It’s Not Over Until . . . : Resilient Michael Carbajal Recalls Toughest Fight Before Taking On Humberto Gonzalez Again

It was over, no doubt about it. Michael Carbajal, eyes staring nowhere and legs dead, twisted sideways into the ring ropes, then crashed to the canvas. His ponytail was matted to his back, and his left arm swung between the second and third ropes, limply reaching for balance.

After four blistering rounds of absorbing Humberto (Chiquita) Gonzalez’s hammering, Carbajal had to be finished 15 seconds into the fifth, and Gonzalez and everybody else watching the fight at the Las Vegas Hilton knew it.

“I caught him good,” Gonzalez said, recalling the moment this week through a translator. “I saw he was very, very bad. I believed he would never get up.”

At least not before referee Mills Lane counted to 10, maybe not before 100.

Earlier in this fight on March 13, 1993, Carbajal had gone down for the first time in his career, but after that second-round knockdown he was up quickly and not badly damaged.

On this knockdown, caught clean with back-to-back rights as the 5-foot-1 Gonzalez charged him to open the fifth, Carbajal visibly sagged before going down.

“I saw him fall and I thought, man! “ said Carbajal’s brother and trainer, Danny.

How could it not be over?

Then Michael Carbajal emerged from his daze at the count of five, slammed the canvas in anger, rose to his feet and carried the fight into history.

The long-awaited rematch is Saturday night at the Forum.

“I don’t think anybody else would’ve gotten up from that,” Danny Carbajal said of his brother’s fifth-round crisis.

“All I knew is I had to get up,” Michael Carbajal said. “No panic. Just, get up . I was still a little bit shaky. I knew where I was at, but my legs were still wobbly.

“But after taking that shot, anything else I took from him there was no problem. I had taken his best.”

Carbajal survived Gonzalez’s frenzied attempt to finish him off--Gonzalez launched 20 wild home-run swings in the 10 seconds after the knockdown--and came back to score with his own whistling right-hand shots in that round as Gonzalez tired.

The fight ended two rounds later, when Carbajal delivered a savage right-left hook combination that crumpled Gonzalez forward to the floor. Gonzalez was counted out, his eyes shut in agony.

Trailing by four points on all judges’ cards as the fight ended, Carbajal leaped and nearly wept in celebration. It was over.

“The only thing I will always think,” Gonzalez said softly, “is that I already had him. And that I let him go.”

*

Nobody had to go back through the videotape to know that this was one of the best fights in recent years, probably the best ever in the light-flyweight (108-pound) division.

The stunned roars of the crowd. The furious hugs among the Carbajal cornermen when it was over. The bleak look on Gonzalez’s face when he crawled back to a sitting position and asked his corner: “Did he hit me?”

Almost a year later, both fighters can remember every important moment of that bout--their thoughts and their fears and their triumphs--as if they were touchstones of their lives.

Heading into the rematch, the two men spoke in separate interviews with similar degrees of pride and eagerness, obviously hungry to go back into the ring another time.

“I have been waiting for this since the day I lost,” Gonzalez said.

Carbajal, 25 at the time, entered their first fight with a 27-0 record and the International Boxing Federation light-flyweight belt.

But doubts had been gathering over the 1988 Olympic silver medalist from Phoenix--he had only 15 knockouts in those 27 victories, a low percentage for such a nimble outside puncher, and he had been hit hard often.

Gonzalez, 26 then, was considered the Mexican Mike Tyson of the lower weights, a brawler with a frontal attack that chewed up his opponents. He had the World Boxing Council belt and a 35-1 record, with 25 knockouts.

But Gonzalez had always struggled to make weight, was having trouble with his managers right up to the Carbajal fight, often fought listlessly and was not known as a technician in the ring. He was a bull.

Carbajal thought he knew how to handle bulls.

“I thought the fight would be easier than it was,” Carbajal said. “When I saw him fight before, he threw really slow and really wide punches.”

Said Danny Carbajal: “We had planned just to box and maybe in the later rounds take him out.”

It did not happen that way, not for a moment.

Gonzalez, who usually works from a southpaw stance, came out fighting right-handed in the first round and, unsurprisingly, came out bombing.

“The strategy was to attack Carbajal,” said Gonzalez’s adviser, Rafael Mendoza. “The best thing was to make Carbajal respect him. Don’t let Carbajal walk (forward). He is very good when he walks. He cannot fight backward.”

The first was a tight round, with both fighters landing some punishing shots, though neither was hurt. Carbajal backed away from some of Gonzalez’s charges but stayed inside to trade shots more often than his brother liked.

“Michael came back after the first round, and I was trying to tell him, ‘Don’t stay with him right there, give me more movement,’ ” Danny Carbajal said. “He told me, ‘No, no, no, Danny. He’s not that strong. I’m stronger. I want to mess him up inside.’

“Nobody knows better than the fighter inside the ring.”

Carbajal kept trying to fire away from tight quarters in the second round, but seemed to be confused when Gonzalez switched back to his southpaw style and began hitting Carbajal with searing combinations to the body and head.

About two minutes into the round, Gonzalez caught Carbajal with a solid left uppercut, and 30 seconds later, a wide left to the forehead put Carbajal down.

“He was a lot quicker and threw a lot crisper than I thought he would be,” Michael Carbajal said.

Carbajal clearly wasn’t hurt by the knockdown--he was up at the count of two and fighting again immediately after the eight-count--but Gonzalez was setting the tempo of the fight.

Through the third and fourth rounds, Gonzalez swarmed over Carbajal. Although Carbajal was catching Gonzalez with clean right crosses and those rocket shots had opened up a gash over Gonzalez’s left eye in the third, Gonzalez was winning the fight with flurries that often had Carbajal on his heels.

The first knockdown told Gonzalez everything he needed to know.

“I knew it’s not going to be any problem to handle this guy,” Gonzalez said. “He got up, he wasn’t hurt. But, I thought, at the first hard punch I nailed him with, he went down.

“He was going to be mine at any time.”

*

The fifth round all but won the fight for Gonzalez, then ultimately lost it.

He had to shed several pounds the day before the bout to make weight, and was not sure he could last 12 rounds at a break-neck pace. His plan was to attack and get a knockout, and nothing Carbajal had done warned him away from the strategy.

When the fifth opened, Gonzalez zoomed in for the kill, pinning Carbajal against the ropes in five seconds and firing looping rights and lefts at his head.

Carbajal tried answering, but couldn’t get to Gonzalez, who is four inches shorter.

Ten seconds into the Gonzalez flurry, Carbajal was hit by the second right hook, and went down.

His brother, upon later reflection, sees the next five seconds as the most important span of time in his brother’s professional career. The answer to any man’s deepest fears.

“I don’t like to see him go down, but there has to be another fighter who goes in with the same competitiveness,” Danny Carbajal said. “The same heart to go out there and test yourself against. With Gonzalez, a lot of the questions about Mike were answered in the fifth round.”

Carbajal was on his knees by the count of five and, with the support of the ropes, on his feet by seven. But his eyes and legs looked as if the fight were over.

Gonzalez saw it.

“When I saw him get up, I jumped on him, and I was trying to finish him,” Gonzalez said. “I threw a lot of punches and I got tired.

“It was a mistake. Because of the problem I had with my weight, I shouldn’t have gone after him.”

Before the fifth round was a minute old, Carbajal had already gone down dizzily and gotten up, and Gonzalez had relaunched his attack and punched himself out. Carbajal, stunningly, had recuperated, fought off Gonzalez and gone back to battle.

Said Gonzalez’s new trainer, Ignacio Beristain, who replaced Justo Sanchez: “He threw too many punches to see if he could nail him with one and finish the fight, instead of going very calm and trying to find the opening.

“But when you get excited and when you are worried because you don’t have the conditioning, you say, ‘I better finish him now.’ ”

Carbajal took over the rest of the round and began to hit Gonzalez with his left hook, which would become the fateful punch of the fight.

Into the sixth and seventh rounds, Carbajal seemed to grow fresher and fresher, as Gonzalez’s carefully plotted combination attack evaporated into pure slugging. Gonzalez was more open than ever.

“I knew that Michael could take a shot,” Danny Carbajal said. “And I knew if Michael landed a shot the way Gonzalez did, it was going to be over.”

At 1:32 of the seventh, Carbajal caught Gonzalez off-balance with a short left hook that drove Gonzalez 10 feet back into the ropes. Although it could have been ruled a knockdown, Lane did not call it, and Gonzalez covered up against Carbajal.

“That was the first time Gonzalez had been hurt,” Mendoza said.

Gonzalez recovered enough to hit Carbajal a dozen more times, but his legs were gone. His arms swung heavily.

Then, with less than 20 seconds left in the round, Carbajal pounded a right hand into Gonzalez’s face that pushed him against the ropes, ducked two soft Gonzalez counters, missed with a wild right and connected with a perfect left hook.

“That was not only a strong punch, it was a surprise,” Gonzalez said. “And that was the combination that put me down.”

Gonzalez teetered for a second, his body resting briefly on Carbajal’s shoulder. He fell hard.

Though he hit the canvas at 2:47, Lane did not officially count him out until one second remained in the round.

Carbajal will earn $1 million Saturday night, as a direct result of his increased stature in the boxing world because of that victory last March. And the comparisons to Roberto Duran, his idol, have never seemed more apt as he prepares for the rematch.

“Michael knows he can take whatever Gonzalez can dish out,” Danny Carbajal said. “That doesn’t mean we’ll go in reckless, but he knows, ‘I can take it.’ Gonzalez has the question, ‘Man, if he hits me, am I going to go out again?’ And that he can’t get rid of, no matter how long he fights.”

Said Gonzalez: “Carbajal says that because I got tired and I never nailed him again. If I nail him again good, he will go down.”

Gonzalez grew quiet when asked if he was injured by the knockout.

“I was not hurt,” Gonzalez said. “I didn’t have any pain. The only thing I felt was sadness.”

Michael Carbajal, asked what the moment was like, also recalled only emotion.

“I just remember saying, ‘Damn, that was a good fight.’ ”