RING RIVALS DIE : Death Comes Just Eight Days Apart for ’24 Olympic Finalists Fields, Salas

In 1924, at the Olympic Games in Paris, two Los Angeles boxers battled for the gold medal in the featherweight division.

In a close bout, Jackie Fields scored a decision over Joe Salas, who was awarded the silver medal.

Recently, the two old battlers died, within days of one another.

Fields died June 3, at 79. On June 11, Salas died, at 83.

Fields died in Las Vegas, where he lived in a rest home, and was buried there. Salas, who died in Los Angeles, was buried Monday at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. Salas won the 1924 national amateur featherweight championship in Boston, where Fields had been eliminated earlier in the tournament. The amateur served as the selection tournament for the U.S. Olympic team, but Fields, then 16, was later added to the team as an alternate.

Fields gained the distinction of being the youngest American ever to box for a U.S. Olympic team, since the age limit was raised for later Olympics. Salas was the first U.S. Latino to compete for an American Olympic team.

In the 16-boxer bracket at the Paris Olympics, Fields and Salas each scored four decision victories to gain the final.

After the Olympics, both boxers turned pro and made their debuts against one another in Los Angeles. Fields went on to a much more distinguished pro career. As a welterweight, he won the world championship twice, in 1929 and 1932.

He lost only 9 of 85 pro bouts in a career spanning 1924-1933. He was knocked out only by another Los Angeles boxer, Jimmy McLarnin.

Fields was elected in 1977 to the Boxing Hall of Fame.

Fields was born Jacob Finkelstein in Chicago in 1908, but his family moved to Los Angeles in 1921. He learned to box at Jack Dempsey’s Gym, then located at 5th and Spring streets. As an amateur, Fields, as did Salas, wore the colors of the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

Fields made considerable money as a pro boxer and invested much of it in real estate, but most of his investments were wiped out during the Depression.

In later years, Fields was a part owner and casino host at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. He also served as chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission.

Of his 1924 Olympic championship bout with Salas, Fields told a Times writer in 1969: “I won decisively, and to this day Joe has never spoken to me again. I really don’t know why.”

Salas, born in Los Angeles, was a Main Street newsboy before turning to boxing in 1920.

In 1983, he described his Olympic championship bout with Fields this way: “We had to dress in the same room. When they knocked on the door to call us to fight, we looked at each other and started to cry and we hugged. Ten minutes later, we were beating the hell out of each other.”

Salas compiled a 42-6 pro record. His career was retarded by hand injuries. He worked as a liquor salesman and a nurseryman until retirement. In recent years, he lived alone in the El Sereno home he built in 1932.

Fields is survived by a daughter, Michele Sharp of Las Vegas; stepdaughters Tina Kobrin and Donna Holland of Las Vegas, and stepson Todd Kobrin of Los Angeles.

Salas is survived by two sons, Robert, of Harbor City; Joseph, Jr., of Carlsbad, and a sister, Vivian Johnathan of Los Angeles.