Nowadays almost all boxing in the United States takes place in gambling casinos. Promoters are contractors using casino money to put on the matches. Back in the 80’s there were still a few old-style promoters who recruited investors to stage the big fights. And for the crucial small club shows where young fighters learn their trade and build their records, there were those fight-loving individual promoters who ponied up their own cash and swam in red ink to make it happen.
All that day the clouds did imitations of Sonny Liston. They were slow and bruised and nasty. They were heavy as death and scheming for a splashdown.
The fights were scheduled outdoors in the Rodeo Arena, so the threat of rain had the promoters on edge and the boxers spooked. There were jokes at the weigh-in about fighting barefoot and in slickers, but the worry was real.
I didn’t care if it rained crankcase oil as long as the fight went on. I took the backroads out of Portland and was halfway through the six-pack in the cooler when the first yellow, damp-curled poster caught my eye. It was stapled to a tarred telephone pole in the gravel parking lot of a juke-box-and-beer roadhouse, in the heart of what used to be called the Toolie Weeds. Half the names on the poster were wrong, claiming fighters who had said yes once and changed their minds since. The photos were bleary and torn but the address was right. Mollala. The Buckaroo. The road twisted on but the sky began to relent.
By the time I slid into Mollala the blue was slicing the thunderheads like a smile. I was still blocks away from the Rodeo Grounds when the excitement hit. Parked cars lined the road and spawned a buzzing stream of people, all headed in the same direction. A faint razzmatazz of carnie music pushed against a suddenly laughing sky. Then the Ferris wheel appeared, lit like the pearly gates and spinning huge as a bingeing Santa Claus.
I waded through the tall grass in the parking lot, hopped a ditch, and went through the fence. Everybody I passed had a paper cup the size of the colossal popcorn barrel at the drive-in movies. Every cup was full of beer. The carnival glittered off to the left and the boxing ring sat at one end of the big arena in as tidy a little amphitheater as ever played in Athens. A single, large droplight hung in the clear air above the canvas. In the meadow beyond, a herd of horses grazed peacefully. The corndogs smelled great.
A main motive for reporters writing about boxing is that they get to sit with their noses on the ring apron. The disadvantage is that when you sit that close you can’t cheer. Any display of partisan feeling would undermine the reputation of journalistic objectivity. And if you holler for one guy, his opponent will probably be offended and refuse you an interview afterwards. There are those who argue that you can’t see a fight properly if you’re too close, anyway. It’s a matter of forests and trees. These connoisseurs prefer a 12-to-30-foot vantage in order to savor the choreography and gestalt of a bout. That may be why the parasitic press are relegated to the hurly-burly at the judge’s table. This time I sat up in the bleachers and yowled like a paying customer. Very satisfying.
There isn’t a bad seat on the slope, the ring announcer is wearing a white Stetson, and a crew from CBS Television is lugging film equipment down the steps. They are here to film the Northwest junior lightweight and lightweight champ, Louie Loy. Louie has been in Los Angeles visiting his family and recuperating from the kidney infection that scratched him from the June card in Portland.
He flew back in today with his younger brother, Larry, who is his sparring partner, and his father, Louie Sr., who trains and manages him. Louie’s Uncle Richard lives in Portland and Louie lives and trains with him while he is here. Richard met the plane, which was late, and the whole clan went straight to the professional gym, where the CBS crew was waiting.
From the moment he stepped out of the car, the cameras followed Louie, focusing on his hands being wrapped, trailing him through a full workout. A microphone picked up every sound.
CBS has been enjoying top-flight Nielsen ratings on its boxing matches and has assigned documentary producer Maurice Murad and his crew to do an hour-long special on boxing. Murad picked Hector Camacho and Louie, who will meet for a July bout in Madison Square Garden, as subjects for the film. Both fighters are undefeated and, going into this match, extremely promising. Camacho is fast, a classy southpaw stylist from New York. Louie is a West Coast puncher with a high KO ratio and a level head. Murad is intrigued by the mystique of the sport. The special, he says, will be aired in December. Meanwhile, Louie has offered to spar a few exhibition rounds with his brother to open the Molalla card, so the crew tags along, trying not to interfere.
“It’s hard not to act strange when the camera is on you,” says Louie. “They’re going to follow me tomorrow when I do my road-work, too. I know I’ll want to run faster and farther just because they’re watching. But I’m going to pace myself and do it my regular way.”
The sun sets as Louie and his brother put on their leather sparring helmets and climb into the ring wearing sweatshirts. They get an enthusiastic hand from the small but zealous crowd, and the diehard defenders of the underdog root for Larry.
Louie patiently signs autographs afterwards, but it’s been a long day for him and the Loys head home to Portland with the TV crew in their wake and a last cheer from the crowd floating after them. Then the real fights begin.
The three Garcia brothers of Caldwell, Idaho, are wellschooled, promising amateurs who are becoming classic examples of what happens when you turn pro in a remote backwater and don’t have a wily manager. The Garcias had no manager at all and they joined the punch-for-pay ranks with the simple policy of saying yes to any bout, anywhere, against anybody. Disaster.
Lorenzo, the middle brother, debuted in two consecutive bouts with Brian Tinker in Boise. They were brutal wars, with Tinker coming out on top both times. In his third pro fight Lorenzo Garcia came to the Expo-Center to meet Bob “Duke’em” Newcomb in a 1981 affair that clawed its way into the vicious zone of legendary battles. Lorenzo lost that one, too. Things continue like that, and by the time Lorenzo arrives in Molalla he’s sporting a ridiculous record of one win and four losses that in no way reveals what a staunch and elegant character he is.
We know next to nothing about Lorenzo’s opponent, Juan
Rodriguez. He is part of a last-minute package from San Jose, handled by Joe Amato. Rodriguez weighs in at 131 compared to Lorenzo’s 127, and his record is 5–4.
Lorenzo is in fine shape and moving well in his classic stand-up style. Rodriguez is no slouch; his hooks are wide, but he’s tough when they’re toe-to-toe and he hammers at the body. Lorenzo is quick, accurate, and a nice counterpuncher. It is all very pretty and correct. If Lorenzo has a fault, it is that he lacks hostility. He is far too humanitarian in his outlook to try for a knockout. He had Rodriguez stung and staggered a half dozen times, but politely stepped back so that Rodriguez could recover and they could go on playing. Lorenzo fights best when he’s pressured and, since Rodriguez had no compunction about trying to slaughter him, it was an interesting bout. Rodriguez was cut early and Lorenzo’s sharp shooting kept the blood flowing, but it went the six-round distance and Lorenzo took the unanimous decision for the second win in his pro career.
A trio of pretty Garcia women celebrated in the front row and Lorenzo sat down in his robe with them to cheer the next bout. That involved his older brother, Ray, and another mystery man from San Jose named Jerry Lewis. This Lewis (136 lbs.) is no comedian. Ray, the oldest of the Garcia brothers at 22, was the last to turn pro. He won the amateur regional belt in 1981 and then couldn’t make it to the National Tournament because of illness. His pro record, in the Garcia tradition, consists of one loss. Ray was off his feed this night: poor timing, his distance and concentration both askew. Lewis is a tough customer. He hooks well to the chin and his lateral movement threw off Ray’s momentum every time. Ray missed more than he landed but he struggled on to lose a decision to the sympathetic grief of the assembled Garcias.
Renee Garcia is eighteen years old and the baby of the family. He started out in the helpless mode and was 3–2 when fate intervened in the form of Portland manager Fred McNally. McNally took Renee under his wing, and fights for the junior welter are being carefully chosen now.
But Sam Wilson is always a wild card for Renee, and they are in the ring together for their third go at each other. Renee won their first fight and then came in on twelve hours’ notice with a recently broken nose to meet Wilson the second time. Wilson took the sole win in his five bouts that night. Wilson may be another victim of idiot guidance. But he persists, and gets tougher by sheer dint of losing. He lost to Jihad Kareem at the Marriott one Thursday night and climbed in with Renee again a week later. These two always do their best to obliterate each other, and this night was no exception. Wilson has 10 pounds and the reach advantage over Garcia. It’s a wild scramble and Garcia probably lands some low blows in the melee. The decision is close but unanimous for Renee Garcia, who goes to 6–2 in jubilant fashion.
The moon came out and the carnie lights danced in the music from the merry-go-round. The corn-dogs were blue ribbon thoroughbreds and the cotton candy was as pink as a thumbed eye. To top off these delights, Charles “Machine Gun” Carter got into a fight. The 1980 U.S. Olympic Middleweight has had a bumpy transition to the pro game, but there’s evidence that he might be on the right track at last. Carter is developing a punch and, though he’s still the fastest middleweight we’ve seen, he’s learning the difference between a flurry and an effective combination. Carter (165 lbs.) jumped in with another unknown quantity named Sam Turner (165 lbs.) of San Francisco. Turner arrived with a 4–0 record, respectable skills, and a sturdy chin. He was not impressed with amateur laurels and had every intention of chewing hunks out of the Machine Gun. Carter went in and took chunks off Turner instead.
It’s hard to pin down the frame of mind that makes a real fight. It’s certainly not anger. Good boxing requires such clear and rapid analytical thought that a cool head is mandatory. Maybe the driving force is desire, what the fight folk call “being hungry.” This hunger is a slippery beast with a million faces. You can smell it, feel it, and taste it when it’s there in the ring, but it looks one way on Sugar Ray Leonard and altogether different on Aaron Pryor, Alexis Arguello, or Curtis Ramsey. That night, for the first time, we felt and tasted it in “Machine Gun” Carter.
Carter has so much natural ability that he skated through the amateurs. That kind of talent is a curse as well as a blessing because it makes success seem easy. The hunger that can drive mere flesh and blood through the grueling discipline of professional boxing is something Carter had to discover late and by himself.
Judging from what he did to Sam Turner, Carter is developing an appetite. It was amazing to see the easygoing Carter want that win badly enough to go tearing in after it. I was glad to be sitting in the bleachers so I could yell about it. Referee Jim Cassidy stopped the bout at 2:50 of the fifth, with the game Turner out on his feet and unable to defend himself. “Machine Gun” Carter goes to 8–1.
Hunger is what southpaw Francisco Roche (154 lbs.) of Cuba via Seattle has got, and what Steve Moyer (161 lbs.) has not. In fact Steve, the third generation of Portland’s fistic dynasty, seemed ill at ease and far from home in the ring that night. He is trained by his grandfather, Harry, who also tutored ex-Junior Middleweight Champ Denny Moyer as well as Steve’s Dad, former middleweight contender, Phil Moyer. It wasn’t lack of schooling or encouragement that had Steve lunging into the saw blades in Molalla.
Francisco Roche isn’t just hungry, he’s ravenous. Portland saw his last at the Marriott when he was merrily out-pointing Darryl Penn until the instant Roche gushed blood from a bone-deep cut over the left eye. When Roche’s trainer, Joe Toro, stopped the bout and the win went to Penn, Francisco lost his composure. He flung himself down on the floor of the ring and cried, pounding the canvas. Toro was disgusted with the scene but Roche, who had, by all reports, been robbed in a flagrant hometown decision in Canada only weeks before, was furious. But neither Roche nor Toro had anything to regret at Molalla. Moyer had at least six pounds on Roche, was considerably taller, and had an extra reach advantage. Roche ate him like fire on a marshmallow. It was the only mis-match of the night. The little guy totally outclassed the big guy.
Moyer was bleeding from a cut over his left eye at the end of the third round and the ref finally stopped it at 2:10 of the fourth. Moyer dropped to 14–8–2. Francisco Roche went to 10–2–1, and we’ll certainly see more of him.
It was a grand night, and McNally Sports Attractions rates a Patron of the Arts Trophy for contributing several thousand smackers to the aesthetic awareness of Molalla. Historians in the crowd drifted out through the gates, reminiscing about the old days when the ring sat on the pitchers’ mound in the Civic Stadium and the stands were packed. Rings have been scratched in the dust of empty lots, roped off in cow pastures, and surrounded by gilded chairs in Regency salons. Whether the ring sits in a lush casino or in the parking lot outside, the action inside the ropes has the same zesty appeal.