Tragedy in the Ring of Fate : Street Violence Claims the Life of Ex-Boxer, Jolts Young Fighter Who Witnesses Slaying of Uncle

Usually when tragedy befalls a prizefighter, it happens in the ring--the downside of an often brutal sport.

But in Los Angeles, violence also stalks the streets. It claimed the life of one down-and-out former boxer this month and left another, an up-and-coming young prospect, debating whether to abandon his fledgling career and go back home to Mexico.

The tales of Jose Luis Martin Del Campo and Alfredo De Santiago are stories touched by irony and chance. Del Campo, 46, a hard-punching featherweight once touted by his trainers as a possible world champion, was sipping coffee at a doughnut shop at 8th and Alvarado streets west of Downtown when he was gunned down Aug. 13, the unintended victim in a drive-by shooting.

De Santiago, 21, an amateur fighter who had come to Los Angeles to train, was doing even less--merely walking with his uncle outside the Broadway Gym in South-Central--when two gunmen approached them from behind Monday night. The attackers made an apparent demand for money--De Santiago is not even sure he understood them--and then opened fire, killing the uncle while De Santiago raced away on foot to get help.

Although the fighter was not hurt, his career is now in limbo while he figures out how to support himself and decides whether to return to his hometown of Culiacan, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. His uncle, 38-year-old Julian De Santiago, had been providing room and board at his San Pedro duplex, where he left a wife and three young children.

The two murders, not 10 miles apart, were unrelated except for the sinewy ties between boxing and depressed, crime-plagued urban communities. In places where toughness is a requisite of survival, prizefighting is often an outlet for aggression and, sometimes, it is a way out. Generations of young men--many of them immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere--have entered the ring because they are good with their fists, and they have used the sport to chase aspirations of wealth, fame and glory.

Del Campo pursued such dreams. De Santiago had begun to. The dreams were the one bond that brought them, separately, to Los Angeles. The dreams were the reason that they were out on the streets, vulnerable to the violence that awaited them there.

“All his life, he maintained himself with boxing,” Del Campo’s brother Miguel said at the fighter’s funeral in Culver City, where mourners dropped red roses and sprinkled dirt into Del Campo’s open grave.

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Del Campo, like many Los Angeles fighters, came from a humble background in Mexico--from Guadalajara, originally, where his family owned a herd of cows and eked out a living selling milk, cheese and honey. He at first gained notoriety in street skirmishes as a child, and he started boxing in the mid-1960s when he was about 14.

“He always fought,” said Marcos (Chino) Navarro, 44, who grew up in the same barrio and sometimes sparred with Del Campo. “Ever since we were kids, we went to the gym all the time together.”

At 16, Del Campo was fighting professionally on the Mexican circuit. Four years later, according to friends, he was training in Tijuana when well-known manager Willie Ketchum saw him and envisioned a bigger future.

Del Campo had a fighter’s tools: discipline and a devastating left hook. He came to Los Angeles as a likely crowd-pleaser on Thursday night fight cards at the old Olympic Auditorium, where his snub-nosed features earned him the nickname “El Chato,” from the Spanish word for flat. At the height of his career, in 1973, he twice fought champion-to-be Bobby Chacon--and lost both times.

After the second loss, in nine rounds, Del Campo wept. The fight was as close as he ever came to achieving the lofty aspirations that he and his trainers had set.

“After that, he really didn’t have it anymore,” said friend and La Opinion sports writer Marcelino Avila. “He was this far below the best,” Avila said, measuring an inch with his forefinger and thumb. “But not good enough to be the world champion.”

After another knockout defeat in 1975, Del Campo heeded advisers who told him to get out before suffering serious injury. He stopped fighting and never held a full-time job again; instead, he held front-yard clothing sales, bounced around among part-time jobs and occasionally trained young fighters as a hobby.

Those who knew him believe he had a difficult time adjusting to life outside the ring. He lost his sense of purpose. Some friends said he seemed to live two lives--one at home with his wife, Alicia, and their three children, and one out on the streets, drinking, wandering and talking with friends, as if trying to maintain a network of his followers.

“That was the way he reminded himself that he was a good boxer,” said one friend, 38-year-old Tony Perez.

“He had a lot of friends,” said Del Campo’s oldest daughter, Lizette, 17, who remembered him as a playful father who would sometimes wake his 5-year-old son Jose Luis to lead him around the block on his training-wheeled bicycle. He also made his own salsa, and he liked to attend fights at the Olympic for free, trading on his name and reputation.

Even 20 years after his retirement, Del Campo kept the training-ingrained habit of waking up at 5 a.m. That was how he ended up at the doughnut shop at 5:45 in the morning, the moment a drive-by gunman apparently fired at two suspected gang members, police said.

Del Campo was struck in the neck and died on the sidewalk. On that same street in the Westlake district, a litter-strewn place where young men hawk fake IDs and drugs with hushed solicitations, word spread quickly that “Martin,” the small boxer who liked to chat, was gone.

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For nine days after Del Campo’s death, relatives gathered at the family’s apartment to say a rosary. While a memorial candle flickered, Lizette Del Campo lay down a bag of photographs and laminated newspaper clippings of her father’s career, lamenting that she had never taken the time to look closely at them.

“That’s the sad part about it,” she said. “He left without telling me his stories.”

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Young Alfredo De Santiago had no such legacy--not yet. But in coming to America with hopes of launching a pro career, he ended up in one of Los Angeles’ most troubled neighborhoods at a proven seedbed for fighters.

The Broadway Gym is still known in boxing circles for being the onetime training center of former heavyweight champion Ken Norton and 1984 Olympic heavyweight champion Henry Tillman. It has also been used in films. Gym owner Bill Slayton trained Mickey Rourke there for his boxing scenes in the 1988 movie “Homeboy.”

But in recent years, the interest from film crews has dropped while the community has deteriorated. There have been shootings and car break-ins. The gym, at 108th Street and Broadway, is now used mainly by amateur boxers who pay $15.

De Santiago began training there three months ago. He would get up every morning at 6 and jog four miles, then work alongside his uncle in a family plumbing business. After work, they would stop at the gym and De Santiago would box.

Slayton believed he had talent.

“The kid was a very good prospect,” he said. “He’s a nice-looking kid and very quiet. They are very nice people. I guess that’s what hurts.”

On the night of the shooting, Slayton had given De Santiago a pair of boxing shoes. Although the uncle offered to pay for them, Slayton insisted that De Santiago take the shoes for free because the plumber sometimes made repairs at the gym without charge.

At the end of the workout, the uncle and the young boxer were walking to their van when the gunmen attacked.

“They followed us and put guns to our head,” De Santiago said, remembering that his uncle tried to push the guns away. Shots were fired and his uncle fell to the grass. De Santiago ran back to the gym for help, while the attackers, who got no money, took off.

Witnesses told police that one of the killers kicked the uncle as he lay on the ground.

The murder has made the problems in the neighborhood really hit home, said Slayton.

“There are so many nuts around here, and these were the good guys,” Slayton said, alluding to the victims. “Sometimes you wonder if the man upstairs is doing his business.”

Times staff writer David Ferrell contributed to this story.