Classic American West Coast Boxing

[dagosd2000]

I saw Napoles and Rodriguez train. Napoles in Tijuana,Louie in San Diego. I don't think San Diegans realized what was happenig when Louie was here. Perhaps he wasn't that popular. Didn't have name recognition.

When Jose went into a gym,it was almost as exciting as watching him fight. Both Cubans looked SO professional. The way they walked into the gym with the towels and robe draped over their shoulders. Jose had that green robe with "Napoles "written in block letters on the back.

Louie was more subdued in San Diego. I don't think he knew too many people. But he was all pro in there. The carefull way he wrapped his hands. The way Sarria knew exactly the way he wanted that wrap. All second nature. Louie didn't pay much attention to the sparring partners he was training with. They were there to make him work,and if they were dogging it,he'd let them know. He told them what he wanted from them.

Napoles' camp in Mexico was always spirited and energized. He'd interact with the crowd. His smile was arresting. To watch Jose Napoles shadow box in the ring or in front of the mirror put an audience in a trance.

You can only imagine all the experience those two brought with them from Cuba. Rodriguez fought Paret in Cuba. Napoles had 114 amateur fights. Consumate pros. Just as interesting to watch in training or eating a steak. In the ring,it was boxing 101 with magic.

[dagosd2000]

Rick,the tickets arrived. I'm revving up the motor.

[Rick Farris]

Rick,the tickets arrived. I'm revving up the motor.

Great, Rog. Our Boxrec thread will be well represented at the WBHOF Banquet. You, Frank, Scartissue, Randy and myself. I'm really looking forward to this! Maybe Pug's Uncle John, the Irishman that crashed Mando Ramos's memorial will make an appearance? Who knows? -Ricardo

[Bobbin & Weavin]

Photos and caption courtesy of Bruce Smith

dagosd2000=Post subject: Re: Classic American West Coast BoxingPosted: Thu Sep 11, 2008 There used to be a middle weight who boxed in the area named Victor Basilio. I think he was originally from Brawley. When Louie Rodriguez was to fight Rafa Gutierrez here in San Diego,Basilio was on the undercard. Rodriguez was working for a shot at Benvenuti's title. I posted this before about the actual fight which looked a little funny. Louie getting the shit kicked out of him for 5 rounds. Then a big left hook in the 6th puts Rafa to sleep. My father goes up to Angelo and says,"You've got your shot" and they go into thr locker room. So much for that.

Basilio trained with Rodriguez. Louie seemed moody down here. He didn't have any one to work with that would push him. Angelo arrived the final week. I remember Jose Napoles came to camp. The Cubans were very close. They had to fight the Castro stigma along with their opponents.

Victor Basilio got a lot of work with Rodriguez. One day they put on an exhibition in Mexicali. Both camps went there for the day. The way I heard it was Basilo was sparring with Louie. Both boys are "marking" their punches. Finally Basilio is looking at Rodriguez and says to himself that Louie looks small for a middle weight. Kind of frail. They're working in there and Basilio decides to throw a good right hand. Well he catches Louie with it and he staggers back. Now Basilio comes forward.

I heard Basilio tell this back in San Diego. He said he wanted to land some more,but the next thing he saw was the sky! Basilio was flat on his back. He couldn't for the life of him understand what happened. He said Rodriguez is standing over him and told him that the understanding was we were going to "pull" our punches. Then you had to get cute. That's why you were looking up at the clouds. Do that again and you can go home.


Dagos,
Here are some pictures I took of Rodriguez & Gutierrez when they were training at Newman & Herman's Gym for their San Francisco rematch in 1971; Gutierrez won this fight by a sixth round KO. Basilio also fought on the card losing by KO to Ralph McCoy in two. In the picture showing Rodriguez sparring he is doing so with Kim Booker nephew of WBOF member Eddie Booker. Kim had a decent career spanning the late sixties and early seventies. Booker beat Orlando de la Fuentes in a ten round bout on the same card.
Bobbin & Weavin

Good candid shots Frank. Real good. Bobbin,you've got any more shots like that?

Roger,
I do have more pictures that I am rediscovering since becoming infactuated with this thread. I have been up in the attic found a bunch of old fight posters, more pictures and more fun stuff that I will continue to share. Amoung the pictures I found with the ones of Luis Rodriguez was some when Emile Griffith and Curtis Cokes were in San Francisco for fights & trained at Newman's Gym; those were all taken with instamatic cameras but I later got into photography & took a fair amount of B&Ws of George Foreman training & Ray Lunny III which I have to have printed since they are only in proof sheet form. I will continue to share mine if you promise to continue to share your great stories & pictures about boxing & your very interesting family.
Bobbin & Weavin
Bruce

[bennie]

Ken Buchanan Today


"Kenny"

By Diego

Sheer artistry, Rog.

[kikibalt]

Shane Mosley and Frankie Baltazar...2007

[kikibalt]

Joe Rivers -AKA- Jose Ybarra

[bennie]

Prescott took part in two classics with Billy Walker in London. The Brummie had a lot of talent and certainly proved he was better than Billy.

[kikibalt]

Boxer Leach Cross (R) and his partner sparing in outdoor ring.
Los Angeles, Calif., circa 1921

[bennie]

Shane Mosley and Frankie Baltazar...2007

Nice shot. Is Frankie saying, "Shane, I'm glad you beat De La Hoya twice"?

[kikibalt]

Shane Mosley and Frankie Baltazar...2007

Nice shot. Is Frankie saying, "Shane, I'm glad you beat De La Hoya twice"?

Yes, he is, Bennie...

[bennie]

The De La Hoya fan in the background doesn't look too impressed.

[kikibalt]

Frankie, Tony and I, at my induction into the
"California Boxing Hall of Fame", 2007

[bennie]

Frankie, Tony and I, at my induction into the
"California Boxing Hall of Fame", 2007

What is Frank Jnr saying, Frankie?

[kikibalt]

The De La Hoya fan in the background doesn't look too impressed.

So I notices, good eye, Bennie...

[kikibalt]

Frankie, Tony and I, at my induction into the
"California Boxing Hall of Fame", 2007

What is Frank Jnr saying, Frankie?

He is saying, "My dad don't know nothing, who is he, what is he doing here?"

[bennie]

Veterans Ricardo "El Matador" Mayorga and "Sugar" Shane Mosley square up in a light-middleweight 12-rounder in California on September 27.
The brash, fast-living, 34-year-old Mayorga was considered finished when Oscar De La Hoya outclassed him in six rounds in Las Vegas in 2006 but the Nicaraguan wildman came back against an equally brat-like Fernando Vargas late last year and looked pretty good in taking a 12-round decision over the "Ferocious" one, dropping Vargas twice to earn this payday.
Mosley, 36, holds two stoppage wins over Vargas and two decisions over De La Hoya, so obviously goes in as favourite, although he comes off a (credible) points loss to Puerto Rican star Miguel Cotto in a bruising 12-rounder last November for the WBA welterweight title in Madison Square Garden. Weight may have a role to play: Mayorga was up at super-middleweight against Vargas last year whereas Mosley was down at welter for Cotto (of course) and will be comfortable at light-middle. Mosley is also on home turf in California.
Slick and stiff-hitting, the American is chasing a showdown with Mexican iron man Antonio Margarito and ultimately looks too sharp for the strong, reckless if undeniably dangerous Mayorga.
Mosley takes a decision.

[kikibalt]

Ingemar Johansson & Murray Rose, Assoicated Press Writer.
The Stock Club New York City Circa 1960.

[dagosd2000]

Ken Buchanan Today


"Kenny"

By Diego

Sheer artistry, Rog.

ThanksBennie
The pictures I saw of the fighting Buchanan in his stance didn't catch my eye like the present day Kenny. He looks sad in these recent shots. Bennie is he OK? Did I miss something about him on an earlier post? Very powerfull,yet sad expressin.

[dagosd2000]

Frankie, Tony and I, at my induction into the
"California Boxing Hall of Fame", 2007

Hey Frank
Is Junior singing?

[kikibalt]

Frankie, Tony and I, at my induction into the
"California Boxing Hall of Fame", 2007

Hey Frank
Is Junior singing?

Yeah! and boy can he sing.....

[kikibalt]

Prescott took part in two classics with Billy Walker in London. The Brummie had a lot of talent and certainly proved he was better than Billy.

Bennie,

Did you see those fights? if so what you tell us about them.

[kikibalt]

Tequila helped fuel boxer Joel Casamayor's defection to U.S.

Matt Sayles / AP
Boxer Joel Casamayor, above, will fight Juan Manuel Marquez in a lightweight bout on Saturday in Las Vegas.
Two weeks before he was scheduled to box for Cuba in the 1996 Olympics, Casamayor escaped an unhappy training camp in Guadalajara.
Bill Dwyre

LAS VEGAS -- For Cuban boxer Joel Casamayor, coming to America was more happenstance than political. It was more about tequila than tactics.

Casamayor is 37 now, 12 years removed from the international intrigue that surrounded his defection two weeks before he was to box for his second gold medal in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

He has been a good pro, especially effective at 135 pounds. He has lived in Miami since his escape from Cuba, has won a couple of titles in the alphabet-soup world of prize fighting, and will carry a 36-3-1 record into tonight's matchup with popular Mexican Juan Manual Marquez, who is 48-4-1. Since Marquez is 34, this is probably a boxing finale -- grand or otherwise -- for one or both.

So that makes the retelling of Casamayor's defection story somewhat more fitting.

It was two weeks before the start of the Atlanta Olympics. The Cuban boxing team, which had dominated the tournament in 1992 in Barcelona and had gotten a gold medal from Casamayor at 118 pounds, was training in Guadalajara.

By his own account, Casamayor was not a happy camper. For his gold in Barcelona, the Cuban government had given him a bicycle. He had been exposed enough to the rest of the world to know that Soviet gold medalists got cars and apartments and Americans filled the pocketbooks of their golden people and put them on Wheaties boxes and TV.

Casamayor sold his bicycle to buy a pig for his family.

So when things went badly at the Mexican training camp, the Cubans insisting he fight at 118 again, even though he was nowhere near that weight with two weeks to go, he feared being sent back to Cuba, his career over.

"I would be cleaning backyards," he says.

With no clue what to do, he went to the house of a friend, watched a telecast of the first fight between Macho Camacho and Roberto Duran and drank lots of tequila. That, of course, furthered his weight problem.

He returned late that night to Cuban camp and was met at the door by the head trainer, Alcides Saragusa, who marched him directly to the scale. He weighed 135 pounds and was, for all intents, a dead man in the eyes of Cuban sports officials.

"I laid in bed wide awake," Casamayor says. "I waited until everybody was asleep. I knew I couldn't go back to Cuba. Then I snuck out."

He was hidden by his friend from Guadalajara, and moved from home to home, deeper and deeper into the city, as Mexican police, not wanting this high-profile mess to attract big headlines in their country, pledged full cooperation with Cuba.

At the same time Casamayor disappeared, so did world champion Ramon Garbey, a light-heavyweight who many thought would become the next Teofilo Stevenson, a legendary Cuban Olympic star.

Casamayor found his way to Garbey, and Casamayor's Mexican friend got them both to the border at El Centro, where they declared their intentions to defect and were put in holding cells.

Enter Bob Arum, then as now an internationally known boxing promoter.

"There was a guy from the Dominican Republic," Arum recalls, "and he was telling me how this Garbey was the next great heavyweight, and I had heard a little about him. So I got a good immigration lawyer, got them out of San Diego and signed a contract with Garbey.

"I remember, there was a little guy who came with him in the deal. It was kind of like, you hook the big fish, and there was a little one, hanging on. So you keep them both."

The little fish was Casamayor who, along with Garbey, spent his first month in the United States, living unlike most defectors. He and Garbey lived in a suit in Bally's in Las Vegas.

Arum says Garbey, under contract with him and working out so Arum could get him in a fight, immediately found the lure of females and alcohol in his new environment too much.

"He went insane," Arum says.

Then, one day, Garbey and Casamayor went away.

"They were just gone," Arum says. "We went to the hotel and everything had been cleaned out. They just disappeared, and we were very concerned, for maybe a week or more."

Then, he found out that Garbey and the little fish, Casamayor, had been spirited off to Miami by a man named Luis DeCubas. Arum agrees that the fighters would be more comfortable in Miami, but didn't agree that DeCubas could steal away a fighter he had under contract.

Lawsuits were filed, DeCubas eventually paid Arum for his trouble and life went on, Garbey fighting with mixed results for DeCubas and, according to Arum and Casamayor, never really straying from his choice of parties over training.

Arum has no time for Garbey, and refers to DeCubas, whose son of the same name now manages Casamayor, as a "scumbag" and a "wannabe promoter." But he says his impression of Casamayor is that he has turned out to be "a nice guy who has stayed on the straight and narrow well enough to have a good career."

Casamayor has gotten most of his family, but not all of it, out of Cuba. That includes paying for a successful boat run a year ago that brought his mother, brother and 16-year-old daughter to Miami.

Most likely, there is one prized possession he will never get back.

"I had a trophy case, with 200 trophies on the wall," Casamayor says. "They came into my home after I was gone and took one thing out. The gold medal. It is in a museum now."

He shakes his head, smiles wistfully, and adds one more word.

"Fidel," he says.

Dwyre can be reached at [email protected]. For previous columns, go to latimes.com/dwyre.

[kikibalt]

For Rick

Los Angeles history -- noir

The Los Angeles Conservancy is sponsoring a one-day tour of sites titled "L.A. NOIR-chitecture, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Nov. 9. The locations have become famous in noir fiction and film and include the Formosa Cafe (James Ellroy's "L.A. Confidential"), Warner Bros. Studios (Dashiel Hammett's "Maltese Falcon"), the Parva-Sed-Apta Apartments (Nathanael West's "Day of the Locust") and Southern Pacific Terminal in Glendale (James M. Cain's "Double Indemnity"). People on the tour will drive themselves from one spot to another and go on tours led by docents. Tickets are $30, $25 for Conservancy members.

The tour is being produced in partnership with the Department of Cultural Affairs as part of the Big Read program of the National Endowment for the Arts and focuses on Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon," which is set in San Francisco.

Cultural Affairs is showing "Maltese Falcon" on Nov. 21-22. Venues are the Barnsdall Gallery Theater in Hollywood, the Los Angeles Theater Center in downtown Los Angeles and the Warner Grand in San Pedro. The agency plans a showing at the Warner Grand with appearances by an unidentified Hammett scholar and members of Hammett's family.

[dagosd2000]

TACITOS

"So you guys are hungry?"
"Just some tacos. Nothing too heavy."
We took the boys to Mexicali for an amateur tournament. Me and Neto ,who trained the kids. I was to work in the corner with Neto. We drove in the van. Me and Neto and the three boys. We arrived in Mexicali in the late afternoon. In the morning,we'd drive to the Auditorium to weigh the boys in. It was a regional tournament. We felt Oscar would come through winning his division. He was a light weight. But the boys were hungry now.They wanted tacos.

I blame myself. I always liked to eat off the carts. The others did too. Neto was OK with it. We really didn't think nothing of it. I wasn't that familiar with Mexicali. One taco stand was like another. I stopped the van by a taco stand near the river that funneled off from the All American Canal. There was a pretty good crowd in front of the stand so I figured the food was good. We piled out and as soon as we stood in front,we were being handed tacos "con todo." I smelled something. I cuoldn't tell what,but it smelled like some kind of chemicals. The odor was coming from the river that was in back of the taco stand. We began eating,but that smell bothered me.It made me a little dizzy. I wished I had stopped somewhere else,but the boys were in a feeding frenzy. I wasn't worried about any of them making weight,but I wished that I hadn't stopped there. The smell from the river made me lose my appetite.

We booked ourselves into a nice hotel a few blocks from the Auditorium. I figured we could walk to the "weigh in" in the morning. I'll never forget what happened that evening. Me and Neto are playing "Hearts" when Oscar comes running in from the front room. His face is contorted. He's clutching down below and groaning. Sweat is pouring down his face.
"Que pasa Chico?,I asked. I dropped my cards.
Oscar was in such pain he couldn't answer. The other boys came running into the room behind him. I went down to the front desk. The desk clerk called a doctor. Oscar was curled up on the bed groaning and crying. He was scared. We all were.
The doctor came up to the room. We stood behiund him as he felt Oscar's pulse.
"Que comio?"asked the doctor.
"Tacitos," I answered.
"Donde?",countered the doctor.
"Por el rio."
The doctor made a sigh.He then tapped Oscar's sides.He then took out a big needle from his bag and broke an ampule of something. He drew what was in the ampule into the needle. The doctor said it was for the pain. He also made Oscar drink something. He said Oscar would throw up after this.

Well Oscar didn't fight the next day. In fact Oscar never fought again. He felt better in the morning,but was too weak to fight. None of the other two boys made it into the second round. We started back to Tijuana after they were eliminated. Oscar was still woozy on the trip back. When he arrived home he bagan to run a fever. I went back to San Diego.

The next time I saw Oscar was about a year later. His face was pock marked and he'd lost weight.
"Como sientas?"I asked him.
He said he felt all right. He told me he had given up boxing. Then he said whatever he had that day never fully left his body. I asked him if he'd seen the doctor again. He told me that the doctor said he was poisoned. Poisoned by some chemicals that were in that river by that taco stand in Mexicali. The chemicals were in his liver he said.

I thought about how many people eat at that stand. We all did that afternoon. Only Oscar got sick. But maybe the sickness was in all of us and we'd feel it later.
I asked Oscar what he wanted to do.
"I'm hungry for tacos."
"Donde?",amigo.
"Any place that's not near a river," he answered.