Ponies and Pugilists

With sweat streaming down his forehead, Danny Jimenez was led from the boxing ring in tears.

In the crowd, his 17-year-old girlfriend wept too as her mother restrained her from throwing a punch at someone who the teen said had spoken ill of her man.

“It was a bad call,” Jennifer Zagone said of a referee’s decision to end the fight early, thus awarding a technical victory Saturday night to her boyfriend’s opponent. “Danny could have kept going.”

Jimenez, a 22-year-old boxer from Perris, could not have agreed more. “I was all right out there,” he insisted later, “and it shouldn’t have been stopped. I wanted to win so bad for my girlfriend.”

He was practically the only person whose mind was still on the fight, though. The crowd’s attention had already turned to the horses. This is a sporting event with a twist: If luck isn’t with you when you pick the ponies, you can take a break by watching humans duke it out in the ring. It’s called Rumble at the Races.

“We were looking for a way to attract another crowd to the races,” said Jeff True, a spokesman for Los Alamitos Race Course, where the event is held. By expanding beyond its base in quarter horse racing, the track has grown into a major entertainment venue on Katella Avenue.

The clientele at the track reflects Orange County’s growing diversity. In 1951, when the former horse ranch held its first public race, the crowd at the track, like the population along Katella, was mostly white and middle-class. For many years afterward, True said, the racecourse’s typical patrons were white men 35 to 65 years old.

But gambling competition from satellite wagering, as well as a growing number of nearby diversions like Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm and major league baseball in Anaheim cut race attendance from about 1.3 million a year in the mid-1980s to about 1 million now. And the face of the crowd has changed too with more Latinos going to the track. A decade ago, the clientele was about 10% Latino; today that figure is roughly 33%.

“That mirrors the growth of the Hispanic population in Orange County,” True said. “A big portion of our nighttime attendance is Hispanic.”

Two years ago, racecourse administrators decided to do something special for Latino regulars. Like baseball in the United States, they learned, professional boxing is a big part of the cultural fabric of Mexico. “One day I was watching a boxing match on TV,” said Brad McKinzie, who was general manager of the racetrack at the time. “They showed the crowd, and it looked like our kind of people.”

Since 1997, the racecourse has hosted professional boxing matches at least twice a year on a ring set up right next to the track. For $5 apiece, True said, fans can get ringside seats to enjoy six 12-minute bouts between horse races.

The results, he said, have been impressive: a 30% jump in race attendance--much of it Latino--on Rumble at the Races nights.

“Our Hispanic crowd is more of a family crowd,” McKinzie said. “Going to the races is a family event--you see the wives all dressed up.”

That was clearly the case at Saturday night’s Rumble. In fact, many of the ringside seats were taken by the fighters’ wives, girlfriends, parents, children and friends.

“I think it’s exciting,” said Josie Andrande, 19, whose husband, Librado Andrande, who was making his debut as a pro. Also in the crowd was Librado’s 5-month-old daughter, Alandra, and his 11-year-old nephew, Rigoberto. “He’s been training almost all his life,” his wife said, “and I’m nervous for him.”

If others in the crowd shared her apprehension, they weren’t showing it as they cheered wildly, shouted out advice in Spanish and booed loudly every time they disagreed with a referee’s call.

Israel Diaz, a 32-year-old construction worker from Buena Park, said the mood was remarkably similar to that at any of the hundreds of weekend boxing matches in small towns across Mexico. “It’s part of the culture,” Diaz said as he watched Saturday’s fights with his 2 1/2-year-old son. “Basically, soccer and boxing are the major sports in Hispanic countries. It’s how lots of people make their living--there aren’t too many jobs around, so they put on their trunks and put on a show.”

Danny Jimenez, the young fighter whose defeat in the ring had brought him and his girlfriend to tears, elaborated on Latinos’ love of boxing: “It comes from leading a rough life,” he said. “It comes from growing up poor and wanting something better.”

For those in Saturday’s audience, though, the main draw seemed simply to be entertainment. “You can’t beat it,” Diaz said. “You get horses, good fighting, good atmosphere--they really put on a good show.”