Friends and Foes : Jerry Quarry and Joe Orbillo Were Old Pals When They Fought on Dec. 15, 1966

One lived in Bellflower, the other in Wilmington.

One was Mexican, the other Irish.

Both were young heavyweight boxers called by Sports Illustrated “prime candidates” to dethrone Muhammad Ali.

Theirs was a great Southern California rivalry with a twist: Jerry Quarry and Joe Orbillo were old friends with no burning desire to meet each other in the ring.

But they did, and today it is 26 years since their fight before 10,200 screaming boxing fans at the Olympic Auditorium to determine who was the top young heavyweight in Los Angeles.

Quarry won and went on to a career as one of the best heavyweights of that era. But the fight had an even greater impact on Orbillo’s life. The beating he took from his old friend, says Orbillo, “saved my life in a strange way.”

“We met when we were kids in the Junior Golden Gloves program,” says Quarry, now 47 and living in Woodland Hills.

Both he and Orbillo were 5 when they had their first fights. By the time he won the national Golden Gloves heavyweight title in 1965, by knocking out five opponents, the 192-pound Bellflower boxer had logged more than 230 amateur bouts. His professional debut on May 7, 1965--Quarry won a four-round decision over Gene Hamilton--was widely viewed as the launching of a future heavyweight champion.

Orbillo never had another amateur fight after his debut at 5. But over the years, he trained in the gym with the likes of Archie Moore and Amos (Big Train) Lincoln. When he turned pro on May 28, 1964--he won a four-round decision over Henry Clark--ring announcer Jimmy Lennon introduced him as “the Harbor hawk.” In less than a year, the 190-pound Wilmington fighter was luring big crowds to the Olympic.

“I was Mexican, and I was a heavyweight. That was totally unusual,” says Orbillo, 45 and living in San Pedro.

In the February 21, 1966 issue of Sports Illustrated, the undefeated fighters--Quarry was 14-0-1, Orbillo 8-0-1--were given top billing in a feature article heralding a group of promising heavyweights that included a 22-year-old Philadelphian named Joe Frazier. The story boosted them all as worthy future opponents for then-champion Ali, but it also noted the inevitability of a match between Southern California’s top young heavyweights.

“I would knock him out in the fourth round,” Quarry was quoted as saying of a match with Orbillo. “He’s a three-round fighter.”

Said Orbillo: “Quarry is a good fighter, but so am I.”

The stage was set, but before the curtain went up, a new player joined the cast: Uncle Sam. In the spring of 1966, Orbillo was drafted into the Army and after basic training received his orders for Vietnam.

He fought Quarry the day before he was to ship out.

“I wasn’t going to fight Jerry,” Orbillo says. “I just wanted to come home, have a good time, fool around and go off to war.”

But he was persuaded to take the match by a letter from Johnny Flores, Quarry’s co-manager, which suggested, says Orbillo, that “I might not come back (from Vietnam) for a chance later on.”

So on Dec. 15, 1966, with the Olympic Auditorium beyond its legal capacity, Orbillo listened to Earl Nightingale motivational tapes in his dressing room and walked to the ring repeating his usual prefight affirmation: “I will survive. I will complete the mission.”

“The energy in that place was so great,” he remembers. “I don’t know how I got into the ring. I think I floated down the aisle.”

Quarry recalls that a lot of that crowd energy was channeled into fistfights between spectators.

“It was crazy,” he says. “Everybody was going nuts.”

The fight in the ring went almost the way Quarry had predicted in Sports Illustrated. Orbillo won the first three rounds. In the fourth, though, Orbillo says: “(Quarry) hit me so hard I went all the way over, like a complete somersault. I was on all fours, and saw (referee) John Thomas showing me five fingers. I thought, ‘Is it the fifth round, or what?’ ”

Although he was able to get up and continue on, that’s all Orbillo remembers about the fight. His next recollection is of being in a bowling alley with friends at 2:30 the next morning.

“I remember a strike being thrown, and looking around and saying, ‘What the hell? Hey, who won the fight?’

“There was dead silence. Then my best friend grabbed me and carried me into the bathroom.

“ ‘Look at your face and now ask me who won,’ he said. I looked at my swollen eyes and said, ‘I guess I lost.’ ”

But he completed the mission: He had gone the whole 10 rounds, with help from his friend Quarry, who won a unanimous decision.

“When I knocked him down, I was very afraid I was gonna kill him,” Quarry says. “I could have knocked him out, but there was no way I wanted to do that because we were friends.”

In the last round, with the fight in hand, Quarry dropped his hands and did an imitation of Ali dancing around the ring. The crowd loved it, but Quarry says he wasn’t showing off.

“It was strictly that I didn’t want to hurt him anymore,” he says.

The bout was voted “fight of the year” in Southern California.

Letting the fight go the distance turned out to be Quarry’s second-biggest favor of that night for Orbillo. The knockdown punch in the fourth round was first. It broke Orbillo’s eardrums.

Orbillo left for Ft. Benning, Ga., the next day, his first stop en route to Saigon. He had been trained as a point man, the soldier who took the lead in jungle patrols. But by the time he got to Vietnam, Orbillo’s ears were so inflamed that he was hospitalized. Then the Army sent him home for treatment.

“The guy who took my place over there, on his first patrol he stepped on a land mine and he was gone,” Orbillo says.

Orbillo boxed for a few more years, but says: “That spark was not really there” anymore. He retired for good in 1975.

Today, the longshoreman and union officer has some pangs but no bitterness about his boxing career.

“My goal was to be world’s champion,” he says. “I feel deprived, but nothing in the world is supposed to be guaranteed.”

Quarry didn’t become champion, either, but did fight Ali, Frazier and other top heavyweights of that era.

Both he and Orbillo regret that the 195-pound cruiserweight division wasn’t around when they were fighting.

“Neither one of us was a legitimate heavyweight,” Quarry says.

Adds Orbillo: “We could have been trading that (cruiserweight) title back and forth and making money off it.”

But nothing in this world is guaranteed, agrees Quarry, except for this:

“Joe’s still a good buddy of mine, and will be till the day we both drop dead.”