For Davila and Duarte, It’s Back to the Future

Ten years ago to the month, crosstown rivals Albert Davila and Frankie Duarte met in the ring.

They were 22, in the prime of their athletic lives. Davila was ranked fifth by the World Boxing Council, Duarte 10th. The Olympic Auditorium, in wild anticipation, was swollen with its biggest house of the year. Cherry bombs rained from the balcony.

It was another of those Olympic crossroads fights, the climax to a long buildup of two popular house fighters. It was the way of promotion at the Olympic then, mismatches and box office busts patiently endured until the well-choreographed payoff. And this was one of the biggest.

But hardly any of those crossroads fights produced paths of such subsequent divergence as this one. Duarte, flattened in five that night, soon disappeared into a haze of drugs and drink. Davila fought for the bantamweight title within a year.

Today, at the Forum, their paths converge again, another crossroads fight on boxing’s meandering highways.

These two have been all over the map during the last 10 years, the mileage showing in their 32-year-old faces. But here they come again, Duarte and Davila, then, now, and forever, their futures once more on the line.

Apart from the mileage, these guys have a little more baggage than they did in their youth. Davila has been in six title fights since then, winning two. But his brief reigns were marred by tragedy in the ring and injury outside it, and his career has been curiously unsatisfying, given his early prospects.

Duarte, after a party that lasted nearly a decade, kicked drugs and alcohol and returned to the ring in 1984 for a remarkable comeback that took him within a few points of a world title this year.

Through such divergence have their careers merged again. The winner today, as 10 years ago, can anticipate a title fight, Forum officials say. The loser, presumably, will retire. Nothing really changes in boxing.

But that’s looking ahead, when the purpose of this reunion is to revisit the past, a little heyday in these parts when local fighters, just neighborhood guys really, could arouse an entire city.

“Those were the days,” says Danny Lopez, a featherweight champion then, and also Davila’s stablemate at the time. “You saw Albert and myself selling out the Olympic time and again. I sold it out, I think, four or five times. It was nice to fight at the Olympic, all that charisma. We were all local heroes.”

Davila and Duarte were two of the biggest.

Davila was celebrated by his Pomona constituency for his calm professionalism. He rarely knocked anybody out but won his fights with clever, intelligent boxing. His opponents simply came apart.

Duarte stirred his Venice followers with a brutal style that produced blood all around. Duarte was happy to take a punch or two if he could just get one of his own in. He often did. In his first 30 fights, he scored 22 knockouts.

Each had been showcased relentlessly at the Olympic, probably the busiest boxing arena of its time. And if they were ready for the fight, so were the fans.

“It was the kind of crowd you’d want for background if you had to do a boxing movie,” says Marty Denkin, who refereed the undercard.

Davila was only dimly aware of the crowd, although its size was crucial to his paycheck. “I always thought it was a little bigger crowd than they said it was,” remembered Davila, who received a percentage of the gate. He shrugged mischievously. “But I wasn’t an accountant.”

On the other hand Duarte, who admits he was mostly in the game to hear fans chant his name as he came down the aisle to the ring, remembers being gratified by the turnout. He’d had a hard time making the weight--he hadn’t made 118 pounds in three years--and was not in top shape.

“But I remember strutting around the ring before the fight,” he said. “I must have talked myself into believing I could win.”

The fight itself was anticlimactic. Davila, the clever boxer, floored Duarte three times before the one-sided affair was finally stopped.

“It was easier than I thought,” Davila says.

“It was humiliating,” says Duarte.

“I heard a lot of embarrassing things after the fight,” added Duarte. “There had been a (newspaper) story before the fight, ‘Win or Lose, Duarte Will Party.’ As I was leaving the ring, I heard someone yell, ‘Are you going to party, Frankie?’

“You know what? I went home and got bombed.”

In those days Duarte was often bombed. Denkin, now a member of the State Athletic Commission, remembers that Duarte’s inclinations were hardly secret.

“When he didn’t fight, he played to the maximum,” Denkin said. “Everybody in the game knew Frankie participated.”

Duarte does not deny it. “I remember me being a popular fighter and enjoying that popularity because I could go to some really good parties because of it,” he said. “I was at my peak then, at least to the extent that I was going to the best parties.”

But Duarte soon stopped winning fights and soon stopped fighting altogether, although the parties continued. In the nightmarish years that followed, Duarte grappled with his diminished legend.

“It got so bad, I noticed, that Davila wasn’t even using my name as a victim,” he said. “For a while it was, ‘Albert Davila, who knocked out Frankie Duarte.’ But then it was, ‘Davila, who beat Lupe Pintor.’ I wasn’t even good enough to be a victim. Well, he went on from that fight, I didn’t.”

Davila went on and went far, but never far enough. He fought Carlos Zarate for the WBC title within a year but was stopped in eight rounds.

Within six months, he made a bid for Jorge Lujan’s World Boxing Assn. title. He lost that on a close decision.

He was still a hot prospect, though, and was matched against Pintor for the WBC title in 1980. Davila, after winning the early rounds, ran out of gas and lost another close fight.

He got a fourth chance in 1983, when he was matched with Kiko Bejines for the vacant WBC title. Davila won that fight with a 12th-round knockout, on a seemingly harmless punch. It was not harmless. Bejines was never roused and died days later.

“I never did celebrate that victory,” Davila said.

Worse, a championship that should have been enjoyed could barely be endured. He made just one defense and his divergent road came to a sudden end. He hurt his back pulling out a shrub.

In a way, it was a tribute to his professionalism that he retired in 1985.

“Any other guy would have stayed on for other paydays,” Denkin said. “But this guy, if he’s not 100%, he retires.”

Surgery relieved the pain of the ruptured disk, though, and Davila soon was back in the ring, and even in contention. He was put in with Miguel Lora for the WBC championship in Colombia last year. Another close loss.

Yet he remains a contender, just as Duarte does after his loss to WBA champion Bernardo Pinango. Davila, 53-8-1, is ranked first by the WBC. Duarte, 47-7-1, is ranked fourth. John Jackson of the Forum promises the winner a crack at one of the bantamweight titles.

But that’s all in the future, which may come in time if these two guys ever quit reliving the past.

Boxing Notes

Today’s fight between Albert Davila and Frankie Duarte will begin about 2 p.m. It will be shown, tape delayed, by CBS, which is televising it live back East. . . . Ten years ago, on the undercard of their fight, Bobby Chacon was making one of his comeback fights. Tuesday night, Chacon, on another comeback, fought Martin Guevara in Tucson, surviving three knockdowns in the first two rounds and winning in the third on a TKO. . . . The fight today is billed as a North American Boxing Federation title bout, Duarte holding the belt. The state commission has decided it’s also for the state bantamweight championship. . . . Duarte, based on his recent attractiveness at the Forum, is receiving $45,000, an immense figure for a nontitle bantamweight bout; Davila, though the favorite, is getting $20,000, not a bad payday either.