Boxing in a Ballroom by the Beach: Where Else but Southern California?

A saxophone and piano are being played. Bartenders draw beers and pour wine. Hot dogs, brownies and cookies wait to be eaten. A crowd gathers behind doors not yet open.

It is nearly time for Boxing by the Beach at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Long Beach.

Two women in tight skirts and low necklines enter the foyer and are offended when mistaken for the curvaceous women who hold up round cards during the fights.

The women say they represent a beer company. They sit at a table and autograph beer ad posters of themselves.

Inside the Grand Ballroom, which holds a red-aproned boxing ring, promoter Steve Brooks writes checks to people who have provided their services for the evening.

Brooks is a tall young man in jeans and a T-shirt.

“All the fighters made weight, so that’s a minor miracle,” he said. “One was a pound over, but they put him on a bike for 40 minutes and he lost it.”

Tables are being set up. Little numbers are being affixed to chairs.

“We have 923 seats in the room,” a hotel official told Brooks.

“We’re getting a lot of calls about tickets,” another hotel official told Brooks.

A fire inspector wants to look at the seating chart. “This row has to go someplace else,” he said.

Sonny Ray, a top fighter in the 1950s and now a car painter, has a drink in his hand. He says he is a corner man for Ray McElroy of Long Beach, the undefeated California middleweight champion who will be in the main event.

The doors open, the crowd files in.

Brooks, carrying a tuxedo and cowboy boots, goes to change.

Leah Newman and Darcy Austin wait nervously in a hotel room. They will be two of the ring girls, the first time for both. Newman is a cocktail waitress at a popular sports bar, where she did well in a recent bikini contest. Austin works at a nightclub, where she wrestles customers in hot shaving cream.

Beneath a ceiling of little white lights similar to those that decorate Christmas trees, the fights begin. Salvador Montes knocks out Anthony (Hummingbird) Corriel in the first round.

Newman and Austin, in skimpy bathing suits, parade around the ring. Cheers and “yows” rise from the crowd.

Newman returns to her chair. Her hand shakes.

“Guarding” these women is Kraigo Klier, 23, of Norwalk. A short-sleeved tuxedo shirt emphasizes his big biceps. Red hair falls halfway down his back. He has a cast on his wrist.

Klier said he broke it in a fight at a Black Angus restaurant, where he is a bouncer.

Celebrities are introduced: pop singer Irene Cara and boxer Henry Tillman.

Mike Masucci, the center on the Cal State Long Beach basketball team, gets Tillman’s autograph.

The smacks from red leather gloves echo during the next two bouts.

“Take him out!” booms Gene Layton, an ex-pro football player who is sitting--by design, he said--behind the ring girls.

But one person at ringside looks bored.

“I’ve seen more excitement at a Broadway musical,” said Gordon James, president of the Long Beach Civic Light Opera.

In the fourth fight, light-heavyweight Nate Houser, his eyes puffy, crumbles to the canvas. A flashlight is shined in his eyes by a doctor. Later, a state official said Houser just lay down and quit, and Houser said he is going to retire.

In line at one of the bars during intermission, Layton said: “This is old-time entertainment. These kids are banging hard.”

Time for the main event: Ray McElroy vs. Robert (Showdown) Carson of San Pedro. Both have tassels on their shoes.

Carson can’t stand still for the national anthem.

Enthusiasm for the ring girls ebbs, but rises for the fighters, who slug it out.

“Knock him out, Ray.”

“Knock him out, Showdown.”

“Ray can’t do it, baby.”

There is a flurry of punches in the eighth and final round. Sweat drops fly into the first row.

“Comb-in-a-tion, comb-in-a-tion,” instructs a fan, his hands cupped around his mouth.

It is over. McElroy wins a unanimous decision. Sonny Ray pulls off McElroy’s gloves.

The fighters leave the ring.

“Champ didn’t knock you out, baby,” Carson’s girlfriend shouts to him.

They both smile.

Already, the ring is being taken down.