Boxing : Red Shannon Does Teaching Now

It was 1941, on a hot summer afternoon in Los Angeles. The Main Street Gym, 321 South Main St., was a busy, noisy place. The grimy little gym resounded with the sounds of sweating fighters whacking away at bags, and the clicking sound their jump ropes made on the dirty wooden floor. Boxers snorted as they threw punches at mirrors.

Against one wall, by the heavy punching bags, an old man in a suit sat on a bench and leaned on his cane.

He watched Red Shannon, a Los Angeles middleweight, work the heavy bag. He smiled at the young boxer, and revealed a gold tooth.

Forty-seven years later, Shannon, now 67, remembers the conversation this way:

Old man: Young man, when you get done, come over here. I want to talk to you.

Shannon: OK, let’s talk now.

Old man: Look, you’re too tight when you’re throwing punches, you need to relax. Your punches should flow naturally. You’re flexing up too much when you punch. And another thing, where’s your trainer?

Shannon: He’s over there, working with that other guy.

Old man: Well, you go tell him if he’s not going to be with you and watch you during your workout, you’re going to get another trainer.

Shannon: Well, who are you, anyway?

Old man: I’m Jack Johnson.

“I’d seen him hanging around the gym that summer,” Shannon said the other day. “He used to just sit on that bench and watch. I remember thinking after I’d talked to him that a lot of guys in the gym had no idea who he was.”

Johnson was the first black heavyweight champion, 1908-1915. In the early 1940s, he lived in Los Angeles. He was 68 when he died in an automobile accident near Raleigh, N.C., in 1946.

Today, the 20-year-old kid who was on the receiving end of the old champion’s lecture that day is, in a sense, the old man on the bench. Now he’s lecturing a young fighter. And he’s dreaming dreams that never came true for Red Shannon.

Shannon had a 37-13-11 record as a Los Angeles middleweight, from 1939 to 1944. He was never a champion, but he was better than most.

“My biggest payday was $1,300,” he said. “I went up to Seattle and lost to Harry (Kid) Matthews, when he was a middleweight. This was 10 years before he fought Marciano. Another big name from those days was Shorty Hogue, who beat Archie Moore twice. I lost to him, too.”

Shannon’s young fighter is Ricky Romero, 24, of Wilmington, a one-time nationally ranked amateur flyweight. He’s 15-0 as a pro, with two 10-rounders under his belt.

“This kid is something special,” Shannon said. “He can win a title. He has ability. He’s a hard worker, a quick learner and he’s all business in the gym. He’s sparred with Paul Gonzales a couple of times in the gym and gave Paul all he wanted. I think in a year or two, a Gonzales-Romero fight would be a good one in L.A.”

Romero’s next test is against Abraham Perez (18-5), on matchmaker Harry Kabakoff’s first show at the Hollywood Palladium, Sept. 1.

And speaking of Harry Kabakoff--as he is often wont to do--the question isn’t “Where has Harry been?” but rather, “Where is the rest of Harry?”

He has trimmed down from 303 pounds to 185 over the last two years, on doctor’s orders.

“I went into the hospital in a diabetic coma in 1984,” Harry said. “I had a tough doctor. When I came to, he said: ‘Harry, you’re going to lose a hundred pounds. Now, we can do this your way, or we can do it my way. If we do it my way, I’m going to start with your toes.’ ”

Harry Kabakoff--real name: Melville Himmelfarb--says he’s 61, but some say 71 is closer to the mark. He probably has the state record for most fight sites.

Harry has worked the Culver City Veterans Auditorium, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, the Reseda Country Club, the Bakersfield Auditorium, the Olympic Auditorium, San Francisco’s Cow Palace, the Sacramento Veterans Memorial Auditorium, the Fresno Municipal Auditorium, the Universal Sheraton . . .

Hey, wait a minute, Harry. Hasn’t your counterpart in Orange County, Don Fraser, proven that boxing works best in the suburbs? Fraser’s shows have been playing to SRO crowds at the Irvine Marriott for four years.

“The Palladium is perfect,” Harry insists.

“It’s 15 minutes from East L.A., 15 minutes from the Valley--and it’s a beautiful old building. I got 1,998 seats, and I’m gonna scale ‘em from $12 to $22. Or you can buy a ringside table at 50 bucks a seat, and all the beer and hors d’oeuvres you can eat.

So how did Harry go from 303 pounds to 185?

“It was easy,” he said, “I just knocked off sweets, salt, pastries and the chili dogs. Well, OK--giving up the chili dogs wasn’t easy, but I did it.”

Boxing Notes

One more Red Shannon-Jack Johnson story: “One day in the Main Street Gym some young heavyweight whose name I can’t remember was acting cocky. Johnson was there that day, and the young heavyweight talked the old man into the ring. He had to be 60. He stripped to the waist, put on 16-ounce gloves, and they rang the bell. Johnson never threw a punch. He just stood there, and picked off with his gloves every punch this kid threw . . . picked them right out of the air. They went one round, and he made the kid look foolish.”

The second main on Harry Kabakoff’s Sept. 1 Palladium card: Rogelio Montenegro (16-0), Mexico City vs. Robert Lewis (10-13), Los Angeles. . . . Fabela Chavez, leading Southland lightweight from the early 1950s, will be honored on Don Fraser’s Monday card at the Irvine Marriott, where Tommy Perez (18-3), Santa Ana, and Kenny Lopez (16-6), San Jose, meet for the vacant state super-welterweight title. . . . There is talk of Glendale’s Hector Lopez (17-1) meeting Australian WBC featherweight champion Jeff Fenech (21-0) on the undercard of the Nov. 7 Sugar Ray Leonard-Donny Lalonde fight at Caesars Palace. Fenech, who has never fought outside Australia, calls himself: “The greatest pound-for-pound fighter in the world, south of Mike Tyson.”