BoxRec

kikibalt wrote:
Sugar Ray Robinson & Mike Mazurki
Circa 1968
"Land of the Giants"

kikibalt wrote:
Jerry Quarry vs Tony Doyle

kikibalt wrote:Tim Rutten:
Requiem for a boxing town
The recent deaths of two boxing greats remind us of a forgotten era when the sport flourished in L.A.

It was a melancholy thing to see the face of handsome young Mando Ramos, once the lightweight boxing champion of the world, staring up off the obituary page of Monday's Times. He was just 20 when he won the crown, and just 59 when he died of natural causes in his sleep Sunday. More than 20 years ago, he waged a successful fight with alcohol and drug addiction, but diabetes and a back injury suffered while working as a longshoreman had sapped his health in recent years.

He was the second Los Angeles boxing great to die this year. Art Aragon -- who in the late 1940s and '50s drew crowds in the tens of thousands and Hollywood actresses in droves -- died in March at the age of 80.

There was a time when Ramos and Aragon were sporting names as resonant as Kobe Bryant or Sandy Koufax, but their quiet passing is a sobering reminder that Los Angeles is a city of many histories, each with its own celebrities. It isn't well understood -- or even much recalled these days -- that L.A. always was one of the world's great boxing cities.

Since 1906, when the Irish American Tommy Burns defeated Marvin Hart for the heavyweight title in the city's first important championship fight, L.A. has produced legions of world-class boxers, including Jim Jefferies, Enrique Bolanos, Aragon, Ramos, Bobby Chacon, the Lopez brothers (Ernie and Danny), Armando Muniz, Shane Mosely and Oscar De La Hoya.

Among aficionados of the "sweet science" around the world, Los Angeles is recognized as a boxing Mecca, although the sport has seemed to recede in recent years. In part, that's because, like the history of the working-class and immigrant sports fans who idolized fighters like Ramos, the story of boxing in L.A. is a scattered and neglected one, still awaiting a narrator.

Ramos, for example, ended up on the docks because he was handled by Hall of Fame trainer Jackie McCoy, a onetime longshoreman who never gave up his union card. When two of his champions -- Ramos and former welterweight titleholder Don Jordan -- came to the end of their careers, McCoy got them into the union. Jordan, who despite his name was a Spanish-speaker from East L.A., died in 1997 after a beating he'd suffered in a parking lot left him in a yearlong coma.

Partly, Los Angeles neglects its pugilistic history out of embarrassment. A culture that criminalizes secondhand smoke and regards veal as a cruelty is unlikely to glorify a sport rooted in struggle and the street, one in which competition is stripped to its brutal essence.

Today, Los Angeles no longer has a venue that makes matches or holds weekly cards. The Olympic, where Ramos' great patroness, the matchmaker Eileen Eaton, once reigned, is closed. The Forum, where Don Fraser made the matches, is now a mega-church. The late Howie Steindler's Main Street Gym, where, as a sign used to proclaim, "The Greatest Fighters In the World Train Here," is a parking lot.

Professional boxing flourishes mainly as programming for cable and pay-for-view television. Even there, though, the brightest star long has been East L.A.'s De La Hoya. His career is nearing its end, but his popularity endures. He is, after all, the good-looking guy who won middle-aged Chicana hearts from Downey to El Sereno when he dedicated the 1992 Olympic gold medal he won in Barcelona to his mother's memory.

Today, if you want to get the bittersweet flavor of the sweet science as practiced in gritty L.A., you can turn to literary fiction. Try Yxta Maya Murray's marvelous 1999 novel, "What It Takes to Get to Vegas," whose female protagonist is one of the most memorable in recent L.A. fiction. Or seek out "Rope Burn," F.X. Toole's superb short story collection, which includes the novella-length "Million Dollar Baby" and his flawed but fascinating posthumously published novel, "Pound for Pound."

F.X. Toole was the pseudonym of a onetime fighter named Jerry Boyd, who was born in Long Beach, lived in L.A. and had a 22-year career as a trainer and cut man, mostly on the local boxing circuit. Along the way, he studied theater and worked as a longshoreman and bartender. Boyd was 70 when his first book came out, and two years later was working on the novel when he died after emergency heart surgery. His last words were, "Doc, get me just a little more time. I gotta finish my book."

Somebody, someday, needs to say the same for the story of boxing in Los Angeles.

[email protected]

BoxBuzz wrote:

Rick Farris wrote:Uno Mas on Ramos vs. Rojas . . .

Here's one that Mando told me and it's a classic!

A couple of weeks before Mando Ramos and Raul Rojas tangled at the Olympic, Mando threw a birthday party for his baby son, Armando Jr., who was just one-year-old. Naturally, the party wasn't really for the baby, but for Mando and his then wife Stella's friends. Mando hired a very popular Mexican band and had the event catered. Rojas had been talking a lot of trash about his former stablemate, and Mando was doing his best to stay clean & sober. To avoid temptation, he invited his manager Jackie McCoy and his wife Shirley, to attend the party.

Everybody was having a good time until McCoy tapped Mando on the shoulder and informed him that Raul Rojas had just walked thru the front door. "What's he doing here, did you invite him?", McCoy asked. Ramos was surprised to see his former stablemate and next opponent show up, uninvited, but being the gracious host that he was, Mando greeted Raul at the door and invited him to have a good time.

Rojas asked Mando if they could have a few words alone, and the two walked into another room to talk.

"Listen", Rojas said, "I want to to tell you old friend, this will be my last fight. I have no desire to box anymore and the only reason I'm going thru with it is for the money. I haven't trained one day and plan to make it look good for a round or two, and then lay down. Would you please do me a favor, just for old times sake, and take it easy on me? I know I'm too old to beat you, but don't want to be humiliated. Could we let the past be the past and be friends again?"

Mando put his arms around Rojas and gave him a big hug, promising to go light on him, and also encouraged Raul to stay and enjoy the party. Rojas declined, saying he just wanted to bury the hatchet and give Mando Jr. a present, handing Mando a gift wrapped toy for the little boy. A few minutes later, Raul Rojas left left the party.

When Mando returned to the party, Jackie McCoy asked, "What did he want?" Mando answered, "Nothing, he just wanted to say, 'may the best man win'." A short while later, a suspicious McCoy and his wife left the party, and the moment he did, Mando cracked open a bottle of beer and fired up a joint. Now the party was on, Mando was now a passenger on the "no stress express", confident he needn't worry about his conditioning any longer.

"I didn't show up in the gym for a week, just had fun", Mando told me. When Ramos finally surfaced from a week of drinking and drugging, he showed up at the gym and was greeted by a furious McCoy. "Where in the Hell you been? Your going to get killed, Raul is in the best condition of his life, word is he's knocking out his sparring partners!"

With less than a week remaining before the match, Mando started to run again, and tried to make-up for the time lost, but by fight night, he was far from peak condition. Luckily, Mando's tremendous skill and punching power would prevail. After the match, Mando encountered Rojas in the dressing room, "Why did you tell me you weren't training, what was that about?", he asked.

Rojas just shook his and answered, "F___ You, asshole!", then walked away.


-Rick Farris

What a story! A page right out of life, proving once again that facts can always trump the best fiction! Thanks for that.

Rick Farris wrote:

kikibalt wrote:
Jerry Quarry vs Tony Doyle

The above picture was from Jerry's second fight with Doyle, held eight years after the first. Tony Doyle of Utah, was the first boxer to blemish Jerry's unbeaten record in 1965, holding him to a ten round draw at the Olympic. In the rematch (above) Quarry stopped Doyle in four rounds at the FORUM in 1973. In the background, referee John Thomas, one of my favorites, looks on.

-Rick Farris

kikibalt wrote:
Jake LaMotta & Brother Joey LaMotta
Gleason's Gym, New York City
June, 1950

kikibalt wrote:
Sugar Ray Robinson & Mike Mazurki
Circa 1968
"Land of the Giants"

kikibalt wrote:

Mando & Mando with Jose

bennie wrote:

kikibalt wrote:
Jake LaMotta & Brother Joey LaMotta
Gleason's Gym, New York City
June, 1950

You know, the thing that always pisses me off about boxing movies is the laughably overblown fight scenes. One of these days somebody is going to be smart and say, "Let's use the real footage." They actually did that in Ali's film, "The Greatest", and it makes it quite watchable (Ok, I know Ali was playing himself).
They could also have done that in "Raging Bull", in my opinion, given De Niro looked so like LaMotta in the movie and it was filmed in black and white.

bennie wrote:

kikibalt wrote:

Mando & Mando with Jose

Mando looks uncomfortable in both pics. Well, Jose Sulaiman would have that affect on anybody.

Rick Farris wrote:

bennie wrote:

kikibalt wrote:
Jake LaMotta & Brother Joey LaMotta
Gleason's Gym, New York City
June, 1950

You know, the thing that always pisses me off about boxing movies is the laughably overblown fight scenes. One of these days somebody is going to be smart and say, "Let's use the real footage." They actually did that in Ali's film, "The Greatest", and it makes it quite watchable (Ok, I know Ali was playing himself).
They could also have done that in "Raging Bull", in my opinion, given De Niro looked so like LaMotta in the movie and it was filmed in black and white.

I agree, Bennie. They should never let an actor portray a boxer in fight scenes. Regardless of how much training an actor does, or who they get to train them, they still are an embarrassment to the greats they portray. Will Smith, DeNiro and Russell Crowe all get praise for their "fight scenes" from film critics, however, to people who really know and love boxing, such scenes are CRAP! Keeping it real would make for a much better film.

-Rick

bennie wrote:

Rick Farris wrote:

kikibalt wrote:
Jerry Quarry vs Tony Doyle

The above picture was from Jerry's second fight with Doyle, held eight years after the first. Tony Doyle of Utah, was the first boxer to blemish Jerry's unbeaten record in 1965, holding him to a ten round draw at the Olympic. In the rematch (above) Quarry stopped Doyle in four rounds at the FORUM in 1973. In the background, referee John Thomas, one of my favorites, looks on.

-Rick Farris

Quarry fighting everyone twice, as usual. Thomas's expression is rather amusing, almost like he's thinking "get me a black heavyweight in here!"

kikibalt wrote:

bennie wrote:

kikibalt wrote:

Mando & Mando with Jose

Mando looks uncomfortable in both pics. Well, Jose Sulaiman would have that affect on anybody.

You're right Bennie, Mando R. don't look to happy to have his pic. taken with old Jose.

bennie wrote:Incidentally, Frankie, I know this may be unseemly and impossible even, but a few (just one or two) shots of Mando's funeral wouldn't go amiss for us fight fans across the pond.
I totally understand if it cannot be done.

kikibalt wrote:

bennie wrote:Incidentally, Frankie, I know this may be unseemly and impossible even, but a few (just one or two) shots of Mando's funeral wouldn't go amiss for us fight fans across the pond.
I totally understand if it cannot be done.

Bennie, I plan on going to Mando service's, only way I won't go is if my wife has a doctor's appoinment that afternoon, (Bum Leg.. :x ), if I do make it, I will ask Mando's wife Sylvia for permission to shoot some pics., I won't do it without her ok.

You can be sure I'll post'em here if Sylvia give me her ok.

bennie wrote:Incidentally, Frankie, I know this may be unseemly and impossible even, but a few (just one or two) shots of Mando's funeral wouldn't go amiss for us fight fans across the pond.
I totally understand if it cannot be done.

Rick Farris wrote:

bennie wrote:Incidentally, Frankie, I know this may be unseemly and impossible even, but a few (just one or two) shots of Mando's funeral wouldn't go amiss for us fight fans across the pond.
I totally understand if it cannot be done.

Sylvia Ramos told me yesterday that Mando's Memorial service on the 18th would be for happy memories of her husband, pictures, films, etc. The body is already gone. After donating Mando's remains to UCLA, the school has already "harvested" his organs for research, cremated the remains and will return the ashes to her later in the week. In this case, photos of Mando's compadres honoring the champ is not only appropriate, but encouraged. Mando loved the attention, those are Sylvia's wishes. Once again, the house will be packed for Mando Ramos, and he loved being on film.

-Rick