Robledo Refused to Fall in Line

They were as much a part of boxing as the knockdown timekeeper at the bell, the swabs in the trainer’s mouth. You could see them in the lobby on fight night, scuffed shoes, frayed cuffs, sightless eyes behind dark glasses, selling pencils from a tin cup, maybe a sign around their necks reading: “Please Help Me. I Am Blind.”

The aficionados pointed them out proudly as if they were trophies to a glorious sport, ornaments to a great profession. “That’s Speedy Dado, he was the uncrowned champ.” “There’s Jack McVey, he fought the best.” There were guys who “had fought Johnson,” guys who “went 10 with the Bombah,” guys “who licked Greb,” guys “who got robbed.”

They got robbed, all right. Sam Langford belonged to this ghostly company, and the people who saw him say he might have been the best there ever was, even when he had to fight by feel. They usually died alone, unloved, broke and broken in some rear room in a rooming house with a cat and a scrapbook as their only legacy, and men wept for them who would never buy them a cup of coffee or even one of their pencils.

Canto Robledo was supposed to belong to this sad company of boxing’s damned, its long line of the sport’s human debris.

It was in the ‘30s, and Canto was as fine a specimen of an athlete as you would want to see. Quick, strong, fearless, he took on the best the bantamweight division had to offer. He beat the great Chalky Wright, who went on to become the featherweight champion of the world a dozen years later. He fought draws with the dazzling Speedy Dado, one of the best punchers ever to come out of the Philippines. He fought Midget Wolgast, the flyweight champion, twice. He became Pacific Coast bantamweight champion.

He also became blind. It happened, as it does, one eye at a time. He lost the first eye, the left one, to a bungled operation. But he also lost it to a bungled fight, an inability to get out of the way of Wolgast’s jab. Retinas are fragile membranes not constructed to withstand thumbs on the socket.

One of the most poignant scenes in all boxing film literature was the one in “On The Waterfront” when Marlon Brando, as a pug, says pitiably to his brother, Rod Steiger, “I could have been a contendah!”

Canto Robledo could have, too, and was within view of the title when he took a fight in Seattle that, if he won, would have resulted in a title shot with Panama Al Brown in Paris and, if he won that, in a featherweight title shot against Bat Battalino.

Boxing was a good game sport in those days, and even though Robledo couldn’t fight in California, other states were not so chicken.

Canto’s manager, Tom Donahue, was a good, game manager, too, and he made the fight for Canto even though Canto warned him he could no longer read an eye chart.

Canto never got to fight Panama Al Brown or Battling Battalino. In fact, he never got to fight anybody again. Boxing does draw the line at letting no-eyed men fight.

His last fight was against a swarmer named Hilo Hernandez. “He was a southpaw,” Canto recalls. “With a southpaw, you can’t always see the punches coming. Even when you got two eyes.”

In the third round of his fight against Hernandez, the lights went out for Canto Robledo. You might say the fight had to be called on account of darkness. Canto wondered why they had turned the ring lights off, but the fight mob understood what had happened when Canto began punching the referee. Canto hadn’t lost a fight, he had lost a career. “I got the decision,” he says.

That’s what he thought. He was behind on all cards in the real fight of life. They did try to save his sight. They put him in the hospital, where he had to lay motionless between sandbags with what he remembers as cones over his eyes.

Canto never could take a count. He stayed down, as he remembers it, for 18 days, then got up, ripped the bandages off his eyes and took off.

You would figure you could write the rest of this scenario with, so to speak, your eyes closed. Sam Langford, move over.

But you’d be wrong. Canto had been married--to Conchita --about a year before his eyesight was lost. That was 54 years ago, and now, four children and many grandchildren later, they are still married.

It may be a big reason Canto is not selling pencils at an auditorium. Another reason is Canto himself. At first, he admits, he gave himself over to booze and self-pity. But that didn’t last long. That wasn’t Canto’s style. Canto always pressed the fight. He went after life the way he went after Speedy Dado.

If ever the boxing game owed anybody--and it is in hock up to its ears in that moral regard--the game owed Canto Robledo.

It may be the one time it can mark the account, “Paid in full.”

Canto went right back to the profession that owed him. He became a trainer, a good one.

They only had to hold one benefit for Canto. That was 31 years ago. He took the proceeds from that and built himself a home with a gym in the back and he has trained nearly 500 fighters, some of the best in the West. “I had Ralph Lara--he fought Docusen--I had Bobby Brewer, I had Eloy Renteria. I had some good boys,” he recalls.

The Canto Robledo story has a happy ending of sorts. He has a scrapbook he can’t read, a gym he can’t see (but he can still teach youngsters how to punch a bag) and a world he can only hear, but there is no bitterness in Canto Robledo. “My old manager, Tom Donahue, came to me before he died,” he says, “and he never managed another fighter and he said, ‘Canto, can you ever forgive me?’ And I said, ‘I forgive you a long time ago--life is nobody’s fault.’ ”

They’re honoring Canto Robledo July 21 at the Irvine Marriott during one of Don Fraser’s ballroom fight cards there. But it’s a proud moment, a tribute to a guy who wouldn’t quit in his corner. You won’t have to throw money in the ring or buy a table. Canto will be working as usual, getting his main eventer, Joey Olivera, ready for a 10-rounder. Canto has no regrets. “If I had it to do over, what would I do?” he asks. “Well, I would have ducked more.”