At This Ex-Lightweight’s Pub, Boxing Still Reigns Supreme

Walking into Georgie Latka’s tavern in Huntington Beach is kind of like waking up and finding yourself in the middle of an old George Raft movie.

Your first instinct is to hit the deck before the coppers bust the joint.

It’s as though someone lifted a chunk of Southside Chicago and dropped it on the corner of Bolsa Chica and Warner.

It’s a place that should be filmed in black and white. It’s smoky, smelly and loud--everything you’d desire in a place dedicated solely to preserving the name of beer and boxing.

Every square inch of wall space is plastered with history. See faded pictures of boxing’s legends--revered and forgotten--squeezed between yellowed and tattered fight-card pinups.

Behind the bar, wiping the counter, is the old scrapper himself, Latka, who could tell you in a minute how close he came to being champeeeen of the world.

No, this isn’t Fashion Island.

It’s Orange County in real estate only.

Imagine some beach kid peeking his head in the door on his way to Hooters Surf Wax and Sushi Kitchen or something. I mean, you gotta be kiddin’, dude.

But Latka, steaming toward his 72nd birthday, is no joke. He’s living, breathing proof that not all old fighters end up on park benches reciting the alphabet.

Of course, 214 career fights have left their mark. Latka’s nose is pushed in some, the area surrounding his eyes swollen and glazed.

But ask Latka if it was all worth it and he gives you one of those “Let-me-tell-ya-a-story, kid” looks.

He embraces boxing with such a passion that it’s easy to see how a man’s bar can, too, embody his life and love.

“It was just as glamorous as portrayed,” Latka said as he looked back around at the pictures in the room. “A lot more movies could have been made out of fighters’ lives.”

Latka springs from his chair and takes a guest on a pictorial tour around his ring. There’s a shot of Latka mugging with the great Jack Dempsey. There’s Latka with former middleweight champ Tony Zale. And Latka with Mae West. And Latka with, yes, George Raft.

Raft, the movie actor, actually bought Latka’s contract for $6,000 in 1940, when the lightweight was about the hottest boxer on the West Coast.

Latka was known then as “The Professor” because of his skills as a defensive fighter. It was also a fitting name considering Latka was a rarity in his day--a college graduate and later a teacher.

Not a bad climb for a scrawny, pimply-faced kid out of Gary, Ind. Latka, child No. 10 in a family of 12, fought his way off the playgrounds to California, where he won a boxing scholarship at San Jose State.

He came south to Los Angeles in 1937 and turned pro, making $19 in his first fight--six bucks of it, naturally, going to his manager.

The Professor was in his prime in 1940, winning the Pacific Coast Lightweight title.

He was 50-5 as a pro, but his biggest heartbreak came in not getting a shot at the world title, then held by Sammy Angott. Angott and Latka were all set to fight in 1940 and went as far as having publicity photos taken.

The fight was being promoted by Ed (Strangler) Lewis, a former pro wrestler and local celebrity. But the fight fell through at the last minute, at which time Latka could have strangled somebody.

He later fought Angott to a draw in a non-title fight in San Francisco. But no one makes movies about guys in non-title fights.

Latka retired in 1942 at age 28, his senses intact. He wasn’t going to end up “a punchy” like the rest of them, though he seemed headed that way in 1945 when the dizzy spells first started. Latka then began tripping over his words, his tongue feeling thick and numb.

Lucky for him, the problem turned out to be a disc in his neck that was pressing on a nerve, and after a few tweaks from a chiropractor Latka was good as new.

He spent 28 years at Douglass Aircraft and 35 years as a boxing referee.

He was in the ring on the night of the 1963 featherweight championship fight between Sugar Ramos and Davey Moore, in which Moore was killed.

A picture of that fight hangs on his wall, too. It would be a long time before Latka could accept it as an act of fate.

“I had a lot of second thoughts about what I could’ve done,” he said. “But, in retrospect, it was just a fluke thing.”

Yet most of his memories of boxing are great ones.

His career as a referee landed him bit parts in several boxing movies, including “Raging Bull.”

Latka thought he had retired once in the early 1970s but couldn’t stand sitting around with nothing to do.

That’s when, in 1975, he and wife Trudie decided to open Latka’s Golden Gloves.

Come in some night and find Latka arm-wrestling a customer or swapping stories around the pool table.

Just don’t try to tell him that a life in boxing never did anyone any good. Not even the old palookas.

“You never hear the stories of the guy who never made it big,” Latka said. “But he can walk back into his old arena or gym years later and feel proud. He feels like somebody. He couldn’t get that feeling anywhere else. And he can carry it with him the rest of his life.”