Round That Never Came Might Mean End for Torres

It’s highly unlikely that when Mom and Dad Torres of San Juan, Puerto Rico, sought a name for their son 26 years ago they thought of how many victories he might have after 12 professional boxing matches.

But alas, his name and his win total are Juan and the same.

Juan (Kid) Torres, now of San Diego, watched his record drop to 1-9-2 with a loss to Abe Gomez of Arleta on Tuesday night at the Country Club in Reseda. The word “watched” is important here, because that’s basically what he did in the last round of the five-round fight.

“I didn’t know it was the last round,” Torres said after losing the unanimous decision. “I thought I’d rest that round and then pound that sucker in the next round.”

There was no next round. And for Torres, there might never be a next round. At least not in this state. California Athletic Commissioner Marty Denkin carefully has reviewed the career of Torres and told the fighter before the bout that unless he turned in a very impressive performance, the commission would revoke his boxing license.

It’s not official yet, but consider it revoked.

Gomez rocked Torres in the first round, landing a crushing overhand right that snapped Torres’ head back and buckled his knees. After the knockdown, it appeared Torres’ game plan was simply one of survival. And that did not escape the notice of Denkin.

“He was trying to survive, not to win,” Denkin said. “Now we’ll evaluate him and see if he should fight again. But I have to ask myself now, with this guy’s record 1-9-2, where does he go from here?”

The immediate answer was back to the tiny dressing room at the Country Club, where Torres nursed a swollen right eye and insisted that he won the fight. The judges saw it a bit differently. In the five rounds scored by the three judges, only one of the 15 scores did not go to Gomez. One judge called one round a draw. Some planets are closer than this fight was.

“I didn’t think he beat me,” Torres said. “He never hurt me. He knocked me down, OK, but he never hurt me. That’s why they gave it to him, I guess. Losing all these decisions gets pretty frustrating. To tell you the truth, I might as well quit. This gets very discouraging.”

The highlight of the night for Torres was the introduction by ring announcer Jimmy Lennon, Jr., which went like this:

“Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we have two undefeated featherweights in the ring. In the blue corner, fighting out of San Diego, at 128 pounds, unbeaten in his pro career with a record of 3-0, Juan (Kid) Torres.”

In the blue corner, there was a big smile on the face of Torres. Perhaps, he was thinking, all those losses were just bad dreams. Perhaps he was, indeed, undefeated. Perhaps not.

“We have made a mistake,” Lennon announced between the first and second rounds, at which time Torres was still listening to train whistles blowing in his ears from the knockdown punch he took. “Juan Torres is not an undefeated fighter tonight.”

Or any other night, for that matter. He lost his pro debut in 1983 and evened his record at 1-1 with a decision in his second bout. But for Torres, it has all been going downhill faster than Dom DeLuise on a skateboard since that second fight. He lost to Lance Reyes and Kiki Ortega and Tony Lopez and Kenneth Garigan and Augie Serros and Joe Orantez.

“He’s been an opponent,” said Dean Lohuis, editor of boxing’s Pacific Southwest Record Book. “He’s been used.”

And abused.

“My first manager didn’t care about me at all,” Torres said. “He put me in against anybody and then he took all the money.”

And in true boxing style, Torres doesn’t really believe he lost all those fights.

“I’ve lost a lot of close decisions,” he said. “They robbed me out of a lot of those fights. They knew I was better than some of those guys I was supposed to fight so they put someone else in the ring against me at the last minute. It screws your mind up. You prepare for one guy and then, all of a sudden, there’s another guy standing there.”

But Kid Torres is also no dummy. Somewhere in his heart he knows the truth.

“I guess it didn’t really matter if they switched opponents on me, if you think about it,” he said. “I had never seen any of the guys I was supposed to be fighting, either.”

Torres, a handsome man with a thick mustache, works as a private security guard in San Diego. He answers a lot of ringing bells in banks and homes, “but it’s a high risk job with no money in it,” said the man who allows adults to pound him in the skull with boxing gloves on a regular basis for about $250 a night.

On the surface, Tuesday appeared to be just another work night for Torres. A few hundred dollars, a few solid blows to the head and another loss. But this one was different. This one might have been his last one.

“I thought I could beat this guy,” he said. “And then I forgot the fifth round was the last round. The last damn round.”