Pound for Pound

by F. X. Toole

  “I don’t know if it had a name. Used to see people comin and goin that looked like fighter types, but not in a while, now.”

  The boozer set the hose down, motioned Chicky over to a patch of weeds, and pointed down. Lying there, half covered with hard dirt, was Dan’s small hand-painted sign: “GyM.”

  “¡Ay!” Chicky said. “You know what the owner looked like?”

  “Is he a black man?”

  “White, far as I know.”

  The neighbor said, “I only saw a black man, that I recall.”

  “That rips it.”

  Even though he was tempted to give up, Chicky decided that he might have one more shot, and returned to the Hollywood division PD.

  He spoke with a female desk officer, “Payson” on her name tag, and asked her if she knew of a Dan Cooley.

  Officer Payson said, “Seems like there was a Cooley involved in a traffic death a while back, but that’s all I remember.”

  Chicky said, “I was afraid of somethin like that. Thanks.”

  He drove back to Bell, his options exhausted, his mind blank. That night, he dreamed that he couldn’t sleep, and that was worse than not sleeping at all. He was exhausted the next day, and slipping into despair. He’d spent five hundred on the motel for nothing, in addition to the money for the trip. He’d been ready to go to New York or Philadelphia alone, but now he was alone in Al-lay. A new kid in town. He thought of the El Indio.

  Chicky wore his straw Resistol hat. He entered the El Indio gym at ten-thirty, knowing that most of its fighters would have already arrived. No whites, no blacks, all Latinos. Some were warming up, others were still changing into their gym togs. Chicky could tell that most were four-round fighters, but he could also see that others had the moves and weariness of bust-out, ten-round pros. Trainers worked the punch mitts, or stood coaching boys on the body bags. It was too early for the bippity-bippity of the speed bags, or the yop-yop-yop of the leather jump ropes. Two fighters stood in opposite corners of one of the rings. They wore protective cups, mouthpieces, headgear, and gloves. Their corner men greased them with Vaseline. It wasn’t Bexar County, but Chicky felt at home.

  A kindly looking man, one who reminded Chicky of a smoother version of his grandfather, was on the phone at a desk against a wall. Owner of the gym, the man at the desk also trained and managed fighters. He had a bit of a gut, but otherwise looked in good shape for his age. Gray hair, dark, dark skin, frameless glasses. Tony Velasco smiled and pinched a thumb and forefinger together, indicating to Chicky that he’d be with him in a moment. The ring timer was on. When the thirty-second whistle sounded, Velasco hung up the phone. He hurried over to Chicky and smiled again. Given Chicky’s straw hat and boots, Velasco couldn’t be sure where he was from, but newcomers from the other side of the border often wore the same outfit. Velasco figured Chicky for Mexican of one kind or another, despite his light complexion. Some of Velasco’s fighters wore the vato baggy shit from the barrio. Others, having assimilated more than the younger guys, wore standard white-bread clothes. When Chicky got to the desk, Velasco held out his hand.

  Velasco said, “You speak English?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Hey, I’m Tony Velasco, can I help you?”

  “Hi’ya,” said Chicky, shaking hands. “I hope you can. I’m lookin for a trainer, white feller name of Dan Cooley?”

  Velasco heard the accent and figured Chicky for a hayseed, but he also noticed the flattened nose and scar tissue. “You a fighter?”

  Chicky said, “Yessir. You know Mr. Cooley?”

  “Why you want Cooley?”

  “I want to turn pro. You know of him?”

  Velasco knew Dan Cooley. Cooley had kicked Tony’s ass at the Olympic in the old days. In a rematch, Cooley kicked his ass again, only worse. Cooley’s fighters always whipped Velasco’s fighters as well. But that was expected by insiders, given Velasco’s reputation for supplying “opponents”—inexperienced, unprepared, or worn-out fighters who could be offered to promoters looking to build a favored fighter’s record. “Opponents” could also be fighters who could aspire only to being “opponents.” Just being in the game was enough. Maybe they’d catch a break, who could tell? And the “opponent” sometimes got paid more than the favorite. Such fights weren’t “fixed” fights, in the sense that the outcome was predetermined; but they were “rigged,” meaning that the playing field had been seriously tipped. When insiders saw Velasco in some boy’s corner, the smart money usually went down on the opposite corner.

  Tony Velasco looked into the exposed rafters of the old building. “Cooley? You say Cooley?”

  Velasco seemed legit to Chicky, and he grew hopeful despite himself. “Yessir, that’s Dan Cooley?”

  Velasco loved to lie, cheat, and steal. “Older guy, right? Like my age?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, I hate to be the one to say it,” Velasco told him, “but I think I heard he was dead.”

  “Shucks,” said Chicky.

  “Yeah,” said Velasco, “seems like it was a while ago. Maybe it was he retired and moved, but I think I heard he bought it.”

  Chicky said, “It’s about what I’d come to.”

  Velasco said, “What’s your name? Where you from? What’s your amateur record?”

  “Chicky Garza. San Antonio. Fifty-six and seven, with twenty-nine KOs.”

  Velasco knew that having a good amateur record didn’t guarantee success in the pros, but he was looking for bodies, not success. Velasco appeared to be considering something, but he already had a plan, the same plan he’d always made his living by, and he was sure he could make some quick money off this hick.

  Velasco said, “That’s some record. I got connections, you know. Maybe you should come train here, see how you like it, you know? I could turn you pro.”

  Chicky hadn’t had a better offer, but at this point he was thinking more about whip-out money. “How much’ll you charge me?”

  “If me or one of my guys trains you, there’s no charge. But you got to be good, and always ready to fight, no excuses like the bullshit punks come in here lookin for a sugar daddy. Otherwise, it’s thirty a month, your towels,” said Velasco. “I could find you a cheap place in one of my apartments close by, bed and stove and that, for maybe six hundred and fifty.”

  “I already got a place at the Bell Motel for a month, and cheaper, too.”

  “That’s even better, mano,” said Velasco, slipping into an Us-Versus-Them tone of voice. “I take a lot of boys up to Vegas, eh? Or I take ‘em down to Mexico, you know, along the border, so they can make quick money and no taxes and fight in their hometowns or at least in front of raza, ése. My cut is the standard one third for manager, and one of my guys gets the standard ten percent off the top for trainer.” Velasco didn’t mention that the “trainer” was washed up, slept in a back room for his pay, and bombed himself out every night on a bottle of Wild Irish Rose.

  Chicky said, “You know any places where I might get a job, too?”

  “Might. Could take me a little time,” said Velasco. “Ehy, I like a guy ain’t too proud to work. Is it a deal?”

  Chicky hesitated. “Don’t we need a contract, or somethin?”

  “Naw, I trust you. A handshake’s good enough for me.”

  Velasco held out his hand. Chicky shook it.

  Chapter 27

  At the El Indio Gym, other fighters assessed Chicky, checked his skills without challenging him. He did likewise. Trainers, egged on by Velasco, tried to convince Chicky to spar. Chicky knew he needed time running at the high school track first. When Chicky worked the mitts and bags and rope, boxing guys saw that he knew something about the game, and they silently respected him when he said he was working on his wind.

  Velasco didn’t care if the kid had wind or not, only that he would look respectable for two rounds before losing, and Velasco figured the only way Chicky could do that was to spar. If the kid lost, he lost. If he won, all the better, because
he’d stay at it a little longer. If he didn’t like Velasco’s deal, fuck him.

  Velasco said, “When’ll you be ready to get in there?”

  “Gimme a couple of weeks.”

  “I thought you wanted to make some money.”

  “Yeah, well, turnin pro and all, I want to be ready, right?” But, for all his confidence, Chicky felt a need to run this by his abuelo.

  For the first time since he had arrived in L.A., Chicky telephoned his grandfather. He explained his situation, and how he’d come to train with Velasco. He soft-peddled the part about Dan Cooley being dead. “It’s what some people think.”

  The old man sighed, “I’d hoped for better. Well, maybe it’ll be my turn next.”

  Chicky said, “Don’t say that. I got to know you’re in my corner.”

  “I ain’t quittin on you, if that’s what you’re thinkin. You need some money?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  “I ain’t.”

  “Well now,” his abuelo said, “call regular.”

  “I will.”

  Chicky called weekly at first, but when things began to hit the shitter with Velasco, he called only once a month so he wouldn’t have to make up stories.

  The first day Chicky sparred, he took an ass whipping, not because of his wind, but because his hands and eyes were out of sync. The second day was the same, Chicky missing and the other guy landing. The third day was better, and the wise eyes at ringside could see the improvement. By the end of the week, Chicky was handling four-round pros, guys his weight with six and eight fights, but Chicky could sense they lacked his amateur experience. Velasco put him in with a ten-round fighter from another gym who’d come in for work. He tried to intimidate Chicky. He stung Chicky, but Chicky was able to sting him back, because he was in shape and strong. Chicky knew he wasn’t learning anything, and that troubled him. Not from Velasco, and not from Velasco’s wino trainer. Chicky would realize in hindsight that nobody learned much at El Indio, which was why so few of Velasco’s four-round fighters had careers that lasted much more than six to eight fights.

  Velasco said, “Lookeen goood. You ready to turn pro?”

  Chicky said, “So soon?”

  “Vegas in two weeks, homey.”

  Chicky said, “What about that job we talked about?”

  “I’m workin on it, but fight money is quicker and sweeter.”

  With his funds running low, Chicky knew he had to shit or get off the pot. “Book it.”

  Vegas was scary and cheap. Chicky’s dislike for it began at the tits-and-ass airport. The wall-to-wall casino come-ons and the long stretches of dinging slot machines assaulted the senses and the soul after the flight across pure desert. But Chicky needed money and he wanted to make it as a professional fighter, so he saw Vegas as just one of many packages he’d have to tie a ribbon on.

  For this fight, he was to receive $100 a round, standard for four-round fights, but $400 was nothing like the tens or hundreds of thousands he would have made if he’d won a medal in the Olympics before turning pro. He was down to $1,100 and change, and the $400 paycheck would give him a cushion until his next fight. But $400 a fight wasn’t going to be enough to keep him going. He needed a job soon if he was to keep from spending the money his granddaddy had given him for the Stetson.

  Chicky couldn’t imagine Velasco getting him more than one fight a month, though he knew that it was not uncommon for fighters from their twenties through their fifties to fight once a week, sometimes more—they kept in shape fighting. His grandfather blamed the IRS for the brain damage that too often afflicted modern-day fighters. In days past, many boxers had 150 fights and more. They fought often, but were able to take their money home, less the 10 and the 33 ? percents that went to trainers and managers. “The Gray,” gangster Frankie Carbo, ran boxing for a time, but the great thing about mobsters is that they die, kill each other off, or go to jail. The suits who make up Government Commissions go on forever. They always need more and more money to fund seminars in exotic places. Pals replace pals, each doing less and less while demanding more and more. Dishonesty becomes institutionalized, the best hustle of all, since government crooks seldom lose their jobs, regardless of shortages or excessive expenditures. Eloy would take gangsters over government crooks anytime.

  Chicky said, “But don’t Commissions and sanctioning bodies help fighters?”

  “‘Bout the way a hook’ll he’p a catfish,” his grandfather replied.

  He went on to explain the connection, that when the IRS began to take such huge chunks of boxers’ purses, the champions and other big-money fighters had to start taking fights based on how much they could keep in a given tax year, instead of how many big-money fights they could get in the same year. Consequently, if they had a big fight early on, they would lie around on their asses for six to ten months, get out of shape, and chase trim until they were cross-eyed and bow-legged. All this to beat the tax man.

  Problems arose. Training for a fight typically lasts only six to eight weeks, but this is only temporary shape, not long-term conditioning. During the lengthy periods between fights, fighters would balloon up like hogs in a fattening pen, and would have to lose twenty pounds of blubber, maybe more. Their bodies had to suffer the shock of sparring, the grind of roadwork, the punishment of the exercise table—all this while fighting an appetite the size of a forty-foot tapeworm.

  Gaining and losing weight makes gaining easier and easier, and losing it harder and harder, particularly in a matter of weeks. Add nose candy and carbohydrates and the lack of exercise and how much fighters are in love with their dicks. The human body breaks down. Neurons in futile search of neurons, blood in the piss from kidney shots, eyes with blood in the whites. The greater the fighter’s wits—guys like Benny Leonard and Kid Azteca—the less susceptible the fighter is to being hit. Being hit increases the number of dead spots in the brain that stem from concussions, and dead spots lead to more dead spots, lead to more dead spots, and lead to more dead spots.

  “Hit and don’t get hit,” said Eloy.

  “Hit and don’t get hit,” Chicky said. “But I heard of folks who get Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s who never got hit even once.”

  “Doctors, pilots, all kinds. It’s the same with detached retinas. Some folks get ‘em walking down the street. It’s the cards what you get dealt.”

  Chicky couldn’t resist. “What about that big ol’ belly you got there?”

  His abuelo smiled and lied, “Boy, that’s somethin you got to earn.”

  Chicky was aware that today’s fighters didn’t have the opportunity to fight as often as the pre-TV fighters, though he also knew that in the last few years more club fights were being held. Even so, he wanted that job Velasco said he could get for him. Chicky wasn’t shy about applying for a job, and if Velasco didn’t come through, he’d try for busboy jobs, or even stand on street corners with illegals and wait to be picked up as casual labor. But it had to be part-time, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to train or run properly. Chicky figured that anyone Velasco knew would understand that, so he had been willing to wait for part-time employment. He didn’t care what kind of job it was, so long as it was honest work and it paid enough to get him from fight to fight. If he could rack up a string of knockouts in a hurry, and word about him got out to promoters, he could make enough money fighting to quit work and focus only on becoming Champion of the World.

  He hoped for ten, maybe twelve strong wins as a four-round fighter, and then move up to six- and eight-round matches before becoming a ten-round fighter. If Velasco had the juice he said he had, Chicky felt he’d be on his way in a year and a half. He knew that most fighters didn’t move up that quickly, but he also knew that most fighters didn’t hit as hard as he. Being a southpaw was an advantage he was grateful for.

  His grandfather would have told him not to count his chickens before they hatched. Only the best managers in the world could move him the way he hoped to be
moved, and that meant he would need a promoter backing him as well, one who would invest time and money in him, with the expectation of big gates. Promoters were antsy about fighters, since pugs were known to turn to smoke, figuratively and literally. Promoters weren’t standing in line to back unknowns. And what about the kind of training Chicky would need, now that Dan Cooley was dead? And what if Chicky lost? Could he handle that? Or was hurt? Or if the people in his corner were crooks, or simply incompetent?

  But Eloy wasn’t there to talk horse sense to Chicky. The kid was all alone. The last thing Velasco cared about was teaching his fighters to win. How was an eighteen-year-old kid to keep himself from dreaming his dream?

  Chapter 28

  It had been a month since Chicky had called home. When he called from his room in the motel, his grandfather sounded drunk, and the conversation was one-sided. Once Chicky got a good payday, he would send his abuelo money for an airline ticket to L.A., or maybe he would make a quick trip back to Poteet. He knew his granddaddy was hurting, and he missed the old man, but Chicky also knew that his first goal was to get himself going as a pro. It’s what his granddaddy would want, too.

  But why did Velasco keep telling him to punch hard, and not to worry about catching and slipping and blocking punches? Fuck, he could already hit hard. Good fighters could do that and more, were taught the head game of boxing, and Chicky wanted slick as well as power. A puncher could take you out with one shot, but the real boxer would usually win. Chicky hoped to become a boxer-puncher. Maybe Velasco would bring in a better trainer once he saw Chicky fight and win big, maybe get a KO his first time out, maybe get it in the first round. This fight in Vegas might be the make-or-break.