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The bell sounds to end the second round, and the beer-addled crowd at the Great Western Forum focuses its attention on the bathing suit-clad ring girls who sashay between rounds. But 83-year-old cutman Chuck Bodak only has eyes for 22-year-old super-middleweight George Johnson.

As Johnson reels back to his corner, Bodak scans the fighter’s face for any bruises or swelling. If Johnson is cut, Bodak must staunch the bleeding. Considering he has only 60 seconds to undo the limitless damage 8-ounce gloves can inflict on a face, this is easier said than done. Which is why a good cutman’s adroitly applied dab of salve can determine the outcome of a fight as decisively as a well-timed right uppercut.

Since the mid-1930s, Bodak has repaired the faces of thousands of boxers; he’s traveled the world in the employ of champs from Muhammad Ali to Jorge Paez, and his ointments and hands are said to have extraordinary restorative powers. “Chuck’s the best,” says welterweight champ Oscar De La Hoya, who entrusts his endorsement-friendly, beatific mug to Bodak. “I feel more confident just having him in my corner.” (Which is exactly where Bodak will be for De La Hoya’s bout against Felix Trinidad on Sept. 18.)

Bodak, a member of the West Coast Boxing Hall of Fame, never works without a bucket full of jars containing Adrenalin, Vaseline and other salves--”trade secrets,” he calls them. On this night, his fighter doesn’t get cut, so he proffers water, wipes sweat and rinses the mouthpiece.

“I was born into fighting,” he says in the trainer’s room after the bout. “I was from a poor and illiterate family during the Depression, and we fought for everything. Fighting was a way of life--we fought to exist.”

Bodak, a Gary, Ind., native, began boxing in the amateur ranks at 13. Moving to Chicago, he went from fighting to teaching the intricacies of the sweet science. “You train animals,” he says, disdaining the vernacular. “You teach humans.” Since settling in Southern California 30 years ago, he’s worked almost exclusively as a cutman--a flamboyant, durable ringside presence in Ecco sandals, black-and-white-checked waiter’s pants, a purple Guatemalan serape and a homemade decoupage headband upon which he attaches photocopied snapshots of fighters. (He plays himself in two upcoming fight films: Ron Shelton’s “Playing It to the Bone” and Phil Berger’s “Price of Glory.”)

“All cuts are different,” he says, from the vantage of 65 years in the corner, “and no two fighters are alike.”