He Liked Running With Tough Crowds

Ray Ortiz, who died of cancer recently at 72, was a popular figure in the Los Angeles sports scene. His Stardust Lounge in Downey drew some of the biggest names in sports through the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. He was an All-CIF basketball player at Los Angeles Mount Carmel and earned a scholarship to California. But his first love was boxing.

Ortiz, the older brother of boxing talk-show host Johnny Ortiz, liked to tell about talking to George “Scrap Iron” Johnson after Johnson’s fight against Sonny Liston in Las Vegas in 1969. After being stopped in the seventh round, Johnson told Ortiz, “Liston hit me so hard, I married the wrong woman.”

Payback: The Stardust Lounge, which was frequented by such people as Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Johnny Unitas, Roman Gabriel, Marlin McKeever and Jerry Quarry, to name a few, was the site of a famous near-brawl after the 1964 season.

Gino Marchetti of the Baltimore Colts and Frank Ryan of the Cleveland Browns were in the Stardust a few nights before the Pro Bowl game at the Coliseum. The Browns, led by Ryan, had just embarrassed the Colts, 27-0, in the NFL championship game.

Marchetti, a Hall of Fame defensive end, was still fuming when he saw Ryan in the Stardust. He challenged the quarterback to a fight. It was quickly broken up, but a few days later, Marchetti knocked Ryan out of the Pro Bowl game with a separated shoulder.

Trivia time: George Foreman lost five of his 76 fights. Whom did he lose to on June 7, 1993, in Las Vegas?

Fightin’ words: The sport of boxing took some hits this week at the Octagon World Congress of Sports conference in Newport Beach.

Anschutz Entertainment Group President Tim Leiweke was on a panel that, among other things, discussed the need to clean up boxing.

“Boxing is full of thieves, crooks and liars, and those are the good guys,” Leiweke said.

Another challenger: Former Times sportswriter Cal Whorton, who will be inducted posthumously into the California Boxing Hall of Fame today at a sold-out luncheon at Stevens Steak House in Commerce, once stepped into the ring against Henry Armstrong. But he wasn’t the only Times sportswriter to take on a professional boxer.

Another was John Hall. When Hall was covering boxing for The Times’ sister paper, the Los Angeles Mirror, in 1956, he went one round with Carl “Bobo” Olson at the Ocean Park Arena, where Olson was prepping for a title match with Sugar Ray Robinson at Wrigley Field.

Olson was knocked out in the fourth round by Robinson.

Said Hall, “I softened him up for Sugar Ray.”

Trivia answer: Tommy Morrison.

And finally: Shaquille O’Neal is partnering with Staples Center on a 4,000-square-foot Team LA store that opens today at Universal CityWalk.

“I’ll be stopping by regularly, making suggestions on ways to make the store even better, and of course checking out the books,” O’Neal said.

*

Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.