at the Main Street Gym.
The next morning I was shadow boxing in front of a mirror next to the entrance to the gym floor and was surprised to see the Hawk walk in carrying his gym bag. I couldn't imagine why he would be in the gym the morning after a tough fight like he'd had the night before. Hawkins looked around and spotted Johnny Flores who was talking with Hal Benson and a couple of trainers. When Benson saw Hawkins he greeted the Hawk with a big smile on his face. Before Dwight could say a word Benson told him that he had some good news. Lionel Rose had also been knocked out the night before by Ruben Olivares, losing his banatmweight title. George Parnassus had told Benson after the fight that Rose would be moving up to the featherweight division and that he would like to match Hawkins with Rose, with the winner to get a shot at the featherweight title. Hawkins just smiled and told Benson "No thanks, I'm finished". He then handed Flores his gym bag and told Johnny to give the equipment to some young fighter who could us it. Benson put his hand on Dwight's shoulder and tried to convince him that he was one fight away from a title shot. The Hawk just smiled and then left the gym for the last time.
The following year I turned professional and after a half dozen fights I saw Dwight Hawkins in the gym one day. I immediatly went over to the Hawk to say hello and was happy to hear that he had returned to help Flores train heavyweight Mac Foster. Foster was a top heavyweight and had just signed a management contract with Flores. That day I got some great news from Johnny Flores. Flores told me that Hawkins would also be training me.
I was scheduled to fight on the undercard of a world lightweight title bout between champion Ken Buchanan and my stablemate Ruben Navarro. Ironically, the card would be held at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, they same building where 17-year-old Dwight Hawkins had upset Jose Becerra more than fourteen years earlier. I was eighteen at the time and found myself being over powered by stronger, more mature opponents. My boxing skills and speed allowed me to compete with these men but I needed more power. With the help of Dwight Hawkins, I was able to gain the extra punching power I needed. With Flores and the Hawk in my corner, I knocked out a tough vet who had held me to a draw in my first pro fight.
I lost contact with Hawkins after I stopped boxing and it was more than twenty years later before I would see him again. In 1995, I was recovering from a work-related injury that had me on crutches for a few weeks. As I hobbled around on the crutches I couldn't help but think of Dwight Hawkins and how he had been on crutches as a child. I began to wonder how the Hawk was doing and decided to try and locate him. A call to information was all I needed to find Dwight Hawkins and when I called I was happy that he still remembered who I was. A couple of days later my friend John Brumshagen who, ironiclly, had been close with featherweight Frankie Crawford, drove me to Hawkins house for a visit.
It was great visiting with Dwight Hawkins. As we sat in Dwight's living room and talked, I kept bringing up great fights from the past I'd seen him in. Dwight would smile and politely acknowledge his boxing career but would then quickly change the subject to what he really considered important. Dwight's main concern today is the kids of South Central Los Angeles and the problem related to the gangs.
It's guys like Dwight Hawkins that represent the best of boxing. More accuratly, it's guys like Dwight Hawkins that represent the best of humanity.
How lucky for me to have been around a guy like the Hawk.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Welterweights I remember . . .
By Rick farris
They were guys who usually stepped up from lower weight classes, like Jose Napoles.
Napoles was a lightweight who fought junior welters, and finally won the 147 lb. title at what was considered the "end" of his career.
We were a little light in the number of world titles available when guys like Mantequilla, Homicide Henry and the "real" Sugar Ray ruled the 147 pound division.
There was only ONE title, and only one guy got to claim it.
Napoles, Armstrong and Robinson never looked down in weight when considering challenges.
Well into his 30's, about fifteen years into his career, Napoles had exhausted all of the welter challengers of his era, and it was a great era.
He didn't look down in search of a blown up featherweight to fight, he challenged an all-time great middleweight champ in his prime, Carlos Monzon.
Robinson stepped up to middleweight and won the title five times. Many consider him the best ever, all-time P4P (in contemporary boxing fan lingo?)
Ray also stepped up and challenged Joey Maxim for the light-heavy crown on a hot summer night at Yankee Stadium.
The intense heat and weight disadvantage did Robinson in late in the fight. I never heard of Sugar Ray challenging Chalky Wright.
He didn't look down to see what the little guys were doing.
Armstrong was a little guy, I doubt weighed much more than 132lbs when holding every title between 126-147.
Armstrong had to go up and down, and still defended the welter title a record 18 times in less than two years. He whipped Ceferino Garcia in a title defense.
When Garcia won the middleweight title, Armstrong took him on, hoping to add the middleweight title to his collection.
Armstrong dominated, but the fight was declared a draw, a bad decision?
Today, I communicated with another pretty good welter champ, he held the title three times, his name is Emile Griffith.
Griffith had won and lost the welter title, re-winning it twice. Like other greats, he'd dominated the welterweights then stepped up to win the middleweight title twice.
Emile told me he'll be at the WBHOF banquet again this year. He'd be coming with his son, Luis, and will also bring James "Bonecrusher" Smith.
I was pleased we were speaking for reasons not related to the WBHOF, I almost hesitated telling him I was involved with the organization.
Just a few seconds ago, I hear Jim Lampley scream with excitement that Floyd Mayweather Jr. "IS BETTER THAN EVER!!!!"
I truly believe that Mantequilla Napoles would have looked better than ever had he fought men two divisions below has natural weight class, instead of two above.
To bring things a little closer to present, a few years back another welterweight champ, Sugar Ray Leonard, demanded all the edges and usually got them.
However, Sugar Ray Leonard fought bigger men as his career progressed, not the smaller.
Floyd Mayweather looked sharp tonight. Of course he did. He wasn't in the ring with Shane Mosely. That's who he should have fought.
The problem with Shane Mosely is obvious. He's too much man for a guy who calls himself "Money".
They were guys who usually stepped up from lower weight classes, like Jose Napoles.
Napoles was a lightweight who fought junior welters, and finally won the 147 lb. title at what was considered the "end" of his career.
We were a little light in the number of world titles available when guys like Mantequilla, Homicide Henry and the "real" Sugar Ray ruled the 147 pound division.
There was only ONE title, and only one guy got to claim it.
Napoles, Armstrong and Robinson never looked down in weight when considering challenges.
Well into his 30's, about fifteen years into his career, Napoles had exhausted all of the welter challengers of his era, and it was a great era.
He didn't look down in search of a blown up featherweight to fight, he challenged an all-time great middleweight champ in his prime, Carlos Monzon.
Robinson stepped up to middleweight and won the title five times. Many consider him the best ever, all-time P4P (in contemporary boxing fan lingo?)
Ray also stepped up and challenged Joey Maxim for the light-heavy crown on a hot summer night at Yankee Stadium.
The intense heat and weight disadvantage did Robinson in late in the fight. I never heard of Sugar Ray challenging Chalky Wright.
He didn't look down to see what the little guys were doing.
Armstrong was a little guy, I doubt weighed much more than 132lbs when holding every title between 126-147.
Armstrong had to go up and down, and still defended the welter title a record 18 times in less than two years. He whipped Ceferino Garcia in a title defense.
When Garcia won the middleweight title, Armstrong took him on, hoping to add the middleweight title to his collection.
Armstrong dominated, but the fight was declared a draw, a bad decision?
Today, I communicated with another pretty good welter champ, he held the title three times, his name is Emile Griffith.
Griffith had won and lost the welter title, re-winning it twice. Like other greats, he'd dominated the welterweights then stepped up to win the middleweight title twice.
Emile told me he'll be at the WBHOF banquet again this year. He'd be coming with his son, Luis, and will also bring James "Bonecrusher" Smith.
I was pleased we were speaking for reasons not related to the WBHOF, I almost hesitated telling him I was involved with the organization.
Just a few seconds ago, I hear Jim Lampley scream with excitement that Floyd Mayweather Jr. "IS BETTER THAN EVER!!!!"
I truly believe that Mantequilla Napoles would have looked better than ever had he fought men two divisions below has natural weight class, instead of two above.
To bring things a little closer to present, a few years back another welterweight champ, Sugar Ray Leonard, demanded all the edges and usually got them.
However, Sugar Ray Leonard fought bigger men as his career progressed, not the smaller.
Floyd Mayweather looked sharp tonight. Of course he did. He wasn't in the ring with Shane Mosely. That's who he should have fought.
The problem with Shane Mosely is obvious. He's too much man for a guy who calls himself "Money".
Saturday, September 19, 2009
TARNISHED SHOES
By Roger Esty
The talk about knowing when to hang up the gloves. Those old fighters know that they can't recapture the light. Some say they can,but they know when they walk into the gym that the light is gone. Sometimes we believe they can recapture it,but in the end it's always a wash.We want to see their greatness again. So they say that they've got it back . We believe them. It's a fragile faith,but to see that greatness again,that genius that we lived our lives through, is what we want to believe they can recapture. So why do they continue? Some miss the spotlight. Most miss the money. Most know that fighting is all they know in order to make the money.
At the end of his career Denny Moyer knew he could always make a thousand bucks fighting in Nevada. I remember he'd fight on cards at the Silver Slipper. Train more or less in San Diego. Do his share of non training activities, and then fight at the Silver Slipper. In those days a thousand bucks was good money. In those days Denny spent it as fast a ten round fight.
We know he's hurting now. He's got his wife to protect him. He's lucky she's his faith. All those fights in Nevada when he should have been thinking about the consequences. Denny think about consequences? If it crossed his mind,he just set up the bar. Now there's no champagne to drink from the silver slipper.
The talk about knowing when to hang up the gloves. Those old fighters know that they can't recapture the light. Some say they can,but they know when they walk into the gym that the light is gone. Sometimes we believe they can recapture it,but in the end it's always a wash.We want to see their greatness again. So they say that they've got it back . We believe them. It's a fragile faith,but to see that greatness again,that genius that we lived our lives through, is what we want to believe they can recapture. So why do they continue? Some miss the spotlight. Most miss the money. Most know that fighting is all they know in order to make the money.
At the end of his career Denny Moyer knew he could always make a thousand bucks fighting in Nevada. I remember he'd fight on cards at the Silver Slipper. Train more or less in San Diego. Do his share of non training activities, and then fight at the Silver Slipper. In those days a thousand bucks was good money. In those days Denny spent it as fast a ten round fight.
We know he's hurting now. He's got his wife to protect him. He's lucky she's his faith. All those fights in Nevada when he should have been thinking about the consequences. Denny think about consequences? If it crossed his mind,he just set up the bar. Now there's no champagne to drink from the silver slipper.
California to probe boxing regulation panel over free tickets
The investigation is announced after The Times reported that commissioners, who also oversee mixed martial arts, requested the free passes from promoters whom they license and regulate.
California boxing regulators gave free fight tickets to friends, records show
By Michael Rothfeld
September 19, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento - California's ethics watchdog agency opened an investigation Friday into the California State Athletic Commission, in connection with free admission to big-ticket events that board members obtained for themselves, relatives, friends and associates.
The investigation was announced after The Times reported that commissioners, who oversee boxing and mixed martial arts, requested the free passes from promoters whom they license and regulate. Requests were made to admit more than 50 people in the last year and a half who did not work for the board; most of the guests were friends and associates of the commissioners.
Most of the free access was not reported to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, an ethics agency that can fine high-ranking officials who violate state law that requires gifts to be disclosed and not to exceed annual limits.
"Based on the information in The Times' article, the [Fair Political Practices] Commission will be investigating the activities of the athletic commission," said Roman Porter, the ethics agency's executive director.
Matt David, a spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said in a statement, "We fully support their investigation and will demand compliance with their findings."
Erin Shaw, a spokeswoman for the athletic commission, said she had "nothing further" to add to the statement from the governor's office.
Those invited to events free included actor Sylvester Stallone, who is a friend of Commission Chairman Timothy Noonan; John Cruz, a high-ranking aide to Schwarzenegger; one commissioner's pastor; and other friends and relatives of the panel's members.
Schwarzenegger and his son sat next to Stallone at a January fight for which tickets cost up to $300. Six of the seven part-time commissioners were appointed by the governor.
Some commissioners disclosed free admissions after The Times inquired about their practices in July, though they said Thursday they'd already been in the process of doing so. They also reimbursed promoters so they would not exceed state gift-acceptance limits, but they did so well after the 30-day legal window for such action. The governor made a similar payment last month.
michael.rothfeld@latimes.com
California boxing regulators gave free fight tickets to friends, records show
By Michael Rothfeld
September 19, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento - California's ethics watchdog agency opened an investigation Friday into the California State Athletic Commission, in connection with free admission to big-ticket events that board members obtained for themselves, relatives, friends and associates.
The investigation was announced after The Times reported that commissioners, who oversee boxing and mixed martial arts, requested the free passes from promoters whom they license and regulate. Requests were made to admit more than 50 people in the last year and a half who did not work for the board; most of the guests were friends and associates of the commissioners.
Most of the free access was not reported to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, an ethics agency that can fine high-ranking officials who violate state law that requires gifts to be disclosed and not to exceed annual limits.
"Based on the information in The Times' article, the [Fair Political Practices] Commission will be investigating the activities of the athletic commission," said Roman Porter, the ethics agency's executive director.
Matt David, a spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said in a statement, "We fully support their investigation and will demand compliance with their findings."
Erin Shaw, a spokeswoman for the athletic commission, said she had "nothing further" to add to the statement from the governor's office.
Those invited to events free included actor Sylvester Stallone, who is a friend of Commission Chairman Timothy Noonan; John Cruz, a high-ranking aide to Schwarzenegger; one commissioner's pastor; and other friends and relatives of the panel's members.
Schwarzenegger and his son sat next to Stallone at a January fight for which tickets cost up to $300. Six of the seven part-time commissioners were appointed by the governor.
Some commissioners disclosed free admissions after The Times inquired about their practices in July, though they said Thursday they'd already been in the process of doing so. They also reimbursed promoters so they would not exceed state gift-acceptance limits, but they did so well after the 30-day legal window for such action. The governor made a similar payment last month.
michael.rothfeld@latimes.com
Friday, September 18, 2009
State boxing panel has a poor record
The California State Athletic Commission has a history of poor record-keeping, faulty revenue collection and a harassment claim.
By Michael Rothfeld
September 18, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento - The California State Athletic Commission, one of many consumer-protection boards, is responsible for ensuring the safety of athletes in boxing and mixed martial arts by licensing them and event promoters, among other tasks.
But records from the state and the boxing industry reveal a pattern of poor performance by a board that has had trouble following its own rules.
An internal audit in late 2003, around the time Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office, found sloppy record-keeping, inaccurate revenue collection, outdated technology and staffing shortages. Such problems prompted state lawmakers to let the commission's authority lapse for six months in 2006 before it was launched again in 2007.
Since then the situation has not improved, follow-up state audits show.
Armando Garcia, the executive officer brought in to turn the commission around, was ousted late last year after a sexual harassment complaint by a subordinate. He has not been permanently replaced.
Garcia wrote the subordinate numerous e-mails, obtained by The Times under California's public records law, which he signed with messages such as "Loving you" in English and Spanish. In April, the panel and its parent agency, the state Department of Consumer Affairs, settled the complaint for $75,000.
The commission acknowledged a regulatory failure in March after a mixed martial arts fighter was allowed to compete even though he had hepatitis C and didn't have the required HIV test result on file.
Records from a national registry, Fight Fax, indicate that others have been permitted to compete this year while on suspension -- pending, for instance, medical tests -- or without an identification card required under federal law.
Dave Thornton, the commission's acting executive officer, said that in most cases, the agency had not updated the registry for months but the fighters were appropriately allowed to compete; in two cases, they competed while on suspension. Thornton said the agency was working to address its "occasional" regulatory errors and long-standing administrative problems. "I think we've made quite a bit of progress," he said. "It's gone on for a while, so we do need some time to make it right."
michael.rothfeld@latimes.com
By Michael Rothfeld
September 18, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento - The California State Athletic Commission, one of many consumer-protection boards, is responsible for ensuring the safety of athletes in boxing and mixed martial arts by licensing them and event promoters, among other tasks.
But records from the state and the boxing industry reveal a pattern of poor performance by a board that has had trouble following its own rules.
An internal audit in late 2003, around the time Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office, found sloppy record-keeping, inaccurate revenue collection, outdated technology and staffing shortages. Such problems prompted state lawmakers to let the commission's authority lapse for six months in 2006 before it was launched again in 2007.
Since then the situation has not improved, follow-up state audits show.
Armando Garcia, the executive officer brought in to turn the commission around, was ousted late last year after a sexual harassment complaint by a subordinate. He has not been permanently replaced.
Garcia wrote the subordinate numerous e-mails, obtained by The Times under California's public records law, which he signed with messages such as "Loving you" in English and Spanish. In April, the panel and its parent agency, the state Department of Consumer Affairs, settled the complaint for $75,000.
The commission acknowledged a regulatory failure in March after a mixed martial arts fighter was allowed to compete even though he had hepatitis C and didn't have the required HIV test result on file.
Records from a national registry, Fight Fax, indicate that others have been permitted to compete this year while on suspension -- pending, for instance, medical tests -- or without an identification card required under federal law.
Dave Thornton, the commission's acting executive officer, said that in most cases, the agency had not updated the registry for months but the fighters were appropriately allowed to compete; in two cases, they competed while on suspension. Thornton said the agency was working to address its "occasional" regulatory errors and long-standing administrative problems. "I think we've made quite a bit of progress," he said. "It's gone on for a while, so we do need some time to make it right."
michael.rothfeld@latimes.com
California boxing regulators gave free fight tickets to friends, records show
By law, Athletic Commission members are required to report gifts worth $50 or more obtained from an outside firm for anyone else. Only a fraction of the tickets were disclosed before The Times asked.
By Michael Rothfeld
September 18, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento - State officials who regulate boxing have used their positions to gain admission to big-ticket events for friends -- actor Sylvester Stallone among them -- relatives and other associates who sit ringside for free, records show.
One member of the California State Athletic Commission directed state employees to obtain free passes for his wife and pastor. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appointed all but one of the commissioners, attended an event gratis, as did one of his high-ranking aides.
At some fights, guests were placed in VIP rows, in front of fans whose tickets cost hundreds of dollars apiece. Schwarzenegger and his son sat with Stallone at the Antonio Margarito-Shane Mosley welterweight championship bout in January. Tickets to that fight cost up to $300.
Commissioners themselves receive free entry because of their jobs. But Timothy Lueckenhoff, president of the Assn. of Boxing Commissions, a national organization, said asking promoters to admit guests lends the appearance that officials are abusing their regulatory power for personal benefit. The commission can "hold over their head" the ability to approve promoters' fights, license athletes, collect fees and state taxes on ticket sales and pay out winnings, he said.
"It's the appearance of inappropriate activity," Lueckenhoff said. Panel members' acceptance of promoters' largess could suggest that the businesses "are buying some sort of favoritism," he said.
State law requires that commissioners report as gifts anything worth $50 or more obtained from an outside company for anyone else, including friends and relatives. They are required to report their own free admission as well if they do not perform a function related to their jobs while at the event.
But only a fraction of the free entries were disclosed until The Times asked about them. One commissioner did not request admission regularly, the state records show. None responded to requests for comment.
Dave Thornton, the commission's acting executive officer, said that board members were in the process of amending their disclosures before The Times requested the records, and that his predecessor had told them that free admission for guests was "a routine perk of their position."
The revelations are another blow for the commission's parent agency, the California Department of Consumer Affairs, and for Schwarzenegger. He has pledged to make state government more efficient and to impose strict ethical standards, such as a ban he imposed three years ago on gifts to his aides.
Schwarzenegger recently overhauled the state board that monitors registered nurses after The Times and the nonprofit news group ProPublica disclosed major enforcement delays. Before that, the consumer protection agency's director and her boss quit in scandals over taxpayer-funded trips and illegal speaking fees.
On Thursday, as The Times was preparing to publish information on the free admissions, Schwarzenegger sent a letter to the commissioners reiterating that "appointees do not accept gifts" and directing them to follow his policy or resign.
The governor "continues to take aggressive steps to oversee these boards and commissions," Schwarzenegger's spokesman, Matt David, said after the letter went out.
On Aug. 6, Schwarzenegger paid the promoter $180 toward the $600 cost of the fight he attended Jan. 24 with his son, so as not to exceed the state gift limit of $420, David said, and John Cruz, Schwarzenegger's appointments secretary, was planning a similar payment. Such payments are supposed to be made within 30 days under state law.
The 80-year-old athletic commission is responsible for licensing fighters and promoters, safeguarding athletes' health and safety and managing a pension fund for boxers. Its inspectors, referees and other workers travel across California overseeing huge championship bouts, niche shows put on by promoters like Chaos in the Cage and events for select audiences at places such as the Playboy mansion.
The commissioners -- who work part time, earn $100 a day and usually meet monthly -- are Chairman Timothy Noonan, an insurance executive from Los Angeles; Mario Rodriguez, the commission's vice chairman and a business consultant from San Clemente; Howard Rose, a Beverly Hills talent agent; Peter Lopez, an L.A. entertainment lawyer; John Frierson, a former Los Angeles County deputy sheriff; Christopher Giza, a pediatric neurologist from Culver City; and June Collison, a healthcare executive from Etiwanda and a former Olympic runner.
The athletic commission keeps no formal record of the people for whom it obtains access to events that it regulates. In response to a request by The Times in late July, the panel printed a stack of e-mails between commissioners and staff discussing arrangements for events.
Those records, though an incomplete accounting, showed that in the last year and a half the agency obtained free admission for more than 50 people who did not work for the commission. Lists of guests who received access to events contained names of people not employed by the state, with no explanation of why they received admission.
Noonan has obtained credentials for at least four events for Stallone, a friend who spent time in the ring in the "Rocky" films. Noonan once gave his own credential to someone else, the records show, and assigned Armando Garcia, then the commission's top-ranking administrator, to make sure that guest and another person got in smoothly.
"Armando is planning on seeing you & Jeff this Saturday night at the Home Depot Center," Noonan wrote in an e-mail last year to one of those guests, Don Johnson [not the "Miami Vice" star]. "There will be a credential under your name, and because of my absence, Jeff is to use my credential. . . . Enjoy!"
Frierson obtained credentials for his pastor for one fight and invited a guest from New Jersey. He regularly placed his wife, Susie, on the free-entry list along with state employees.
Rodriguez has been granted free admission for at least 20 guests, including Schwarzenegger aide Cruz, since the beginning of 2008. In January, Rodriguez and Noonan attended the Margarito-Mosley fight with guests in L.A. on the same night they obtained admission for others to another show in Anaheim, former commission officials said.
Only Collison did not regularly seek free admissions, according to the records.
Before a weekend of three matches in January, William Douglas, the assistant executive officer, sent out a mass e-mail with a chart that commissioners could use to check their desired events and the number of guests they wanted. They requested at least 18 credentials that weekend.
"You assume that because it is a state agency and it is a regulatory agency that they're not taking advantage," said David Itskowitch, chief operating officer of Golden Boy Promotions, which has sponsored several major fights in the last two years.
Most of the free admissions still have not been reported to the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state's ethics enforcement agency.
In early August, after The Times requested information about their guests, Rodriguez, Rose, Lopez and Giza amended the disclosures they had filed earlier in the year to include gifts not previously reported. The revised filings said promoters gave them free tickets to events including a $600-a-head fight on May 3, 2008, between Oscar De La Hoya and Steve Forbes, and the Margarito-Mosley event.
Rodriguez, Rose and Lopez cut checks for hundreds of dollars to Golden Boy Promotions, one of the sponsors of those events, because the value of the tickets exceeded the state's annual gift limit from a single source, which was $390 last year and rose to $420 on Jan. 1. Noonan had done the same earlier in July as the state Senate was reviewing his reappointment by the governor, which is still pending.
In some cases those payments were made more than a year after the fight, despite the 30-day requirement.
michael.rothfeld@latimes.com
By Michael Rothfeld
September 18, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento - State officials who regulate boxing have used their positions to gain admission to big-ticket events for friends -- actor Sylvester Stallone among them -- relatives and other associates who sit ringside for free, records show.
One member of the California State Athletic Commission directed state employees to obtain free passes for his wife and pastor. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appointed all but one of the commissioners, attended an event gratis, as did one of his high-ranking aides.
At some fights, guests were placed in VIP rows, in front of fans whose tickets cost hundreds of dollars apiece. Schwarzenegger and his son sat with Stallone at the Antonio Margarito-Shane Mosley welterweight championship bout in January. Tickets to that fight cost up to $300.
Commissioners themselves receive free entry because of their jobs. But Timothy Lueckenhoff, president of the Assn. of Boxing Commissions, a national organization, said asking promoters to admit guests lends the appearance that officials are abusing their regulatory power for personal benefit. The commission can "hold over their head" the ability to approve promoters' fights, license athletes, collect fees and state taxes on ticket sales and pay out winnings, he said.
"It's the appearance of inappropriate activity," Lueckenhoff said. Panel members' acceptance of promoters' largess could suggest that the businesses "are buying some sort of favoritism," he said.
State law requires that commissioners report as gifts anything worth $50 or more obtained from an outside company for anyone else, including friends and relatives. They are required to report their own free admission as well if they do not perform a function related to their jobs while at the event.
But only a fraction of the free entries were disclosed until The Times asked about them. One commissioner did not request admission regularly, the state records show. None responded to requests for comment.
Dave Thornton, the commission's acting executive officer, said that board members were in the process of amending their disclosures before The Times requested the records, and that his predecessor had told them that free admission for guests was "a routine perk of their position."
The revelations are another blow for the commission's parent agency, the California Department of Consumer Affairs, and for Schwarzenegger. He has pledged to make state government more efficient and to impose strict ethical standards, such as a ban he imposed three years ago on gifts to his aides.
Schwarzenegger recently overhauled the state board that monitors registered nurses after The Times and the nonprofit news group ProPublica disclosed major enforcement delays. Before that, the consumer protection agency's director and her boss quit in scandals over taxpayer-funded trips and illegal speaking fees.
On Thursday, as The Times was preparing to publish information on the free admissions, Schwarzenegger sent a letter to the commissioners reiterating that "appointees do not accept gifts" and directing them to follow his policy or resign.
The governor "continues to take aggressive steps to oversee these boards and commissions," Schwarzenegger's spokesman, Matt David, said after the letter went out.
On Aug. 6, Schwarzenegger paid the promoter $180 toward the $600 cost of the fight he attended Jan. 24 with his son, so as not to exceed the state gift limit of $420, David said, and John Cruz, Schwarzenegger's appointments secretary, was planning a similar payment. Such payments are supposed to be made within 30 days under state law.
The 80-year-old athletic commission is responsible for licensing fighters and promoters, safeguarding athletes' health and safety and managing a pension fund for boxers. Its inspectors, referees and other workers travel across California overseeing huge championship bouts, niche shows put on by promoters like Chaos in the Cage and events for select audiences at places such as the Playboy mansion.
The commissioners -- who work part time, earn $100 a day and usually meet monthly -- are Chairman Timothy Noonan, an insurance executive from Los Angeles; Mario Rodriguez, the commission's vice chairman and a business consultant from San Clemente; Howard Rose, a Beverly Hills talent agent; Peter Lopez, an L.A. entertainment lawyer; John Frierson, a former Los Angeles County deputy sheriff; Christopher Giza, a pediatric neurologist from Culver City; and June Collison, a healthcare executive from Etiwanda and a former Olympic runner.
The athletic commission keeps no formal record of the people for whom it obtains access to events that it regulates. In response to a request by The Times in late July, the panel printed a stack of e-mails between commissioners and staff discussing arrangements for events.
Those records, though an incomplete accounting, showed that in the last year and a half the agency obtained free admission for more than 50 people who did not work for the commission. Lists of guests who received access to events contained names of people not employed by the state, with no explanation of why they received admission.
Noonan has obtained credentials for at least four events for Stallone, a friend who spent time in the ring in the "Rocky" films. Noonan once gave his own credential to someone else, the records show, and assigned Armando Garcia, then the commission's top-ranking administrator, to make sure that guest and another person got in smoothly.
"Armando is planning on seeing you & Jeff this Saturday night at the Home Depot Center," Noonan wrote in an e-mail last year to one of those guests, Don Johnson [not the "Miami Vice" star]. "There will be a credential under your name, and because of my absence, Jeff is to use my credential. . . . Enjoy!"
Frierson obtained credentials for his pastor for one fight and invited a guest from New Jersey. He regularly placed his wife, Susie, on the free-entry list along with state employees.
Rodriguez has been granted free admission for at least 20 guests, including Schwarzenegger aide Cruz, since the beginning of 2008. In January, Rodriguez and Noonan attended the Margarito-Mosley fight with guests in L.A. on the same night they obtained admission for others to another show in Anaheim, former commission officials said.
Only Collison did not regularly seek free admissions, according to the records.
Before a weekend of three matches in January, William Douglas, the assistant executive officer, sent out a mass e-mail with a chart that commissioners could use to check their desired events and the number of guests they wanted. They requested at least 18 credentials that weekend.
"You assume that because it is a state agency and it is a regulatory agency that they're not taking advantage," said David Itskowitch, chief operating officer of Golden Boy Promotions, which has sponsored several major fights in the last two years.
Most of the free admissions still have not been reported to the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state's ethics enforcement agency.
In early August, after The Times requested information about their guests, Rodriguez, Rose, Lopez and Giza amended the disclosures they had filed earlier in the year to include gifts not previously reported. The revised filings said promoters gave them free tickets to events including a $600-a-head fight on May 3, 2008, between Oscar De La Hoya and Steve Forbes, and the Margarito-Mosley event.
Rodriguez, Rose and Lopez cut checks for hundreds of dollars to Golden Boy Promotions, one of the sponsors of those events, because the value of the tickets exceeded the state's annual gift limit from a single source, which was $390 last year and rose to $420 on Jan. 1. Noonan had done the same earlier in July as the state Senate was reviewing his reappointment by the governor, which is still pending.
In some cases those payments were made more than a year after the fight, despite the 30-day requirement.
michael.rothfeld@latimes.com
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Scarface: The Rough & Tumble Life Of A Boxing Superstar
By Chris Oakley
He shook up the sports world as few men had before him or would after him. He was loved by millions of people, detested by millions of others, feared by many of the opponents he faced in the ring, and remembered by everyone who saw him. Al "Scarface" Capone was one of the most successful-- and controversial --fighters in boxing history, and his legacy would loom large in the ring long after he had hung up his gloves for the last time.
Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 17th, 1899. He was introduced to the sweet science at the age of 13 by a neighborhood candy store owner who had once fought professionally as a middleweight; the boxing lessons helped channel Capone’s aggressive impulses into socially acceptable outlets and keep him from getting sucked into the dangerous criminal underworld of early 20th century New York. By age 15 he was skilled enough to enter local youth amateur tournaments; at 20 he won the prestigious Golden Gloves championship in the heavyweight division. Some sports historians even believe that Capone might have made the 1916 US Olympic boxing team had World War I not forced the cancellation of the Summer Games that year.
Capone, who moved to Chicago just after World War I ended, finally did make the Olympic boxing squad in time for the 1920 Summer Games in Antwerp; he won the gold medal in his weight class by virtue of his fierce, pedal-to-the-metal fighting style and an uppercut that could literally almost take a man’s head off. One challenger that Capone was scheduled to face in the Olympic tournament chose to forfeit the match rather than endure the punishing body blows and headshots he almost certainly would have undergone at Capone’s hands.
Capone got the nickname "Scarface" from a cut he sustained on his temple during his first professional bout in 1921. The cut happened during the third round of that bout and nearly provoked the referee to stop the fight; it took half a dozen stitches to close the wound. Some of Capone’s family and friends resented the moniker; Capone himself, however, was rather fond of it-- it implied toughness, a simultaneous ability to take punishment from his opponents and dish it right back out to them.
That ability would propel him steadily up the ranks over the next year and a half. By the spring of 1923 Capone was number two among the top ten contenders for the world heavyweight title, and there wasn’t much doubt in anyone’s mind he would soon be number one on that list.
Only one man stood in the way of his attainment of that pinnacle....
******
Eliot Ness, known to his fans as "Untouchable" because his foes could never seem to land a punch on him, was Al "Scarface" Capone’s main rival in the fight game at the time the two men were booked to face one another in June of 1923 in the main event of a heavyweight card in Detroit. Whereas Capone relied on power to gain victory, Ness’ fighting technique emphasized quick timing and concentration of blows on a particularly vulnerable part of his opponent’s body. But while he may have been different from Capone in many respects, he had one notable similarity to the Chicago brawler: like Capone, he had been steadily working his way up the ladder after winning the gold medal in his weight class at the 1920 Summer Olympics.
The two fighters had something else in common too-- undefeated records. When Ness and Capone stepped into the ring on the afternoon of June 17th, 1923 Ness boasted a record of 24 wins and 1 draw over 25 fights; Capone had 23 consecutive victories to his credit, 20 of them by knockout in the first or second round. Just about everyone who was in attendance that day expected the match to be a long one; up in the press boxes, the sportswriters had a running bet that the fight would not end any earlier than the eighth round.
As it turned out, Ness and Capone would slug it out at least ten rounds before Ness could gain a noticeable if slight advantage; not until the eleventh round, when Ness was ahead on points, did Capone get the first knockdown of the bout. When the Cleveland native fell to the canvas, you could have heard a pin drop in the arena-- no previous opponent had been able to even come close to doing that to Ness. In the Capone corner Capone’s trainer and occasional sparring partner, Frank Nitti, let out a whoop loud enough to echo all the way back to the arena’s locker rooms.
1:42 into the eleventh round, Capone knocked Ness down a second time; the arena crowd, which was predominantly pro-Ness, reacted with mingled alarm and outrage. At least one spectator threw an empty paper cup in the direction of the ring and was ejected by police for his troubles. By now Capone was overtaking Ness on points and had softened him up to the point where another knockdown would end both the fight and Ness’ undefeated streak.
In desperation, Ness aimed an uppercut at Capone’s nose. That would prove to be the Clevelander’s crucial mistake; Capone landed a body blow which sent Ness sprawling to the mat and left him literally flat on his face. The referee called for the bell and officially named Capone the winner by technical knockout; only a massive Detroit Police presence inside the arena prevented a full-fledged riot from erupting.
And even with the cops around, some people couldn’t resist taking a shot at him, verbal or otherwise-- an Auburn Hills man was arrested for attempted assault after he tried to crack Capone’s skull with a two-by-four.
Charges that Capone had used illegal tactics to gain the victory over Ness created a firestorm in the press in the days immediately after the bout; however, Capone himself denied the accusations and no definitive proof was ever found to back them up. In early September of 1923, the investigation into these charges was closed and the scandal largely forgotten.1
******
As great as his triumph over Ness had been, however, a still greater accomplishment lay ahead for Capone. Jack Dempsey, world heavyweight champion since 1919, was booked to defend his belt against Capone in early December of 1923 in Kansas City; for Capone, it was an opportunity he couldn’t refuse-- the chance to both become world champion and smash the legend of Dempsey’s invincibility in one fell swoop.
To prepare for his clash with the champion, Capone embarked on the toughest training regimen of his career. Part of that regimen was watching films of Dempsey at work in the ring; in fact, Capone is widely credited as being one of the first boxers in any weight class to make viewing films of his opponents a regular part of pre-fight preparations. He also took part in a number of long sparring sessions with Frank Nitti, working at all hours to perfect his jabs and body blows. Though an outgoing man by nature, Capone cut back sharply on his socializing in the weeks leading up to his showdown with Dempsey. He even, albeit somewhat reluctantly, gave up his Friday night visits to his favorite speakeasy.2
Finally, on December 4th, 1923, Capone and Dempsey met face-to-face in a smoke-filled Kansas City arena; everybody who was there knew the stakes in this bout were sky-high, and nobody understood it better than Capone and Dempsey themselves. For Dempsey a win meant continuing his historic undefeated streak; for Capone victory would put him down in the history books as a giant-killer and give him the world heavyweight title.
For twelve rounds Capone and Dempsey went at each other like angry rhinos. The closest either man came to knocking the other man out was when Capone knocked Dempsey down twice in the tenth round; some of the sportswriters covering the bout began quietly making bets after the eighth round that the bout would end in a draw. But when the bell rang for the end of the twelfth round and the judges’ scores were tallied up, Capone would turn out to have earned a split decision win to become the new world heavyweight champion. Jack Dempsey, sure he’d beaten Capone, fell to the canvas in shock when the judges’ decision was announced; some sports historians suggest that Dempsey’s defeat in Kansas City may have marked the beginning of the end for his boxing career. It certainly shattered the myth of his invincibility.
Making good on a promise he’d given prior to the bout, Capone hosted a steak dinner for his family and closest friends back home in Chicago to celebrate his newly won title. He posed for photos with one of the other great American sports idols of the 1920s, George Herman "Babe" Ruth, and spoke at length to sportswriters from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times about his match against Dempsey. He was on top of the world that night...
******
....and would stay there for a long time. Capone proved to be the most dominant boxing champion of his generation, winning 38 bouts in a row, with 36 of those bouts lasting just five rounds or less; of those 36 matches thirty would be won in the first two rounds, and out of that group of thirty at least fifteen fights would be won by first- round KO. "I just forgot how to lose." Capone joked to sportwriters after his September 1925 four-round win over fellow Chicagoan ‘Bugs’ Moran, and there was certainly no shortage of opponents willing to refresh his memory. In fact, other than Eliot Ness, ‘Bugs’ Moran was Capone’s most persistent rival for the world heavyweight championship. Capone and Moran had known and disliked each other for years; Moran accused Capone of costing him a spot on the 1920 US Olympic boxing team, and in turn Capone charged that Moran had disparaged Capone’s wife behind her back. And the Capone-Moran fights weren’t confined to the ring, either; three months before Capone’s four-round victory, he and Moran had gotten into a vicious brawl at a party hosted by actress Clara Bow after Moran made a remark mocking Capone’s Italian heritage.
Nor would the September 1925 fight be the last time Moran stepped through the ropes to face Capone; in May of 1927 the two squared off in a highly publicized and ferociously fought rematch at Braves Field in Boston. That bout lasted just two rounds, halted by the referee at the 1:42 mark of the second round after Capone broke Moran’s jaw with a strong right cross which also opened a cut on Moran’s right temple. Moran nearly retired from boxing after that defeat, and in fact a year would pass before he stepped into the ring again.
******
For most of the year Moran was out of boxing, Capone kept right on winning, so convincingly and in such swift fashion that at one point some promoters suggested retiring the world heavyweight title altogether. There didn’t seem to be anyone left who wanted to take him on; Capone himself bluntly told a Los Angeles Herald-Tribune boxing beat correspondent, "I’ve whipped so many guys by now everybody’s gone yellow...there ain’t nobody left in the whole wide world who has the guts to fight me."3
There were certainly fewer and fewer fighters on American soil willing to risk their necks to try and wrest Capone’s heavyweight belt from him; even Eliot Ness, the champion’s most unrelenting adversary, was starting to seem a bit hesitant to face him again. And it couldn’t have helped Ness’ courage any when Capone wrecked Gene Tunney in three rounds in February of 1928 in a bout rightly dubbed by sportswriters as "the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre".4 Boxing promoters looking for a challenger who had the moxie to stand toe-to-toe with Scarface found themselves increasingly having to look to Europe to find fighters to take on the champion.
But there was an American fighter who wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated by the Al Capone mystique: one Benjamin "Bugsy"5 Siegel, a brawler with an uppercut that had left more than one foe flat on his back. Siegel, who’d turned pro shortly after the first Capone-Moran bout, had a record of sixteen wins and one draw at the time of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and was eager to prove he could take the world heavyweight champion down.
On a Monday afternoon in March of 1928, Siegel confronted Capone at the South Side gym where Capone trained in between fights; to the shock of everyone present and the outrage of Capone himself, the 22- year-old New Yorker labeled the heavyweight champion a "relic" and a "worthless coward" and dared Capone to face him in the ring. Capone, hellbent on putting this New York upstart in his place, took Siegel up on the dare and the match was booked for July 1st at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
That day would see the Coliseum host the largest crowd in boxing history-- and the end of Scarface’s title reign.
******
107,634 people packed Los Angeles Coliseum for the Siegel-Capone fight-- among them Bugs Moran and Eliot Ness, who while sitting in separate sections were both rooting for Siegel to wipe the canvas with Capone. Ness brought his manager Frank Wilson to the fight, and Moran showed up at the Coliseum with his sparring partners Dion O’Banion and Hymie Weiss in tow.
Ness and Moran weren’t the only famous faces to show up for the Siegel-Capone bout; writer Ernest Hemingway, singer/actor Al Jolson, and Capone’s old pal Babe Ruth were just some of the VIPs on hand for the bout. There was even a brief chat prior to the bout between Siegel and disgraced evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson. Herbert Hoover, then campaigning to succeed the outgoing Calvin Coolidge as President of the United States, arrived at the Coliseum just before the start of the second round and stayed until the fight was over.
It was clear Capone was in trouble when Siegel knocked him down twice during the eighth round; none of Capone’s previous opponents had ever managed to accomplish that, and only one-- Jack Dempsey --had even been able to come close, sending Capone to the canvas once in the sixth round of their legendary December 1923 bout. But Siegel had a ton of self-confidence, his famous uppercut, and the backing of most of the Coliseum crowd in his favor. By the ninth round Siegel held the edge on points and could sense the champion was on his last legs; in the tenth round he delivered the coup de grace, his patented uppercut nailing Capone square on the nose and sending the champion tumbling to the canvas. One ten-count later, Bugsy Siegel was the new heavyweight champion of the world...
******
....and Al Capone’s boxing career had started falling into an irreversible decline. Following his loss to Siegel, Capone went into seclusion for the next seven months, and when he finally stepped back into the ring in February of 1929, he lost in six rounds to up-and- coming Italian heavyweight Primo Carnera. He tried to get his career back on track with a final showdown against longtime rival Eliot Ness in June of 1929, only to have Ness embarrass him by knocking him out in four rounds.
Things weren’t much better for him outside the ring either. In August of 1929 Mae Coughlin Capone, his wife since 1918, left him and filed for divorce after the former champion lashed out at her one night in a violent alcoholic rage; two months later, he lost most of his personal fortune in the Wall Street stock market crash that began the Great Depression.
His misfortunes grew even worse in April of 1930 when he was indicted on charges of tax evasion after an IRS audit of his financial records between 1925 and 1927 turned up evidence that Capone might have falsified some of his income tax statements; his trial, which lasted more than six months, was avidly followed by America’s major newspapers and radio networks and ended with Capone being sentenced to three years in prison for tax fraud. He served a year and a half of that sentence and was released in September of 1932, a shell of the larger-than-life figure boxing fans had known at the height of his success as world heavyweight champion.
In what would turn out to be his final professional match ever, Capone, hoping to recapture some of his past glory, faced Bugs Moran one more time in January of 1933 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. But Capone’s hopes were emphatically dashed; Moran, letting loose years of pent-up frustration over his previous defeats at the hands of Capone, tore the ex-champion apart like paper. The man who’d once ruled the heavyweight ranks with an iron fist met the same fate he had inflicted on so many of his foes-- a first-round defeat by knockout.
Shortly after his loss to Moran in San Francisco, Capone got some devastating news from his personal physician: he had been diagnosed with dementia pugilistica, a brain disorder common to boxers which is incurable. This diagnosis crushed Capone’s spirit as even his worst defeats in the ring had never done, and Frank Nitti would later recall that Capone returned from his doctor’s visit "wearing the look of a men who’s just been sentenced to the electric chair".6 Capone knew that those afflicted with dementia pugilistica became vegetables sooner or later, and that was a fate he couldn’t bear to endure.
On August 17th, 1933 Nitti got a phone call from the landlady of the bachelor apartment where Capone had been living since his divorce from Mae became final; in great agitation, she told Nitti that there had been no sound or movement from Capone’s flat since 10:30 PM the night before. Nitti, immediately sensing the worst, phoned the Chicago Police, who sent a detail to bust down the door of Capone’s apartment. When they got in, they found Capone sprawled out on the floor of his bedroom with what looked like a bottle of strychnine in one hand.
The former world heavyweight champion had committed suicide.
******
Al Capone was laid to rest on August 21st, 1933 in one of the largest funerals Chicago had ever seen. The procession to Capone’s gravesite spanned five city blocks; the mausoleum where his body was interred was bigger than some Chicagoans’ houses. Today, next to Wrigley Field and the Sears Tower, the mausoleum ranks as the Windy City’s most famous tourist attraction. Indeed, Capone left his mark on Chicago and the sport of boxing in endless ways large and small; for example a particularly hard body blow is now known in boxing lingo as "a Capone punch", and a boxing school named in his honor has been operating on Chicago’s South Side since the late 1940s.
Mae Capone remarried two years after her divorce from Al Capone was finalized and moved to Manhattan, where she died in 1986. Frank Nitti was killed in March of 1941 in a car crash near the Illinois town of Cicero; Eliot Ness retired from professional boxing in 1939 to become a CBS Radio sportscaster, a job he held until his death from a heart attack in 1957. Bugs Moran defeated Massachusetts native Jack Sharkey for the world heavyweight title in October of 1933 only to end up losing the title to German sports legend Max Schmeling five months later; he retired in 1942 to become a promoter, booking boxing matches throughout the Midwest until his death in 1951.
Hymie Weiss and Dion O’Banion were both gunned down in the spring of 1935 in Newark, New Jersey during a bank holdup attempt gone awry. Their killer was caught three weeks later, convicted of conspiracy to commit bank robbery and second-degree murder, and executed in the New Jersey State Prison electric chair in September of 1936.
After losing the heavyweight championship to Jack Sharkey in 1930, Bugsy Siegel endured a long and hard struggle to return to the top of the heavyweight ranks. In February of 1935 he took on Max Schmeling in London and beat the German colossus in six rounds to regain the world heavyweight title; after his second championship reign ended in June of 1937, he embarked on a second career as a movie serials actor and became romantically involved with a Hollywood chorus girl. Siegel was killed in a plane crash in the Nevada desert in 1950.
The End
He shook up the sports world as few men had before him or would after him. He was loved by millions of people, detested by millions of others, feared by many of the opponents he faced in the ring, and remembered by everyone who saw him. Al "Scarface" Capone was one of the most successful-- and controversial --fighters in boxing history, and his legacy would loom large in the ring long after he had hung up his gloves for the last time.
Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 17th, 1899. He was introduced to the sweet science at the age of 13 by a neighborhood candy store owner who had once fought professionally as a middleweight; the boxing lessons helped channel Capone’s aggressive impulses into socially acceptable outlets and keep him from getting sucked into the dangerous criminal underworld of early 20th century New York. By age 15 he was skilled enough to enter local youth amateur tournaments; at 20 he won the prestigious Golden Gloves championship in the heavyweight division. Some sports historians even believe that Capone might have made the 1916 US Olympic boxing team had World War I not forced the cancellation of the Summer Games that year.
Capone, who moved to Chicago just after World War I ended, finally did make the Olympic boxing squad in time for the 1920 Summer Games in Antwerp; he won the gold medal in his weight class by virtue of his fierce, pedal-to-the-metal fighting style and an uppercut that could literally almost take a man’s head off. One challenger that Capone was scheduled to face in the Olympic tournament chose to forfeit the match rather than endure the punishing body blows and headshots he almost certainly would have undergone at Capone’s hands.
Capone got the nickname "Scarface" from a cut he sustained on his temple during his first professional bout in 1921. The cut happened during the third round of that bout and nearly provoked the referee to stop the fight; it took half a dozen stitches to close the wound. Some of Capone’s family and friends resented the moniker; Capone himself, however, was rather fond of it-- it implied toughness, a simultaneous ability to take punishment from his opponents and dish it right back out to them.
That ability would propel him steadily up the ranks over the next year and a half. By the spring of 1923 Capone was number two among the top ten contenders for the world heavyweight title, and there wasn’t much doubt in anyone’s mind he would soon be number one on that list.
Only one man stood in the way of his attainment of that pinnacle....
******
Eliot Ness, known to his fans as "Untouchable" because his foes could never seem to land a punch on him, was Al "Scarface" Capone’s main rival in the fight game at the time the two men were booked to face one another in June of 1923 in the main event of a heavyweight card in Detroit. Whereas Capone relied on power to gain victory, Ness’ fighting technique emphasized quick timing and concentration of blows on a particularly vulnerable part of his opponent’s body. But while he may have been different from Capone in many respects, he had one notable similarity to the Chicago brawler: like Capone, he had been steadily working his way up the ladder after winning the gold medal in his weight class at the 1920 Summer Olympics.
The two fighters had something else in common too-- undefeated records. When Ness and Capone stepped into the ring on the afternoon of June 17th, 1923 Ness boasted a record of 24 wins and 1 draw over 25 fights; Capone had 23 consecutive victories to his credit, 20 of them by knockout in the first or second round. Just about everyone who was in attendance that day expected the match to be a long one; up in the press boxes, the sportswriters had a running bet that the fight would not end any earlier than the eighth round.
As it turned out, Ness and Capone would slug it out at least ten rounds before Ness could gain a noticeable if slight advantage; not until the eleventh round, when Ness was ahead on points, did Capone get the first knockdown of the bout. When the Cleveland native fell to the canvas, you could have heard a pin drop in the arena-- no previous opponent had been able to even come close to doing that to Ness. In the Capone corner Capone’s trainer and occasional sparring partner, Frank Nitti, let out a whoop loud enough to echo all the way back to the arena’s locker rooms.
1:42 into the eleventh round, Capone knocked Ness down a second time; the arena crowd, which was predominantly pro-Ness, reacted with mingled alarm and outrage. At least one spectator threw an empty paper cup in the direction of the ring and was ejected by police for his troubles. By now Capone was overtaking Ness on points and had softened him up to the point where another knockdown would end both the fight and Ness’ undefeated streak.
In desperation, Ness aimed an uppercut at Capone’s nose. That would prove to be the Clevelander’s crucial mistake; Capone landed a body blow which sent Ness sprawling to the mat and left him literally flat on his face. The referee called for the bell and officially named Capone the winner by technical knockout; only a massive Detroit Police presence inside the arena prevented a full-fledged riot from erupting.
And even with the cops around, some people couldn’t resist taking a shot at him, verbal or otherwise-- an Auburn Hills man was arrested for attempted assault after he tried to crack Capone’s skull with a two-by-four.
Charges that Capone had used illegal tactics to gain the victory over Ness created a firestorm in the press in the days immediately after the bout; however, Capone himself denied the accusations and no definitive proof was ever found to back them up. In early September of 1923, the investigation into these charges was closed and the scandal largely forgotten.1
******
As great as his triumph over Ness had been, however, a still greater accomplishment lay ahead for Capone. Jack Dempsey, world heavyweight champion since 1919, was booked to defend his belt against Capone in early December of 1923 in Kansas City; for Capone, it was an opportunity he couldn’t refuse-- the chance to both become world champion and smash the legend of Dempsey’s invincibility in one fell swoop.
To prepare for his clash with the champion, Capone embarked on the toughest training regimen of his career. Part of that regimen was watching films of Dempsey at work in the ring; in fact, Capone is widely credited as being one of the first boxers in any weight class to make viewing films of his opponents a regular part of pre-fight preparations. He also took part in a number of long sparring sessions with Frank Nitti, working at all hours to perfect his jabs and body blows. Though an outgoing man by nature, Capone cut back sharply on his socializing in the weeks leading up to his showdown with Dempsey. He even, albeit somewhat reluctantly, gave up his Friday night visits to his favorite speakeasy.2
Finally, on December 4th, 1923, Capone and Dempsey met face-to-face in a smoke-filled Kansas City arena; everybody who was there knew the stakes in this bout were sky-high, and nobody understood it better than Capone and Dempsey themselves. For Dempsey a win meant continuing his historic undefeated streak; for Capone victory would put him down in the history books as a giant-killer and give him the world heavyweight title.
For twelve rounds Capone and Dempsey went at each other like angry rhinos. The closest either man came to knocking the other man out was when Capone knocked Dempsey down twice in the tenth round; some of the sportswriters covering the bout began quietly making bets after the eighth round that the bout would end in a draw. But when the bell rang for the end of the twelfth round and the judges’ scores were tallied up, Capone would turn out to have earned a split decision win to become the new world heavyweight champion. Jack Dempsey, sure he’d beaten Capone, fell to the canvas in shock when the judges’ decision was announced; some sports historians suggest that Dempsey’s defeat in Kansas City may have marked the beginning of the end for his boxing career. It certainly shattered the myth of his invincibility.
Making good on a promise he’d given prior to the bout, Capone hosted a steak dinner for his family and closest friends back home in Chicago to celebrate his newly won title. He posed for photos with one of the other great American sports idols of the 1920s, George Herman "Babe" Ruth, and spoke at length to sportswriters from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times about his match against Dempsey. He was on top of the world that night...
******
....and would stay there for a long time. Capone proved to be the most dominant boxing champion of his generation, winning 38 bouts in a row, with 36 of those bouts lasting just five rounds or less; of those 36 matches thirty would be won in the first two rounds, and out of that group of thirty at least fifteen fights would be won by first- round KO. "I just forgot how to lose." Capone joked to sportwriters after his September 1925 four-round win over fellow Chicagoan ‘Bugs’ Moran, and there was certainly no shortage of opponents willing to refresh his memory. In fact, other than Eliot Ness, ‘Bugs’ Moran was Capone’s most persistent rival for the world heavyweight championship. Capone and Moran had known and disliked each other for years; Moran accused Capone of costing him a spot on the 1920 US Olympic boxing team, and in turn Capone charged that Moran had disparaged Capone’s wife behind her back. And the Capone-Moran fights weren’t confined to the ring, either; three months before Capone’s four-round victory, he and Moran had gotten into a vicious brawl at a party hosted by actress Clara Bow after Moran made a remark mocking Capone’s Italian heritage.
Nor would the September 1925 fight be the last time Moran stepped through the ropes to face Capone; in May of 1927 the two squared off in a highly publicized and ferociously fought rematch at Braves Field in Boston. That bout lasted just two rounds, halted by the referee at the 1:42 mark of the second round after Capone broke Moran’s jaw with a strong right cross which also opened a cut on Moran’s right temple. Moran nearly retired from boxing after that defeat, and in fact a year would pass before he stepped into the ring again.
******
For most of the year Moran was out of boxing, Capone kept right on winning, so convincingly and in such swift fashion that at one point some promoters suggested retiring the world heavyweight title altogether. There didn’t seem to be anyone left who wanted to take him on; Capone himself bluntly told a Los Angeles Herald-Tribune boxing beat correspondent, "I’ve whipped so many guys by now everybody’s gone yellow...there ain’t nobody left in the whole wide world who has the guts to fight me."3
There were certainly fewer and fewer fighters on American soil willing to risk their necks to try and wrest Capone’s heavyweight belt from him; even Eliot Ness, the champion’s most unrelenting adversary, was starting to seem a bit hesitant to face him again. And it couldn’t have helped Ness’ courage any when Capone wrecked Gene Tunney in three rounds in February of 1928 in a bout rightly dubbed by sportswriters as "the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre".4 Boxing promoters looking for a challenger who had the moxie to stand toe-to-toe with Scarface found themselves increasingly having to look to Europe to find fighters to take on the champion.
But there was an American fighter who wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated by the Al Capone mystique: one Benjamin "Bugsy"5 Siegel, a brawler with an uppercut that had left more than one foe flat on his back. Siegel, who’d turned pro shortly after the first Capone-Moran bout, had a record of sixteen wins and one draw at the time of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and was eager to prove he could take the world heavyweight champion down.
On a Monday afternoon in March of 1928, Siegel confronted Capone at the South Side gym where Capone trained in between fights; to the shock of everyone present and the outrage of Capone himself, the 22- year-old New Yorker labeled the heavyweight champion a "relic" and a "worthless coward" and dared Capone to face him in the ring. Capone, hellbent on putting this New York upstart in his place, took Siegel up on the dare and the match was booked for July 1st at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
That day would see the Coliseum host the largest crowd in boxing history-- and the end of Scarface’s title reign.
******
107,634 people packed Los Angeles Coliseum for the Siegel-Capone fight-- among them Bugs Moran and Eliot Ness, who while sitting in separate sections were both rooting for Siegel to wipe the canvas with Capone. Ness brought his manager Frank Wilson to the fight, and Moran showed up at the Coliseum with his sparring partners Dion O’Banion and Hymie Weiss in tow.
Ness and Moran weren’t the only famous faces to show up for the Siegel-Capone bout; writer Ernest Hemingway, singer/actor Al Jolson, and Capone’s old pal Babe Ruth were just some of the VIPs on hand for the bout. There was even a brief chat prior to the bout between Siegel and disgraced evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson. Herbert Hoover, then campaigning to succeed the outgoing Calvin Coolidge as President of the United States, arrived at the Coliseum just before the start of the second round and stayed until the fight was over.
It was clear Capone was in trouble when Siegel knocked him down twice during the eighth round; none of Capone’s previous opponents had ever managed to accomplish that, and only one-- Jack Dempsey --had even been able to come close, sending Capone to the canvas once in the sixth round of their legendary December 1923 bout. But Siegel had a ton of self-confidence, his famous uppercut, and the backing of most of the Coliseum crowd in his favor. By the ninth round Siegel held the edge on points and could sense the champion was on his last legs; in the tenth round he delivered the coup de grace, his patented uppercut nailing Capone square on the nose and sending the champion tumbling to the canvas. One ten-count later, Bugsy Siegel was the new heavyweight champion of the world...
******
....and Al Capone’s boxing career had started falling into an irreversible decline. Following his loss to Siegel, Capone went into seclusion for the next seven months, and when he finally stepped back into the ring in February of 1929, he lost in six rounds to up-and- coming Italian heavyweight Primo Carnera. He tried to get his career back on track with a final showdown against longtime rival Eliot Ness in June of 1929, only to have Ness embarrass him by knocking him out in four rounds.
Things weren’t much better for him outside the ring either. In August of 1929 Mae Coughlin Capone, his wife since 1918, left him and filed for divorce after the former champion lashed out at her one night in a violent alcoholic rage; two months later, he lost most of his personal fortune in the Wall Street stock market crash that began the Great Depression.
His misfortunes grew even worse in April of 1930 when he was indicted on charges of tax evasion after an IRS audit of his financial records between 1925 and 1927 turned up evidence that Capone might have falsified some of his income tax statements; his trial, which lasted more than six months, was avidly followed by America’s major newspapers and radio networks and ended with Capone being sentenced to three years in prison for tax fraud. He served a year and a half of that sentence and was released in September of 1932, a shell of the larger-than-life figure boxing fans had known at the height of his success as world heavyweight champion.
In what would turn out to be his final professional match ever, Capone, hoping to recapture some of his past glory, faced Bugs Moran one more time in January of 1933 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. But Capone’s hopes were emphatically dashed; Moran, letting loose years of pent-up frustration over his previous defeats at the hands of Capone, tore the ex-champion apart like paper. The man who’d once ruled the heavyweight ranks with an iron fist met the same fate he had inflicted on so many of his foes-- a first-round defeat by knockout.
Shortly after his loss to Moran in San Francisco, Capone got some devastating news from his personal physician: he had been diagnosed with dementia pugilistica, a brain disorder common to boxers which is incurable. This diagnosis crushed Capone’s spirit as even his worst defeats in the ring had never done, and Frank Nitti would later recall that Capone returned from his doctor’s visit "wearing the look of a men who’s just been sentenced to the electric chair".6 Capone knew that those afflicted with dementia pugilistica became vegetables sooner or later, and that was a fate he couldn’t bear to endure.
On August 17th, 1933 Nitti got a phone call from the landlady of the bachelor apartment where Capone had been living since his divorce from Mae became final; in great agitation, she told Nitti that there had been no sound or movement from Capone’s flat since 10:30 PM the night before. Nitti, immediately sensing the worst, phoned the Chicago Police, who sent a detail to bust down the door of Capone’s apartment. When they got in, they found Capone sprawled out on the floor of his bedroom with what looked like a bottle of strychnine in one hand.
The former world heavyweight champion had committed suicide.
******
Al Capone was laid to rest on August 21st, 1933 in one of the largest funerals Chicago had ever seen. The procession to Capone’s gravesite spanned five city blocks; the mausoleum where his body was interred was bigger than some Chicagoans’ houses. Today, next to Wrigley Field and the Sears Tower, the mausoleum ranks as the Windy City’s most famous tourist attraction. Indeed, Capone left his mark on Chicago and the sport of boxing in endless ways large and small; for example a particularly hard body blow is now known in boxing lingo as "a Capone punch", and a boxing school named in his honor has been operating on Chicago’s South Side since the late 1940s.
Mae Capone remarried two years after her divorce from Al Capone was finalized and moved to Manhattan, where she died in 1986. Frank Nitti was killed in March of 1941 in a car crash near the Illinois town of Cicero; Eliot Ness retired from professional boxing in 1939 to become a CBS Radio sportscaster, a job he held until his death from a heart attack in 1957. Bugs Moran defeated Massachusetts native Jack Sharkey for the world heavyweight title in October of 1933 only to end up losing the title to German sports legend Max Schmeling five months later; he retired in 1942 to become a promoter, booking boxing matches throughout the Midwest until his death in 1951.
Hymie Weiss and Dion O’Banion were both gunned down in the spring of 1935 in Newark, New Jersey during a bank holdup attempt gone awry. Their killer was caught three weeks later, convicted of conspiracy to commit bank robbery and second-degree murder, and executed in the New Jersey State Prison electric chair in September of 1936.
After losing the heavyweight championship to Jack Sharkey in 1930, Bugsy Siegel endured a long and hard struggle to return to the top of the heavyweight ranks. In February of 1935 he took on Max Schmeling in London and beat the German colossus in six rounds to regain the world heavyweight title; after his second championship reign ended in June of 1937, he embarked on a second career as a movie serials actor and became romantically involved with a Hollywood chorus girl. Siegel was killed in a plane crash in the Nevada desert in 1950.
The End
The Youngest Lightweight Champ
By Rick Farris
In 1965, promoters Cal & Aileen Eaton began promoting weekly televised boxing shows from the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. L.A. was loaded with boxing talent and the Eatons would parlay this talent into the most successful weekly boxing promotion in the world.
The Eatons hired veteran boxing figure Mickey Davies as matchmaker and Jimmy Lennon Sr. (The Voice of the Olympic Auditorium) was the ring announcer. The fights were televised every Thursday night on KTLA channel 5 from 8-to-10 pm.
with matchmaker Davies and a young Dick Enberg calling the action from ringside. It was a winning combination. However, it was the boxers that made "Boxing from the Olympic" the highest rated local TV production in Southern California.
A few months after things got started Cal Eaton passed away, leaving his widow Aileen with the responsibility of running the show. Aileen was not to be underestimated and she had no difficulty dealing in the tough world of professional boxing. To the managers she was known as a tough businesswoman and was nicknamed "Dragon Lady". However, she was like a mother to the boxers.
Eaton had the connections and resources to bring top name talent to Los Angeles to headline her boxing cards and often did so. However, she was also aware of the potential of local talent and focused her business on the development of these young fighters. For the next decade Aileen Eaton would help build the careers of many exceptional boxers and several would go on to win world championships.
The first World Champion to come from this group was one of the most exciting and charismatic to ever step into the ring at the 18th & Grand arena.
His name was Armando Ramos. Mando would become the youngest man to ever win the World Lightweight Championship.
Mando Ramos was a boxing prodigy. His father Ray Ramos had been a boxer and he taught his sons Junior and Mando how to box shortly after they had started walking. When Junior began boxing as an amateur Mando would follow his older brother to the gym. By the age of eight, Mando was competing in Jr. Golden Gloves tournaments in Los Angeles.
By the time Junior turned professional Mando was already gaining a rep at the gym. The tall, skinny teenager was outboxing a lot of pros and his punching power was no secret.
Mando Ramos had a gift, but he also had a curse. The gift Mando had would take him to the top of the world in boxing. However, the curse would take it all away from him before he ever had a chance to reach his prime as a boxer.
In the evening, Mando would work in his grandmother's Mexican restaurant washing dishes. He became friendly with the restaurant's bartender and this gave Mando access to all the booze he could want. It was the 60's and Mando was also known to indulge in other methods of getting high. Even so, Ramos was outclassing professional boxers in gym workouts and Junior decided it was time to hook his brother up with a top trainer.
Junior Ramos contacted Jackie McCoy, a former bantamweight contender who had fought Manuel Ortiz in the late 40's. McCoy was one of the best manager/trainers in boxing and had helped guide Don Jordan to the welterweight title in the late 50's. McCoy had heard of the kid but wanted to see for himself. What he saw convinced him that Mando Ramos was something special.
McCoy had a featherweight scheduled to fight in a main event the following week and he put the 16-year-old Ramos in with his boxer for a sparring match. Ramos knocked McCoy's fighter out in the opening round. McCoy was excited about what he saw and called his partner, Lee Praila, and told him to meet him at the gym the next day to discuss future plans for their new prospect.
McCoy went to work and fine tuned Ramos' natural talent, molding him into a boxer that was too good for the amateurs in Los Angeles, or anywhere else for that matter. Amateur boxers would not fight Mando and it was decided that in the best interest of Ramos he should turn professional. McCoy wanted Mando to concentrate on boxing and keep him away from the bad influence of his friends.
However, there was one problem. The California State Athletic Commission required a boxer to be 18-years-old to get a professional boxing license. Mando wasn't yet seventeen. McCoy feared that with no amateur competition, Ramos' career might succumb to his love of women and the party scene before it ever had a chance to get off the ground.
McCoy had a long talk with Mando and the skinny teenager promised to buckle down and work if given the opportunity to fight pro. With the help of a phony birth certificate, Mando Ramos made his professional boxing debut just two days after his 17th birthday.
Armando Ramos had his first pro fight at the Olympic Auditorium on November 17, 1965. In a one-sided match Ramos won a unanimous four round decision over Berlin Roberts. Two weeks later he KO'ed tough Chuey Loera in the second round and the fans were already taking notice of the talented kid from Long Beach. Ramos was nearly 5'10" and weighed 126 pounds. He was also strikingly handsome and became a favorite of the Los Angeles boxing fans watching in person or on TV.
Ramos had only been seen in two pro fights but Aileen Eaton was already getting letters from fans requesting to see more of this kid. Mando would start 1966 with three consecutive knockouts followed by a unanimous decision over Bosco Basileo in a six rounder.
Ramos was 6-0 with 4 knockouts when McCoy and Eaton decided to put him in his first ten round main event. His opponent would be a tough veteran named Joey Aquilar. The Olympic Auditorium, which held nearly 11,000 fans, was packed for Ramos' main event debut which was being broadcast live on television. Everybody thought that Ramos was amazing for an 18-year-old and had no idea that he was only seventeen. Ramos battered Aquilar, knocking the tough Mexican down three times before referee George Latka stopped the fight in the eighth round. A star was born.
Two weeks later Ramos headlined again at the Olympic and knocked out Ray Coleman in the 6th round. Two weeks later he iced Manny Linson in two rounds. By the end of 1966 Ramos was 14-0 (10 KO's) and ready to take another step up the ladder in the featherweight division.
Ramos was now an established main eventer and could sell out the Olympic within a few days of announcing that he was scheduled to fight. Eaton would no longer televise Ramos' fights. Mando's fights would now follow a televised ten rounder and if you wanted to see Ramos fight you would have to drive down to the Olympic and buy a ticket. And this is exactly what people
did.
Mando quickly became one of the biggest box-office attractions in the history of Los Angeles boxing. His popularity was being compared with L.A.'s last box office Golden Boy, Art Aragon from the 50's. It was about this time that the press discovered that L.A.'s newest Golden Boy had only just turned eighteen, making his success even more incredible.
Two months after Mando's 18th birthday he packed the Olympic Auditorium when he took on his first world rated opponent, unbeaten Ray Echevarria. Echevarria was the California Featherweight Champion and rated among the top ten featherweights in the world by the Ring Magazine.
Ramos out boxed, out punched and completely out fought the tough Echevarria, winning a unanimous ten round decision. Two months later Ramos would face another tough test in veteran Pete Gonzales, whom had beaten some of the best in the world and was also rated in the top ten by The Ring. Ramos again showed
his stuff and won a unanimous ten round decision over Gonzales.
Mando was growing and could no longer make 126 pounds. In his next bout he would move up into the jr. lightweight class and take on unbeaten Len Kesey of Eugene, Oregon. Ramos easily knocked out Kesey in the fifth round with a brutal left hook to the liver. Now 17-0 (11 KO's) Ramos would face his biggest test to date in Korea's Suh Kang-IL.
Less than twenty months after his pro debut Ramos was eighteen years old and getting rich. everybody wanted to be close to Mando and he loved the attention, not to mention the women. It was no secret that Mando was keeping late hours and McCoy was upset. The fight with Suh Kang IL was scheduled just two weeks after Ramos' KO of Len Kesey and Mando was confident. So confident that he missed several workouts prior to the match and showed up at the gym once with a hangover.
Suh Kang IL held victories over two world champions and on July 6, 1967 he handed Mando Ramos his first loss as a professional. Two nights before the fight, Ramos had gotten so wasted at a 4th of July party that he was arrested for drunk driving on the way home. L.A.'s newest Golden Boy was no longer unbeaten.
The following month McCoy took Ramos to Sacramento where he KO'ed Alex Luna in two. Ramos returned to L.A. and a few weeks later knocked out Eliseo Estrada in five. Mando was growing into a lightweight but before getting much bigger, fans in Los Angeles were begging to see him fight another hot featherweight making a name for himself at the Olympic, "Irish" Frankie Crawford.
Crawford and Ramos were not strangers, as both worked out at the Jake Shugrue Gym near 78th & Hoover in South Central Los Angeles. they had started their pro careers within months of each other and were similar in build. Like Ramos, Crawford was a tall featherweight at 5'9" and was a knockout puncher. Another thing the two boxers had in common was natural ability and poor
training habits. In later years they would become stablemates when McCoy took over management of Crawford's career and the two fighters became friends. however, on October 5, 1967 the two brought no friendship into the Olympic Auditorium ring when the two met for the first of two great fights.
Mando had about an inch in height on Crawford and at the weigh-in came in nine pounds heavier, which is quite an advantage to a guy under 130 pounds. Before a sellout crowd of 10,500 fans, Frankie Crawford stepped on Ramos' toes, hit him low, thumbed him and opened cuts with head butts and elbows. I knew Crawford well and can guarantee you that Fritzie Zivic and Ace Hudkins had nothing on Frankie when it came to dirty fighting. However, Crawford beat him legit. It was Crawford who entered the ring in better shape and who scored an upset decision victory over Ramos. I remember that Frankie had exhausted himself so much fighting the heavier Ramos, he was given oxygen in the dressing room after the match.
Ramos had lost for the second time in three months and this was a loss that Mando would have to avenge or forever hold his peace. Mando turned nineteen a month after losing to Crawford and three months later, on February 1, 1968 he'd meet Crawford again in a rematch. Mando entered the ring in shape this time and won a unanimous decision over Crawford. Mando Ramos was now ready to get back on the road that would lead him to a world title.
A few months after beating Crawford, Ramos would score his biggest win to date by defeating World Jr. Lightweight champ Hiroshi Kobayashi of Japan in a ten round non-title fight. Ramos beat Kobayashi easily and as a result was rated the number one lightweight in the world by The Ring Magazine.
Ramos was 19-years-old and in his next fight would face Carlos "Teo" Cruz for the World Lightweight Championship. If Ramos could beat Cruz he'd not only be the youngest boxer ever to win the lightweight title, but would do so as a teenager.
Cruz was a clever champion from the Dominican Republic who had won the title by defeating a great champion in Carlos Ortiz. Ramos trained hard for Cruz and I remember that Aileen Eaton would need more room to hold the fight than at the 10,500 seat Olympic Auditorium or the 15,000 seat Los Angeles Sports
Arena. Eaton held the Cruz-Ramos lightweight title fight at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum along with a World Featherweight Championship bout between Ramos' stablemate, WBA Featherweight Champ Raul Rojas and challenger Sho Saijyo.
Cruz opened cuts over both of Ramos' eyes and won a close decision after fifteen rounds, but it was obvious that Mando could beat Cruz. McCoy refused to let Ramos rest and wanted to keep him active. Mando had fought Cruz on even terms throughout much of the fight and Aileen Eaton signed Cruz to
give Ramos a second shot at the title four months later.
After scoring KO's in two tune-up matches, Ramos challenged Cruz once again for the lightweight title on February 18, 1969. This time it was Ramos who battered Cruz and opened cuts over both eyes of the champion. Referee John Thomas, on the advice of ringside physician Dr, Bernard Schwartz, stopped
the bout in the eleventh round. Three months after his 20th birthday, Armando Ramos became the youngest boxer in history to win the World Lightweight Championship.
Three months after winning the title Ramos KO'ed little known Jerry Graci in a non-title fight in Hawaii. He then returned to Los Angeles for the first defense of his title, knocking out newly crowned Jr. Lightweight Champ Yoshiaki Numata of Japan in the seventh round at the L.A. Sports Arena.
On March 3, 1970, Ramos would defend his title for the second time against former Lightweight Champ Ismael Laguna of Panama. During the five months between his first title defense against Numata and the Laguna fight, Ramos had enjoyed all the perks of being a world champion. It was obvious from the
opening round that Mando Ramos was not ready for the skilled Panamanian. By the ninth round Mando was cut to ribbons and bleeding from cuts over both eyes. On the advice of ringside physician Dr. Bernard Schwartz, referee Larry Rozadilla stopped the fight. Laguna had taken the title from Ramos just
over a year later he had won it.
At the age of 21, Ramos had already won and lost the Lightweight Championship. It would be more than five months before Ramos would step into the ring again, and when he did, he faced former Featherweight Champ Sugar Ramos. Sugar Ramos had been fighting in the lightweight division since losing the featherweight title to Vicente Saldivar six years previous.
Ramos and Ramos engaged in one of the bloodiest battles I have ever seen. In the end it was Mando's fight but he left the ring with major cuts over both eyes. A couple of weeks later he underwent plastic surgery to remove the scar tissue in hopes that it would prolong his ring career.
After giving his skin four months to heal, Ramos would engage in a fight that was as important to him personally as it was professionally. He would be matched with his former stablemate Raul Rojas. Rojas was the former WBA Featherweight & Jr. Lightweight Champion and his criticism of Ramos was making headlines in Los Angeles sports pages. Mando trained harder than ever for this match.
On December 10, 1970 Ramos and Rojas would fight before a sellout crowd at the Olympic Auditorium. The match would be the highlight of an all-star card that also featured Frankie Crawford, welterweight prospect Armando Muniz and myself in a six round TV prelim.
I remember the weigh-in for this fight. It was at 11am. on the day of the match (today weigh-ins are held the night before a fight). All of the boxers were weighed-in on a scale set up inside the ring at the Olympic Auditorium. Frankie Crawford stepped onto the scale right after I was weighed and as we left the ring I asked Frankie about Mando's conditioning. Crawford said he's
never seen Mando in better shape and that he was going to destroy Rojas.
That night I opened the show with a unanimous decision win over Antonio Villanueva. In the next bout Armando Muniz remained unbeaten with a KO win. In the televised main event Frankie Crawford knocked out Jose Luis Martinez with a late blow that landed a second after the final bell. After Crawford's controversial win, Ramos and Rojas entered the ring.
The odds favored Ramos slightly but Rojas was a tough former world champ and there was bad blood between the two. In the sixth round, Ramos caught Rojas with a solid left hook flush on the jaw that put his former stablemate to sleep. Referee Dick Young didn't even bother to count.
Ismael Laguna had lost his lightweight championship to Ken Buchanan of Scotland. After Ramos KO'ed Rojas promoter Aileen Eaton signed Buchanan to defend his title against Ramos. The bout was scheduled for the Los Angeles Sports arena on February 12, 1971. I was also signed to fight on the undercard of the Buchanan-Ramos fight and would serve as a Buchanan sparring partner briefly. Less than a week prior to the fight Ramos pulled out claiming to have been injured in the gym. This would cost promoter Aileen Eaton a great deal of money and she was fortunate to get my stablemate Ruben Navarro to substitute for Ramos. Navarro was training for a fight the following month with Jimmy Robertson and was not quite in condition for a fifteen rounder. However, Navarro ended up flooring Buchanan before losing a close decision.
This was not the first time that Ramos had pulled out of an important match claiming to be injured or sick. Mando's problem had nothing to do with injury, it had to do with heroin addiction. Mando's party habits had taken control of his life was destroying his career.
Mando didn't fight again for another nine months and when he did I appeared on the undercard of that match as well. It was September 30, 1971 and Ramos would face my stablemate Ruben Navarro at the Olympic Auditorium. The winner of this match was guaranteed a shot at the vacant WBC Lightweight
Championship against Spain's Pedro Carrasco.
Mando had his hands full with Navarro and at the end of ten rounds the crowd was aware that Navarro had beaten Ramos. However, the judges saw it different and awarded Ramos a narrow split decision win.
Two months later Ramos would fight Carrasco in Spain for the WBC title but end up losing on disqualification in the 12th round after beating the Spanish fighter handily. Three months later a rematch would be held in Los Angeles and Ramos would win the title via a unanimous fifteen round decision. Mando had trained very hard for this match and looked the best I had seen him since
flattening Raul Rojas.
I remember driving Frankie Crawford to Mando's apartment in Belmont Shores a few weeks before this fight. Crawford and I had stopped in to visit Mando and the former champ was really focused. On the door to his refrigerator he had a photo of Carrasco set in the middle of a target. Mando's focus paid
off and Mando was once again a World Champion.
Ramos would defeat Carrassco a second time four months later and then signed to defend his title against Mexican Lightweight Champ Chango Carmona.
Between the last Carrassco fight and the Carmona fight, Ramos had fallen back on his old ways. After Ramos had pulled out of the Buchanan match the previous year, Aileen Eaton had a clause inserted into any contract with Ramos stating that if he were to pull out of the match for any reason he would be liable for a minimum of $50,000. to Eaton.
Less than a week before the Carmona match, Ramos was found early one morning laying half naked in the sand near his Belmont shores apartment. Mando had overdosed on heroin. the press never got word of this and I only heard it thru mutual friends. Mando Ramos was truly sick, however, he would have to honor his contract and go thru with the fight.
On September 15, 1972, Mando Ramos lost the WBC Lightweight Championship at the Los Angeles Coliseum and nearly lost his life. Carmona battered Ramos before knocking him out in the eighth round. Ramos could not make it to his feet following the knockout and had to be taken from the ring in a stretcher. The magic career of Mando Ramos was history.
It would be nearly a year before Ramos would fight again and when he did he was knocked out by Turi Pineda, a fighter that would not have lasted three rounds with Ramos in the past.
In 1974 Ramos headed to Germany where he won three fights in two weeks, before being KO'ed twice by Wolfgang Gans, a second rate German welterweight. He then went to Las Vegas where he was granted a license and lost a ten rounder to a prelim fighter with a losing record. After scoring a couple of close victories Mando Ramos fought Wayne Beale in what would be his last professional fight. Beale had a losing record and was somebody I had beaten easily a few years previous as an amateur. Beale knocked out Ramos in the second round.
Mando disappeared from sight for some time. Every once in awhile I would hear something about Ramos and it was never good. I was told he was strung out pretty bad and was homeless. I also heard that Mando's older brother Junior had died from a heroin overdose.
Then one day I heard that Mando had found himself and had been able to put together some clean time. He was said to be working in San Pedro as a long shoreman and had organized a youth boxing program called "B.A.A.D." - Boxers & Athletes Against Drugs.
About this time four years ago I was working as a lighting technician on the film "CON AIR". One day Carlos Palomino had come to visit some friends of his that were working on the set. I recognized Carlos and noticed that he had brought a friend with him. I didn't recognize the friend but there was something very familiar about him. I could tell the guy had been a fighter and noticed the guy was staring at me. In fact, I was staring at him and it appeared as if he were trying to remember my face. I finally got a chance to break away from my work and went over to say Hi to Carlos. As Palomino and I shook hands his friend stands up and extends his hand to me. He said "Hi, I'm Mando Ramos".
I would have never recognized Mando. He looked great but was a lot heavier than he used to be and had a mustache. I said "Mando, I'm Rick Farris . . . I didn't recognize you". We both began to laugh and tell old stories. We talked about the Olympic and our old friend Frankie Crawford who had died in the early 80's. Seeing Ramos made my day. What really made me happy was hearing that he had been clean & sober for more than a dozen years. He was happily married and life was in session again for Mando Ramos. Around his neck he had a gold chain with the letters "MR. BADD" inscribed on a charm. Mando told me that his young boxers had presented it to him as a Christmas
present the previous year in recognition of his program.
During the time Mando and Palomino were on the set, I watched people walk up to Carlos and introduce him as the former Welterweight champ. Carlos had done work in the film industry and was well known. I was shocked that nobody even looked at Ramos until Palomino and I told people who it was. Suddenly,
Mando Ramos fans appeared from everywhere. People would walk onto the set from other stages after hearing that Mando Ramos was on the lot. If I was unable to recognize Ramos after all the years it's understandable why other didn't either. But once they found out who it was he was the most popular thing on stage, more so than Palomino or Nicolas Cage.
That was the Mando Ramos I remember. Mando's career is long down the road but I have to tell you he still has that charisma. Mando Ramos has come off the canvas and proven himself a champion in life.
In 1965, promoters Cal & Aileen Eaton began promoting weekly televised boxing shows from the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. L.A. was loaded with boxing talent and the Eatons would parlay this talent into the most successful weekly boxing promotion in the world.
The Eatons hired veteran boxing figure Mickey Davies as matchmaker and Jimmy Lennon Sr. (The Voice of the Olympic Auditorium) was the ring announcer. The fights were televised every Thursday night on KTLA channel 5 from 8-to-10 pm.
with matchmaker Davies and a young Dick Enberg calling the action from ringside. It was a winning combination. However, it was the boxers that made "Boxing from the Olympic" the highest rated local TV production in Southern California.
A few months after things got started Cal Eaton passed away, leaving his widow Aileen with the responsibility of running the show. Aileen was not to be underestimated and she had no difficulty dealing in the tough world of professional boxing. To the managers she was known as a tough businesswoman and was nicknamed "Dragon Lady". However, she was like a mother to the boxers.
Eaton had the connections and resources to bring top name talent to Los Angeles to headline her boxing cards and often did so. However, she was also aware of the potential of local talent and focused her business on the development of these young fighters. For the next decade Aileen Eaton would help build the careers of many exceptional boxers and several would go on to win world championships.
The first World Champion to come from this group was one of the most exciting and charismatic to ever step into the ring at the 18th & Grand arena.
His name was Armando Ramos. Mando would become the youngest man to ever win the World Lightweight Championship.
Mando Ramos was a boxing prodigy. His father Ray Ramos had been a boxer and he taught his sons Junior and Mando how to box shortly after they had started walking. When Junior began boxing as an amateur Mando would follow his older brother to the gym. By the age of eight, Mando was competing in Jr. Golden Gloves tournaments in Los Angeles.
By the time Junior turned professional Mando was already gaining a rep at the gym. The tall, skinny teenager was outboxing a lot of pros and his punching power was no secret.
Mando Ramos had a gift, but he also had a curse. The gift Mando had would take him to the top of the world in boxing. However, the curse would take it all away from him before he ever had a chance to reach his prime as a boxer.
In the evening, Mando would work in his grandmother's Mexican restaurant washing dishes. He became friendly with the restaurant's bartender and this gave Mando access to all the booze he could want. It was the 60's and Mando was also known to indulge in other methods of getting high. Even so, Ramos was outclassing professional boxers in gym workouts and Junior decided it was time to hook his brother up with a top trainer.
Junior Ramos contacted Jackie McCoy, a former bantamweight contender who had fought Manuel Ortiz in the late 40's. McCoy was one of the best manager/trainers in boxing and had helped guide Don Jordan to the welterweight title in the late 50's. McCoy had heard of the kid but wanted to see for himself. What he saw convinced him that Mando Ramos was something special.
McCoy had a featherweight scheduled to fight in a main event the following week and he put the 16-year-old Ramos in with his boxer for a sparring match. Ramos knocked McCoy's fighter out in the opening round. McCoy was excited about what he saw and called his partner, Lee Praila, and told him to meet him at the gym the next day to discuss future plans for their new prospect.
McCoy went to work and fine tuned Ramos' natural talent, molding him into a boxer that was too good for the amateurs in Los Angeles, or anywhere else for that matter. Amateur boxers would not fight Mando and it was decided that in the best interest of Ramos he should turn professional. McCoy wanted Mando to concentrate on boxing and keep him away from the bad influence of his friends.
However, there was one problem. The California State Athletic Commission required a boxer to be 18-years-old to get a professional boxing license. Mando wasn't yet seventeen. McCoy feared that with no amateur competition, Ramos' career might succumb to his love of women and the party scene before it ever had a chance to get off the ground.
McCoy had a long talk with Mando and the skinny teenager promised to buckle down and work if given the opportunity to fight pro. With the help of a phony birth certificate, Mando Ramos made his professional boxing debut just two days after his 17th birthday.
Armando Ramos had his first pro fight at the Olympic Auditorium on November 17, 1965. In a one-sided match Ramos won a unanimous four round decision over Berlin Roberts. Two weeks later he KO'ed tough Chuey Loera in the second round and the fans were already taking notice of the talented kid from Long Beach. Ramos was nearly 5'10" and weighed 126 pounds. He was also strikingly handsome and became a favorite of the Los Angeles boxing fans watching in person or on TV.
Ramos had only been seen in two pro fights but Aileen Eaton was already getting letters from fans requesting to see more of this kid. Mando would start 1966 with three consecutive knockouts followed by a unanimous decision over Bosco Basileo in a six rounder.
Ramos was 6-0 with 4 knockouts when McCoy and Eaton decided to put him in his first ten round main event. His opponent would be a tough veteran named Joey Aquilar. The Olympic Auditorium, which held nearly 11,000 fans, was packed for Ramos' main event debut which was being broadcast live on television. Everybody thought that Ramos was amazing for an 18-year-old and had no idea that he was only seventeen. Ramos battered Aquilar, knocking the tough Mexican down three times before referee George Latka stopped the fight in the eighth round. A star was born.
Two weeks later Ramos headlined again at the Olympic and knocked out Ray Coleman in the 6th round. Two weeks later he iced Manny Linson in two rounds. By the end of 1966 Ramos was 14-0 (10 KO's) and ready to take another step up the ladder in the featherweight division.
Ramos was now an established main eventer and could sell out the Olympic within a few days of announcing that he was scheduled to fight. Eaton would no longer televise Ramos' fights. Mando's fights would now follow a televised ten rounder and if you wanted to see Ramos fight you would have to drive down to the Olympic and buy a ticket. And this is exactly what people
did.
Mando quickly became one of the biggest box-office attractions in the history of Los Angeles boxing. His popularity was being compared with L.A.'s last box office Golden Boy, Art Aragon from the 50's. It was about this time that the press discovered that L.A.'s newest Golden Boy had only just turned eighteen, making his success even more incredible.
Two months after Mando's 18th birthday he packed the Olympic Auditorium when he took on his first world rated opponent, unbeaten Ray Echevarria. Echevarria was the California Featherweight Champion and rated among the top ten featherweights in the world by the Ring Magazine.
Ramos out boxed, out punched and completely out fought the tough Echevarria, winning a unanimous ten round decision. Two months later Ramos would face another tough test in veteran Pete Gonzales, whom had beaten some of the best in the world and was also rated in the top ten by The Ring. Ramos again showed
his stuff and won a unanimous ten round decision over Gonzales.
Mando was growing and could no longer make 126 pounds. In his next bout he would move up into the jr. lightweight class and take on unbeaten Len Kesey of Eugene, Oregon. Ramos easily knocked out Kesey in the fifth round with a brutal left hook to the liver. Now 17-0 (11 KO's) Ramos would face his biggest test to date in Korea's Suh Kang-IL.
Less than twenty months after his pro debut Ramos was eighteen years old and getting rich. everybody wanted to be close to Mando and he loved the attention, not to mention the women. It was no secret that Mando was keeping late hours and McCoy was upset. The fight with Suh Kang IL was scheduled just two weeks after Ramos' KO of Len Kesey and Mando was confident. So confident that he missed several workouts prior to the match and showed up at the gym once with a hangover.
Suh Kang IL held victories over two world champions and on July 6, 1967 he handed Mando Ramos his first loss as a professional. Two nights before the fight, Ramos had gotten so wasted at a 4th of July party that he was arrested for drunk driving on the way home. L.A.'s newest Golden Boy was no longer unbeaten.
The following month McCoy took Ramos to Sacramento where he KO'ed Alex Luna in two. Ramos returned to L.A. and a few weeks later knocked out Eliseo Estrada in five. Mando was growing into a lightweight but before getting much bigger, fans in Los Angeles were begging to see him fight another hot featherweight making a name for himself at the Olympic, "Irish" Frankie Crawford.
Crawford and Ramos were not strangers, as both worked out at the Jake Shugrue Gym near 78th & Hoover in South Central Los Angeles. they had started their pro careers within months of each other and were similar in build. Like Ramos, Crawford was a tall featherweight at 5'9" and was a knockout puncher. Another thing the two boxers had in common was natural ability and poor
training habits. In later years they would become stablemates when McCoy took over management of Crawford's career and the two fighters became friends. however, on October 5, 1967 the two brought no friendship into the Olympic Auditorium ring when the two met for the first of two great fights.
Mando had about an inch in height on Crawford and at the weigh-in came in nine pounds heavier, which is quite an advantage to a guy under 130 pounds. Before a sellout crowd of 10,500 fans, Frankie Crawford stepped on Ramos' toes, hit him low, thumbed him and opened cuts with head butts and elbows. I knew Crawford well and can guarantee you that Fritzie Zivic and Ace Hudkins had nothing on Frankie when it came to dirty fighting. However, Crawford beat him legit. It was Crawford who entered the ring in better shape and who scored an upset decision victory over Ramos. I remember that Frankie had exhausted himself so much fighting the heavier Ramos, he was given oxygen in the dressing room after the match.
Ramos had lost for the second time in three months and this was a loss that Mando would have to avenge or forever hold his peace. Mando turned nineteen a month after losing to Crawford and three months later, on February 1, 1968 he'd meet Crawford again in a rematch. Mando entered the ring in shape this time and won a unanimous decision over Crawford. Mando Ramos was now ready to get back on the road that would lead him to a world title.
A few months after beating Crawford, Ramos would score his biggest win to date by defeating World Jr. Lightweight champ Hiroshi Kobayashi of Japan in a ten round non-title fight. Ramos beat Kobayashi easily and as a result was rated the number one lightweight in the world by The Ring Magazine.
Ramos was 19-years-old and in his next fight would face Carlos "Teo" Cruz for the World Lightweight Championship. If Ramos could beat Cruz he'd not only be the youngest boxer ever to win the lightweight title, but would do so as a teenager.
Cruz was a clever champion from the Dominican Republic who had won the title by defeating a great champion in Carlos Ortiz. Ramos trained hard for Cruz and I remember that Aileen Eaton would need more room to hold the fight than at the 10,500 seat Olympic Auditorium or the 15,000 seat Los Angeles Sports
Arena. Eaton held the Cruz-Ramos lightweight title fight at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum along with a World Featherweight Championship bout between Ramos' stablemate, WBA Featherweight Champ Raul Rojas and challenger Sho Saijyo.
Cruz opened cuts over both of Ramos' eyes and won a close decision after fifteen rounds, but it was obvious that Mando could beat Cruz. McCoy refused to let Ramos rest and wanted to keep him active. Mando had fought Cruz on even terms throughout much of the fight and Aileen Eaton signed Cruz to
give Ramos a second shot at the title four months later.
After scoring KO's in two tune-up matches, Ramos challenged Cruz once again for the lightweight title on February 18, 1969. This time it was Ramos who battered Cruz and opened cuts over both eyes of the champion. Referee John Thomas, on the advice of ringside physician Dr, Bernard Schwartz, stopped
the bout in the eleventh round. Three months after his 20th birthday, Armando Ramos became the youngest boxer in history to win the World Lightweight Championship.
Three months after winning the title Ramos KO'ed little known Jerry Graci in a non-title fight in Hawaii. He then returned to Los Angeles for the first defense of his title, knocking out newly crowned Jr. Lightweight Champ Yoshiaki Numata of Japan in the seventh round at the L.A. Sports Arena.
On March 3, 1970, Ramos would defend his title for the second time against former Lightweight Champ Ismael Laguna of Panama. During the five months between his first title defense against Numata and the Laguna fight, Ramos had enjoyed all the perks of being a world champion. It was obvious from the
opening round that Mando Ramos was not ready for the skilled Panamanian. By the ninth round Mando was cut to ribbons and bleeding from cuts over both eyes. On the advice of ringside physician Dr. Bernard Schwartz, referee Larry Rozadilla stopped the fight. Laguna had taken the title from Ramos just
over a year later he had won it.
At the age of 21, Ramos had already won and lost the Lightweight Championship. It would be more than five months before Ramos would step into the ring again, and when he did, he faced former Featherweight Champ Sugar Ramos. Sugar Ramos had been fighting in the lightweight division since losing the featherweight title to Vicente Saldivar six years previous.
Ramos and Ramos engaged in one of the bloodiest battles I have ever seen. In the end it was Mando's fight but he left the ring with major cuts over both eyes. A couple of weeks later he underwent plastic surgery to remove the scar tissue in hopes that it would prolong his ring career.
After giving his skin four months to heal, Ramos would engage in a fight that was as important to him personally as it was professionally. He would be matched with his former stablemate Raul Rojas. Rojas was the former WBA Featherweight & Jr. Lightweight Champion and his criticism of Ramos was making headlines in Los Angeles sports pages. Mando trained harder than ever for this match.
On December 10, 1970 Ramos and Rojas would fight before a sellout crowd at the Olympic Auditorium. The match would be the highlight of an all-star card that also featured Frankie Crawford, welterweight prospect Armando Muniz and myself in a six round TV prelim.
I remember the weigh-in for this fight. It was at 11am. on the day of the match (today weigh-ins are held the night before a fight). All of the boxers were weighed-in on a scale set up inside the ring at the Olympic Auditorium. Frankie Crawford stepped onto the scale right after I was weighed and as we left the ring I asked Frankie about Mando's conditioning. Crawford said he's
never seen Mando in better shape and that he was going to destroy Rojas.
That night I opened the show with a unanimous decision win over Antonio Villanueva. In the next bout Armando Muniz remained unbeaten with a KO win. In the televised main event Frankie Crawford knocked out Jose Luis Martinez with a late blow that landed a second after the final bell. After Crawford's controversial win, Ramos and Rojas entered the ring.
The odds favored Ramos slightly but Rojas was a tough former world champ and there was bad blood between the two. In the sixth round, Ramos caught Rojas with a solid left hook flush on the jaw that put his former stablemate to sleep. Referee Dick Young didn't even bother to count.
Ismael Laguna had lost his lightweight championship to Ken Buchanan of Scotland. After Ramos KO'ed Rojas promoter Aileen Eaton signed Buchanan to defend his title against Ramos. The bout was scheduled for the Los Angeles Sports arena on February 12, 1971. I was also signed to fight on the undercard of the Buchanan-Ramos fight and would serve as a Buchanan sparring partner briefly. Less than a week prior to the fight Ramos pulled out claiming to have been injured in the gym. This would cost promoter Aileen Eaton a great deal of money and she was fortunate to get my stablemate Ruben Navarro to substitute for Ramos. Navarro was training for a fight the following month with Jimmy Robertson and was not quite in condition for a fifteen rounder. However, Navarro ended up flooring Buchanan before losing a close decision.
This was not the first time that Ramos had pulled out of an important match claiming to be injured or sick. Mando's problem had nothing to do with injury, it had to do with heroin addiction. Mando's party habits had taken control of his life was destroying his career.
Mando didn't fight again for another nine months and when he did I appeared on the undercard of that match as well. It was September 30, 1971 and Ramos would face my stablemate Ruben Navarro at the Olympic Auditorium. The winner of this match was guaranteed a shot at the vacant WBC Lightweight
Championship against Spain's Pedro Carrasco.
Mando had his hands full with Navarro and at the end of ten rounds the crowd was aware that Navarro had beaten Ramos. However, the judges saw it different and awarded Ramos a narrow split decision win.
Two months later Ramos would fight Carrasco in Spain for the WBC title but end up losing on disqualification in the 12th round after beating the Spanish fighter handily. Three months later a rematch would be held in Los Angeles and Ramos would win the title via a unanimous fifteen round decision. Mando had trained very hard for this match and looked the best I had seen him since
flattening Raul Rojas.
I remember driving Frankie Crawford to Mando's apartment in Belmont Shores a few weeks before this fight. Crawford and I had stopped in to visit Mando and the former champ was really focused. On the door to his refrigerator he had a photo of Carrasco set in the middle of a target. Mando's focus paid
off and Mando was once again a World Champion.
Ramos would defeat Carrassco a second time four months later and then signed to defend his title against Mexican Lightweight Champ Chango Carmona.
Between the last Carrassco fight and the Carmona fight, Ramos had fallen back on his old ways. After Ramos had pulled out of the Buchanan match the previous year, Aileen Eaton had a clause inserted into any contract with Ramos stating that if he were to pull out of the match for any reason he would be liable for a minimum of $50,000. to Eaton.
Less than a week before the Carmona match, Ramos was found early one morning laying half naked in the sand near his Belmont shores apartment. Mando had overdosed on heroin. the press never got word of this and I only heard it thru mutual friends. Mando Ramos was truly sick, however, he would have to honor his contract and go thru with the fight.
On September 15, 1972, Mando Ramos lost the WBC Lightweight Championship at the Los Angeles Coliseum and nearly lost his life. Carmona battered Ramos before knocking him out in the eighth round. Ramos could not make it to his feet following the knockout and had to be taken from the ring in a stretcher. The magic career of Mando Ramos was history.
It would be nearly a year before Ramos would fight again and when he did he was knocked out by Turi Pineda, a fighter that would not have lasted three rounds with Ramos in the past.
In 1974 Ramos headed to Germany where he won three fights in two weeks, before being KO'ed twice by Wolfgang Gans, a second rate German welterweight. He then went to Las Vegas where he was granted a license and lost a ten rounder to a prelim fighter with a losing record. After scoring a couple of close victories Mando Ramos fought Wayne Beale in what would be his last professional fight. Beale had a losing record and was somebody I had beaten easily a few years previous as an amateur. Beale knocked out Ramos in the second round.
Mando disappeared from sight for some time. Every once in awhile I would hear something about Ramos and it was never good. I was told he was strung out pretty bad and was homeless. I also heard that Mando's older brother Junior had died from a heroin overdose.
Then one day I heard that Mando had found himself and had been able to put together some clean time. He was said to be working in San Pedro as a long shoreman and had organized a youth boxing program called "B.A.A.D." - Boxers & Athletes Against Drugs.
About this time four years ago I was working as a lighting technician on the film "CON AIR". One day Carlos Palomino had come to visit some friends of his that were working on the set. I recognized Carlos and noticed that he had brought a friend with him. I didn't recognize the friend but there was something very familiar about him. I could tell the guy had been a fighter and noticed the guy was staring at me. In fact, I was staring at him and it appeared as if he were trying to remember my face. I finally got a chance to break away from my work and went over to say Hi to Carlos. As Palomino and I shook hands his friend stands up and extends his hand to me. He said "Hi, I'm Mando Ramos".
I would have never recognized Mando. He looked great but was a lot heavier than he used to be and had a mustache. I said "Mando, I'm Rick Farris . . . I didn't recognize you". We both began to laugh and tell old stories. We talked about the Olympic and our old friend Frankie Crawford who had died in the early 80's. Seeing Ramos made my day. What really made me happy was hearing that he had been clean & sober for more than a dozen years. He was happily married and life was in session again for Mando Ramos. Around his neck he had a gold chain with the letters "MR. BADD" inscribed on a charm. Mando told me that his young boxers had presented it to him as a Christmas
present the previous year in recognition of his program.
During the time Mando and Palomino were on the set, I watched people walk up to Carlos and introduce him as the former Welterweight champ. Carlos had done work in the film industry and was well known. I was shocked that nobody even looked at Ramos until Palomino and I told people who it was. Suddenly,
Mando Ramos fans appeared from everywhere. People would walk onto the set from other stages after hearing that Mando Ramos was on the lot. If I was unable to recognize Ramos after all the years it's understandable why other didn't either. But once they found out who it was he was the most popular thing on stage, more so than Palomino or Nicolas Cage.
That was the Mando Ramos I remember. Mando's career is long down the road but I have to tell you he still has that charisma. Mando Ramos has come off the canvas and proven himself a champion in life.
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