RING OF CHAMPIONS

As the 1900s fade to black, so does boxing in Los Angeles. Forum Boxing, the last remnant of a once-glorious pugilistic stronghold, closed up shop a few months ago.

“It’s very sad,” said Forum Boxing originator and bankroller Jerry Buss.

Especially to those old enough to remember the heyday of the sport in this city, which has produced fighters ranging from Jim Jeffries at the start of the century to Henry Armstrong, Art Aragon, Jerry Quarry, Bobby Chacon and today’s impressive crop headed by Oscar De La Hoya.

It was never better, however, than in the middle of the century, when there were three flourishing boxing venues open every week. On Tuesday nights, a boxing fan could go to Ocean Park Arena in Santa Monica. On Thursday nights, the scene shifted to the Olympic Auditorium downtown. And on Saturday nights, boxing was held at Hollywood Legion Stadium.

The fighters were competent and colorful, the fights were competitive and compelling and the stars were out in force. Much as the Dodgers later drew Doris Day and Danny Kaye, and the Lakers attracted Jack Nicholson and Dyan Cannon, the fights regularly attracted Hollywood’s finest.

In those days, the first few rows at Hollywood Legion Stadium were filled with entertainers such as Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor and George Raft.

In the ring were fighters such as Armstrong, the greatest pound-for-pound fighter L.A. has produced, and Aragon, the most colorful.

In the seats, elbow to elbow with the stars, were crime figures who often had more than just a rooting interest in the outcome of the events.

Larry Rummans, a promoter/matchmaker of that era, recalls one night when Armstrong was offered about $20,000 to throw a fight.

“God gave me all this talent,” Rummans says he heard Armstrong tell the guy who was trying to entice him. “If I take this money, what am I supposed to tell God?”

The mobsters kept their money and Armstrong, who had been accused of throwing fights earlier in his career, kept his new-found integrity.

Rummans recalled another occasion when gangster Mickey Cohen thought he had fixed the result of a fight at Hollywood Legion Stadium.

But early in the bout, Cohen’s fighter was struggling. So, between rounds, he marched up to the ring apron, grabbed the pant leg of the referee and reminded him that he wasn’t going along with the arrangement.

Thanks to that bit of intimidation, the fix was fixed.

Back when the century was young and so was boxing, Jeffries emerged as this area’s first great fighter.

He was the heavyweight champion when the century dawned; he held the title from 1899 until he retired in 1905. Jeffries was lured back into the ring in 1910 to fight champion Jack Johnson, an African American many whites wanted to see dethroned. Johnson beat Jeffries badly on July 4 in Reno.

Despite the defeat in that bout, Jeffries remains Los Angeles’ only heavyweight champion.

When it comes to champions, it seems inconceivable that anybody will match Armstrong. In the days before the sport was fragmented by the eruption of sanctioning organizations, when every championship was undisputed, Armstrong held three titles at the same time.

At that time, fighters often spent years in the ring in search of a title shot that never came.

Armstrong, known as “Hammerin’ Henry” before Hank Aaron swung a bat, had 85 fights before winning his first title, the featherweight championship, in 1937. In 1938, he won the welterweight and lightweight titles, giving him the championship in three of the era’s eight weight divisions.

Armstrong almost won a fourth crown, battling middleweight titleholder Ceferino Garcia to a draw in a 1940 match held at Gilmore Stadium, an L.A. baseball park that sometimes doubled as a boxing venue. Although Armstrong weighed only 141 pounds, a dozen pounds fewer than Garcia, Armstrong would have won the match had not referee George Blake deducted two rounds from Armstrong’s score for head butts.

Born in Columbus, Miss., as Henry Jackson, Armstrong came to Los Angeles at 19. Early in his boxing career, according to “The Boxing Album” by Peter Brooke-Ball, Armstrong often took bribes to throw fights. When fight manager Eddie Mead signed Jackson, at the urging of Jolson, he changed the boxer’s name to Armstrong, hoping to bury the fighter’s shady past along with the name, according to Brooke-Ball.

It worked. Mention Henry Jackson and fight fans will draw a blank. Mention Henry Armstrong and they will have no trouble identifying the best fighter to emerge from Los Angeles.

In this age when even bad fighters can win titles, even though it may come from a sanctioning body few have even heard of, it is hard to understand how a man could become one of the best-known boxers in L.A. sports history without ever holding a title.

When actor William Holden, then starring in a movie called “The Golden Boy,” was reminded of that film while in the company of Art Aragon, Holden pointed to the fighter and said, “Here’s the real Golden Boy.”

The nickname stuck, and Aragon proudly carried it long before the boxing world had ever heard of De La Hoya.

Colorful in and out of the ring, known as much for his battles in divorce courts and bars as for those against professional opponents, Aragon may have lost his share of fights, but he was never at a loss for words.

And that made him a media favorite in the 1950s.

When Aragon was losing badly to Carmen Basilio, Aragon’s trainer, Lee Boren, threatened to stop the fight if Aragon didn’t show more in the upcoming round.

“Why wait?” asked Aragon.

Commenting on a fight for which he had to lose a huge chunk of weight, Aragon said, “I was the first fighter in the history of the sport who had to be carried into the ring.”

Quarry, a tough, powerful 6-footer, usually weighed in at a little more than 200 pounds. That would have been fine for the days when heavyweights were built like Rocky Marciano and Floyd Patterson.

But Quarry fought in the 1960s, when Muhammad Ali, at 6-3 and more than 220 pounds, was the prototype in an age of bigger heavyweights. Quarry’s size and a tendency to cut easily left him out of the top tier of heavyweights at the time.

His biggest fight came in 1970 in Atlanta when he became Ali’s first opponent in his comeback from three years of exile for opposing the draft. The fight was stopped in the third round because of a large cut over Quarry’s left eye.

Still, Quarry had plenty of success in the ring, winding up 53-9-4. In his day, he was the unquestioned king of the heavyweights in Southern California and second only to Jeffries among heavyweights in this century.

And when it came to color and controversy, Quarry was second only to Aragon.

Known as Irish Jerry or the Bellflower Bomber, Quarry often fought at the Olympic Auditorium. His family--father, brothers (two of whom, Bobby and Mike, also boxed professionally) and sisters--were known to become embroiled in fights of their own in the Olympic parking lot after Jerry had done his punching in the ring, reinforcing their image as L.A.’s fighting family.

Long before De La Hoya got pulses pounding and money flowing among L.A. boxing fans, two local featherweights captured the attention of the town with one of the most monumental matches ever held in L.A.

Bobby Chacon and Danny “Little Red” Lopez were local fighters. Between them, they had one loss when they faced each other, the 21-year-old Lopez being 23-0, the 22-year-old Chacon 23-1.

They fought at the Sports Arena on May 24, 1974, in front of 16,080. There was so much interest in the fight that an additional crowd of 2,671 paid to watch the fight on closed-circuit television at the Olympic Auditorium.

Chacon won on a ninth-round TKO.

Both fighters eventually went on to win world featherweight crowns, but for the boxing fans of Los Angeles, it was never that good again.

A few others from L.A.’s fascinating boxing century deserve mention, such as:

*Jackie Fields and Joe Salas, a pair of Los Angeles featherweights who fought each other for the gold medal in the 1924 Olympics in Paris.

“We had to dress in the same room,” Salas said in Earl Gustkey’s book, “Great Moments in Southern California Sports.” “When they knocked on the door to call us to fight, we looked at each other and started to cry, and we hugged each other. Ten minutes later, we were beating the hell out of each other.”

Fields won on a decision.

*Jimmy McLarnin, a young welterweight who upset Young Corbett III in 1933 to win the welterweight championship in front of 15,000 in L.A.’s Wrigley Field. A West Coast version of the Chicago landmark, Wrigley Field was not only the home of the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League, but also the site for those fights too big to be held at regular sites such as the Olympic and Hollywood Legion. Joe Louis fought at L.A.’s Wrigley in 1935.

*Joe Rivers, a Los Angeles fighter known as the Lethal Latin, who was part of the strangest fight ever waged in this city. Rivers was the challenger and Ad Wolgast the champion when the two met at Vernon Arena in 1912 for the lightweight championship. The two landed simultaneous blows in the 13th round and both went down, resulting in boxing’s only double knockout. In a highly controversial decision, referee Jack Welsh declared Wolgast, the defending champion, the winner.

There were also many powerful and colorful figures in the promoting/matchmaking end of the sport, from Aileen Eaton, who ran the Olympic for nearly 40 years, to George Parnassus, Don “War a Week” Chargin, Babe McCoy and Mickey Davies.

It has been a strange decade for boxing in Southern California, a bright decade for young talent, a dark one for old buildings.

De La Hoya has generated more revenue than any fighter in history outside the heavyweight division. Along with De La Hoya, fellow Southern Californians Fernando Vargas, Shane Mosley and Robert Garcia are among the biggest names in their divisions.

Yet while this area continues to grow and nurture talent, it cannot seem to maintain the venues that used to house them. The Forum no longer stages bouts, the Olympic lies empty and there are no new bright lights on the horizon to take their place. Officials of the new Staples Center envision no more than three or four fight shows a year, at most.

So, ultimately, the 1900s end on a sad note for boxing. It ends with the area’s native sons leaving town to fulfill their destiny elsewhere.

They take with them a rich tradition.