Think Your Job Is Tough?

The kid dances in his corner, snapping jabs at the crowd -- one-two-three -- a light sheen of sweat forming across his shoulders. He is a local favorite, young and unbeaten, glistening with expectation.

Across the ring stands Corey Alarcon, arms at his side. He has no fancy robe, no hometown fans to cheer him on. His red trunks are faded.

You might want to believe that anything can happen once the bell sounds, but the outcome of this fight seems evident from the start.

Barely a minute into the first round, the kid has Alarcon in trouble, landing hard shots, keeping him off-balance. Shouts and whistles echo through the small auditorium in downtown Oxnard. Though the place is barely half-full, it is late enough on a Friday night that fans have sat through a few bouts, had a few hours to drink beer. They are restless for a knockout.

“C’mon,” someone hollers. “Mess him up!”

In the parlance of the fight game, Alarcon is an “opponent,” the kind of boxer who gets hired to face up-and-comers and true contenders.

This is not the stuff of dime-store novels or old movies -- a warm body procured by a crooked promoter. “Opponents” are skilled journeymen, good enough to put up a tussle but not quite good enough to win.

Alarcon, a 27-year-old light-welterweight, has made a career of facing younger men with flashier records. He earns a few thousand dollars each bout, persevering because he loves the sport and dreams of a lucky break.

“I’m the Rocky Balboa,” he says. “Always looking for an upset.”

As with most of his fights, Alarcon takes this one at the Oxnard Performing Arts & Convention Center last month on short notice. Flying in from Denver, he does not learn until the day before that his opponent, Victor Ortiz, is left-handed.

In boxing, that’s a critical piece of information.

From the opening bell, Alarcon seems unsure of how to attack the southpaw. A sharp punch sends him tumbling into the ropes. After that, it is a matter of alternately clinching and backing out of range.

“I wanted to get through the round,” he says later. “I was trying to figure out his style.”

*

Not every boxer can be a champion. The sport needs a working class to fill its undercards and act as steppingstones.

Gil Clancy, who has trained champions spanning from Emile Griffith to Oscar De La Hoya, explains that with a top prospect, “you try to get your fighter the win. And the best kind of win is for the other guy to be competitive. Otherwise, you don’t get anywhere.”

Boxing lore includes a few shining moments for journeymen. In 1975, heavyweight Chuck Wepner -- the “Bayonne Bleeder” -- knocked down Muhammad Ali before getting stopped in the 15th round, a fight that inspired Sylvester Stallone’s film “Rocky.”

But the job can be dangerous. In a May 28 bout at Staples Center, Ruben Contreras -- a veteran “opponent” -- suffered a head injury and has only recently been transferred from a hospital to a rehabilitation center. On Saturday, Martin Sanchez died from injuries suffered during a Friday night fight.

Asked about the risks, Alarcon shrugs and gives it one of those “If God’s going to take you ... “ lines. The sport has not yet worn him down. His face remains relatively smooth. He is articulate, if not philosophical, about his situation.

He started in the way that so many do, wandering into a gym at 14, discovering that he had some natural talent. After winning a few amateur tournaments, he turned professional in 2000.

Back then, he was like Ortiz, young and promising, building a 6-0 record against opponents of similar experience and ability. Then, he says, “I couldn’t get anyone to fight me.”

Desperate for action, lured by the glamour of boxing at an arena in Houston, Alarcon agreed to take on a hotshot named Rocky Juarez with only a few days to prepare. He says he had to shed more than 10 pounds to make weight and entered the ring feeling weak. Juarez, now a top-ranked featherweight contender, battered him on the way to a technical knockout in the second round.

The memory still makes Alarcon cringe. He returned home dehydrated and barely able to get out of bed, throwing up, eating nothing but chicken broth for two weeks. “I hate chicken broth,” he says. But there was no quitting.

The camaraderie of the gym, the adrenaline of battling another man in the ring -- boxing had a hold on him. Besides, he says, “when I took a loss, it got easier to get fights.”

Overnight, he had become an “opponent.” That meant taking bouts wherever he could get them, traveling to the other guy’s hometown and rarely getting signed more than a week or so in advance.

It is an open secret in the sport. Not only do rival managers hand-pick opponents, they often wait until the last minute. Pat Nelson, a promoter and manager in Youngstown, Ohio, explains: “You don’t want to give the other guy every advantage of preparation.”

As Alarcon’s record settled around the .500 mark, he figured that the only way out of his predicament was to surprise someone, to win a fight that he was not supposed to win.

*

Little time remains in the first round when Alarcon gets Ortiz in a clinch near the ropes. It appears that he will survive. But then, as the referee pulls them apart, Ortiz launches an uppercut.

From one angle, the punch appears to graze Alarcon’s cheek. From another, it seems to catch him more solidly. Either way, he falls to the canvas, sitting a moment, then slumping onto his back.

The fight ends in chaos. The referee rules that the uppercut was an illegal punch, thrown after the break.

Because Alarcon cannot continue, Ortiz is disqualified. Alarcon wins.

The fans boo and yell obscenities, infuriated to see their man lose this way. Ortiz had entered the ring with a 7-0 record, people already talking about the 18-year-old as a future contender. As state officials huddle around a television monitor to confirm the decision, Ortiz’s manager, Cameron Dunkin, tells anyone who will listen that Alarcon stayed down on purpose, a sneaky way to get a victory.

“He’s not getting paid,” Dunkin hollers. “He quit.”

Alarcon swears he was hit hard and, in all the ruckus, does not realize that he has won. Back on his feet, he shouts at the hecklers, then leans close to Ortiz and says: “That was a cheap shot.”

It is a touchy subject with him. He says that fighting on someone else’s turf means never getting a fair break.

“A lot of low blows,” he says. “It seems like the referee lets them get away with everything.”

Also, “if I don’t go out there and knock the guy out, I’m losing on a decision.”

When talking about his sport, Alarcon has a habit of reaching up, tracing a finger across a thin scar under his right eye, as if to accentuate his point. He says that going for broke in the ring has left him open to counterpunches.

Back at the Oxnard auditorium, in a cramped dressing room that he shares with another boxer, Alarcon does not feel well. When a state-appointed doctor stops by, the fighter complains of blurred vision and a headache.

Ruben Contreras had similar symptoms at Staples Center a week earlier, just before suffering a seizure, so paramedics strap Alarcon to a gurney. With the crowd still angry, they wheel him out a side door.

*

Lou DiBella, the big-time New York promoter, has a standard line for journeymen: “You might be better off getting a regular gig.” He means something outside of boxing. “You stand to make more money, and you’ll stay healthy.”

Money was never an issue for Alarcon. After a couple of years as a pro, he realized that he was never going to make much of it.

While some boxers could live on $14,000 or $15,000 a year and devote themselves to training, he had to support a wife and two children. He went to trade school to become a union electrician.

His days start before dawn with a long drive into the mountains, to the resort town of Breckenridge, Colo. There, he installs wiring for hot tubs in large vacation homes, skipping his 15-minute afternoon breaks so he can get off early and head back down the hill.

Most nights, he reaches the gym by 6 and trains for a few hours before going home. His wife, April, isn’t thrilled but figures he could be spending his time doing worse things.

“He loves it, and I don’t want to take away something that he loves,” she says.

April used to attend his fights, but that ended last year after a tough night against undefeated Isaac Mendoza. Fighting at an Indian casino in Oklahoma, Alarcon was cut -- thus the scar under his eye -- and bled badly. The crowd went into a frenzy, yelling: “Kill him.”

“It was pretty scary,” April says.

With a young son and daughter, and another child due this summer, she wishes that the sport provided something in the way of health insurance, maybe even a pension plan.

This spring, the U.S. Senate passed the Professional Boxing Amendments Act of 2005, a bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The legislation, a version of which was also approved by a House committee last week , would create a national commission to set uniform rules and improve safety conditions.

As DiBella says, “This isn’t to protect Oscar De La Hoya or Shane Mosley. This is to protect the journeymen.”

That sounds good to Alarcon, though he has yet to see changes and does not expect any soon.

“You know how baseball players and football players all have unions?” he says. “Boxing is one of the most dangerous sports there is, and we don’t have anything.”

*

It is a busy Friday night in the emergency room at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard. Alarcon sits in a cubicle, still in his boxing trunks and shoes, a white T-shirt pulled on crooked. His head is clear -- only a dull ache remains -- as he makes a request of the paramedics.

His manager has stayed at the auditorium, tending to other fighters on the card, so Alarcon needs a ride back. The paramedics say they aren’t allowed.

Nearby, people are crying.

“I want to go,” Alarcon says. “I don’t like hospitals.”

A nurse comes by to examine him and ask a few questions. Any more blurred vision? Any tingling in his feet? What about pain?

Alarcon responds that it’s nothing more than usual.

Given a painkiller, he takes it reluctantly, saying he prefers to ride out the soreness that comes after fights. Waiting for the doctor to approve his release, he reminisces.

Boxing has brought some good times. Promoters usually send a plane ticket so he can travel comfortably, and the motel rooms are nice. His record has now improved to 12-9.

But tonight his thoughts run mostly dark. Like the time in Laughlin, Nev., one of several occasions when fans threw beer on him. Or another fight, at an Atlantic City casino, when the promoter fed boxers in an employee cafeteria. The food did not look good, so Alarcon begged off. His manager ate it and was sick the next day.

“After that, I always bring a couple of dollars to eat at McDonald’s,” the fighter says.

Though he does not rely on the sport for his livelihood, money is a sore point.

Of the $2,000 he will get for fighting Ortiz -- the rival manager’s threats notwithstanding -- 25% will go to his manager and cornerman. There will be haggling over who pays the emergency room bill.

And, for the first time, the gym where he trains has started asking for monthly dues.

“It’s like a never-ending struggle,” he says.

When the doctor finally lets him go, Alarcon catches a ride back to the auditorium with a reporter.

Fans are still milling around out front, and Alarcon, worried they might come after him, suggests driving around back.

His manager, standing by the stage door, warns him not to get out of the car.

The fighter rides back to his motel, still in his trunks. It is the final indignity in a long, discouraging night when even winning feels bad.