From Glory Days to Yory Days : Campas Has Breathed New Life Into Grand Olympic Auditorium

Put his name on the bill, and people come. Say his name in the arena, they listen. Introduce him in the middle of the ring, they roar.

Luis Ramon (Yory Boy) Campas, relatively unknown in American boxing circles but close to the heart of the Mexican fight crowd, elicits chants and songs and, almost by himself, has breathed new life into a building that had been abandoned yet again.

Put Campas, who has never held a world title, in the Grand Olympic Auditorium, a building whose legacy was built on the battles of countless fighters from Mexico, and suddenly the place is alive.

“He’s really the only fighter who fights in L.A. that, if you just announce he’s going to fight, people are going to come,” said promoter Peter Broudy, who took over the boxing operation at the Olympic after Top Rank Inc.’s ill-fated nine-month stint.

“For my venue, he’s the perfect fighter.”

Campas, 23, of Sonora, Mexico, who built up a 37-0 record with 34 knockouts before his 21st birthday and before fighting outside Mexico, has fought twice at the Olympic and has twice put more than 3,100 paid customers in the seats.

That’s more than Top Rank had for any of its shows, two of which featured Oscar De La Hoya and including the grand reopening in March, 1994, that had a paid crowd under 3,000.

Monday night, Campas (58-1, 52 KOs) fights for the third time at the old boxing palace--against Missouri journeyman Heath Todd--and Broudy, who has promoted only one card at the Olympic that did not feature Campas, is hoping for a paid crowd of more than 4,000.

“I think people like the way I am--very simple,” Campas said through a translator before a workout at the Brooklyn Gym. “I’m not pretending to be some big guy. If I lose they like me, if I win they like me.”

In the ring, Campas, who, as a natural welterweight or junior-middleweight has an unnaturally large frame for a Mexican fighter, is a classic battler, leaning on his opponent with heavy shoulders and landing hammering body shots as precursors to a knockout.

“I always like to finish the opponent, that’s what I think the people like,” said Campas, whose nickname comes from the dark-complexioned Indians who populate his region of Mexico and means, literally, “White Boy.”

After a series of indifferent shows, Olympic owners Steve and Dennis Needleman let Top Rank President Bob Arum out of their one-year contract and turned the building over to Broudy, who controls none of boxing’s glamour names.

But Broudy, who has promoted grass-roots fight cards all over Southern California, is plugged into the pipeline of popular Mexican fighters that served the Olympic so well decades ago.

“I thought about who would be the Mexican fighter to bring to Los Angeles,” Broudy said. “I mean, you eliminate [Julio Cesar] Chavez, I can’t do Chavez.”

After also eliminating Miguel Angel Gonzalez and other Mexican world champions because of the high purse demands, Broudy called Don Chargin, who, along with Dan Duva, manages Campas’ career in the United States.

Chargin, who made his name as the matchmaker at the Olympic during its glory days, said Campas would be perfect for the Olympic in all the ways that American-born Oscar De La Hoya and the rest of the fighters in the Top Rank stable were not.

In a fight for the International Boxing Federation welterweight title, Campas lost for the first time last September to rising star Felix Trinidad, and there were some in the die-hard fight crowd who wrote him off after the fourth-round technical knockout.

“I will admit they needed each other,” Chargin said of the fighter and the old building. “His career after losing to Trinidad needed a boost, the Olympic needed a boost.

“I told Peter he’d be the one guy to draw at Olympic. No. 1, he’s a real Mexican. He’s from there, he’s had the majority of his fights in Mexico, he will take two punches to land one and he’s a puncher, which they like.

“The way the guy meets the people and shakes hands, he just typifies the fighter from below the border that they really like.”

In the tight quarters of the Brooklyn Gym last week, Campas, who is paid about $20,000 a fight for his Olympic appearances--and draws a paid gate of about $80,000--floated from casual interchanges with the other boxers and assorted fight fans to his sparring session to his drills.

“I think Yory Boy is so popular because of the way he acts with the people,” said Obdulio Munoz, who runs the Brooklyn Gym. “It’s the way he fights, the way he treats the people, and he’s never changed.”

If Campas, who refuses to wear his trademark Indian headgear into the ring until he wins back a crown--he was the North American Boxing Federation titleholder until losing to Trinidad--had beaten Trinidad, Duva and Chargin were pointing toward a showdown with World Boxing Council welterweight champion Pernell Whitaker, one of Duva’s fighters.

Campas, who floored Trinidad early but was overwhelmed quickly thereafter, blames the defeat on a sinus problem that grew worse when the quicker, taller Trinidad landed several shots to his nose.

But after again showing his box-office appeal and ability to win in L.A. by knocking out Cassius Clay Horne last February and defeating Young Dick Tiger last April, if Campas can win some kind of title by the end of the year, a Whitaker fight may be in his future.

For Mexican fans, Whitaker-Campas would make up for a disappointing performance by Chavez in his controversial majority-decision draw against Whitaker in September of 1993.

“I think the Olympic would be too small,” Chargin said. “Maybe we’d go with him and Whitaker at the Sports Arena. I don’t think that fight’s that far away at all. He has a style that maybe in 12 rounds he could catch up to Whitaker.”

Until then, Chargin said that he, Duva and Salvador Mendoza Ruiz, Campas’ Sonora manager, are thrilled with the results at the Olympic.

“It’s been like old times at the Olympic, with the people up and screaming every time he goes into one of his rallies,” Chargin said. “I stayed away the whole time [Top Rank ran the building], would never go. And [Campas] was kidding me, ‘Well, you’ve got to go to the Olympic when I fight.’

“I’ve liked it. My mind really is wandering when I go in there, thinking of everything in the past . . . but I’m getting to that age, you know?”

Chargin says he’s impressed with the way Broudy has worked to revive the promotions--making sure to start the main event after 9 p.m. because the crowd is habitually late arriving, as opposed to Top Rank’s 5 or 6 p.m. starts to suit television.

But the key, Chargin emphasizes, is to do what the old Olympic did--keep finding young fighters who can draw the real fight crowd. Broudy, who keeps an office at the Brooklyn Gym, says he is constantly looking for new talent, and points out that there’s no better place to find it than at the Brooklyn.

“Peter’s not afraid to work, so he’s probably going to do it,” Chargin said.

Which is something Top Rank, for all its power and name fighters, could not do.

“I heard that Arum told [Top Rank matchmaker Bruce] Trampler, ‘Your friend Chargin gave the new promoter Yory Boy. Why didn’t he give him to us?’ Thing was,” Chargin said, “they never asked.”