Pound for Pound (32 page)

Chicky said, “You know any places where I might get a job, too?”

“Might. Could take me a little time,” said Velasco. “Ehy, I like a guy ain’t too proud to work. Is it a deal?”

Chicky hesitated. “Don’t we need a contract, or somethin?”

“Naw, I trust you. A handshake’s good enough for me.”

Velasco held out his hand. Chicky shook it.

A
t the El Indio Gym, other fighters assessed Chicky, checked his skills without challenging him. He did likewise. Trainers, egged on by Velasco, tried to convince Chicky to spar. Chicky knew he needed time running at the high school track first. When Chicky worked the mitts and bags and rope, boxing guys saw that he knew something about the game, and they silently respected him when he said he was working on his wind.

Velasco didn’t care if the kid had wind or not, only that he would look respectable for two rounds before losing, and Velasco figured the only way Chicky could do that was to spar. If the kid lost, he lost. If he won, all the better, because he’d stay at it a little longer. If he didn’t like Velasco’s deal, fuck him.

Velasco said, “When’ll you be ready to get in there?”

“Gimme a couple of weeks.”

“I thought you wanted to make some money.”

“Yeah, well, turnin pro and all, I want to be ready, right?” But, for all his confidence, Chicky felt a need to run this by his
abuelo.

For the first time since he had arrived in L.A., Chicky telephoned his grandfather. He explained his situation, and how he’d come to train with
Velasco. He soft-peddled the part about Dan Cooley being dead. “It’s what some people think.”

The old man sighed, “I’d hoped for better. Well, maybe it’ll be my turn next.”

Chicky said, “Don’t say that. I got to know you’re in my corner.”

“I ain’t quittin on you, if that’s what you’re thinkin. You need some money?”

“No, sir.”

“Don’t lie.”

“I ain’t.”

“Well now,” his
abuelo
said, “call regular.”

“I will.”

Chicky called weekly at first, but when things began to hit the shitter with Velasco, he called only once a month so he wouldn’t have to make up stories.

The first day Chicky sparred, he took an ass whipping, not because of his wind, but because his hands and eyes were out of sync. The second day was the same, Chicky missing and the other guy landing. The third day was better, and the wise eyes at ringside could see the improvement. By the end of the week, Chicky was handling four-round pros, guys his weight with six and eight fights, but Chicky could sense they lacked his amateur experience. Velasco put him in with a ten-round fighter from another gym who’d come in for work. He tried to intimidate Chicky. He stung Chicky, but Chicky was able to sting him back, because he was in shape and strong. Chicky knew he wasn’t learning anything, and that troubled him. Not from Velasco, and not from Velasco’s wino trainer. Chicky would realize in hindsight that nobody learned much at El Indio, which was why so few of Velasco’s four-round fighters had careers that lasted much more than six to eight fights.

Velasco said, “Lookeen goood. You ready to turn pro?”

Chicky said, “So soon?”

“Vegas in two weeks, homey.”

Chicky said, “What about that job we talked about?”

“I’m workin on it, but fight money is quicker and sweeter.”

With his funds running low, Chicky knew he had to shit or get off the pot. “Book it.”

Vegas was scary and cheap. Chicky’s dislike for it began at the tits-and-ass airport. The wall-to-wall casino come-ons and the long stretches of dinging slot machines assaulted the senses and the soul after the flight across pure desert. But Chicky needed money and he wanted to make it as a professional fighter, so he saw Vegas as just one of many packages he’d have to tie a ribbon on.

For this fight, he was to receive $100 a round, standard for four-round fights, but $400 was nothing like the tens or hundreds of thousands he would have made if he’d won a medal in the Olympics before turning pro. He was down to
$1,100
and change, and the $400 paycheck would give him a cushion until his next fight. But $400 a fight wasn’t going to be enough to keep him going. He needed a job soon if he was to keep from spending the money his granddaddy had given him for the Stetson.

Chicky couldn’t imagine Velasco getting him more than one fight a month, though he knew that it was not uncommon for fighters from their twenties through their fifties to fight once a week, sometimes more—they kept in shape fighting. His grandfather blamed the IRS for the brain damage that too often afflicted modern-day fighters. In days past, many boxers had 150 fights and more. They fought often, but were able to take their money home, less the 10 and the 33
?
percents that went to trainers and managers. “The Gray,” gangster Frankie Carbo, ran boxing for a time, but the great thing about mobsters is that they die, kill each other off, or go to jail. The suits who make up Government Commissions go on forever. They always need more and more money to fund seminars in exotic places. Pals replace pals, each doing less and less while
demanding more and more. Dishonesty becomes institutionalized, the best hustle of all, since government crooks seldom lose their jobs, regardless of shortages or excessive expenditures. Eloy would take gangsters over government crooks anytime.

Chicky said, “But don’t Commissions and sanctioning bodies help fighters?”

“‘Bout the way a hook’ll he’p a catfish,” his grandfather replied.

He went on to explain the connection, that when the IRS began to take such huge chunks of boxers’ purses, the champions and other big-money fighters had to start taking fights based on how much they could
keep
in a given tax year, instead of how many big-money fights they could
get
in the same year. Consequently, if they had a big fight early on, they would lie around on their asses for six to ten months, get out of shape, and chase trim until they were cross-eyed and bow-legged. All this to beat the tax man.

Problems arose. Training for a fight typically lasts only six to eight weeks, but this is only temporary shape, not long-term conditioning. During the lengthy periods between fights, fighters would balloon up like hogs in a fattening pen, and would have to lose twenty pounds of blubber, maybe more. Their bodies had to suffer the shock of sparring, the grind of roadwork, the punishment of the exercise table—all this while fighting an appetite the size of a forty-foot tapeworm.

Gaining and losing weight makes gaining easier and easier, and losing it harder and harder, particularly in a matter of weeks. Add nose candy and carbohydrates and the lack of exercise and how much fighters are in love with their dicks. The human body breaks down. Neurons in futile search of neurons, blood in the piss from kidney shots, eyes with blood in the whites. The greater the fighter’s wits—guys like Benny Leonard and Kid Azteca—the less susceptible the fighter is to being hit. Being hit increases the number of dead spots in the brain that stem from concussions, and dead spots lead to more dead spots, lead to more dead spots, and lead to more dead spots.

“Hit and don’t get hit,” said Eloy.

“Hit and don’t get hit,” Chicky said. “But I heard of folks who get Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s who never got hit even once.”

“Doctors, pilots, all kinds. It’s the same with detached retinas. Some folks get ‘em walking down the street. It’s the cards what you get dealt.”

Chicky couldn’t resist. “What about that big ol’ belly you got there?”

His
abuelo
smiled and lied, “Boy, that’s somethin you got to earn.”

Chicky was aware that today’s fighters didn’t have the opportunity to fight as often as the pre-TV fighters, though he also knew that in the last few years more club fights were being held. Even so, he wanted that job Velasco said he could get for him. Chicky wasn’t shy about applying for a job, and if Velasco didn’t come through, he’d try for busboy jobs, or even stand on street corners with illegals and wait to be picked up as casual labor. But it had to be part-time, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to train or run properly. Chicky figured that anyone Velasco knew would understand that, so he had been willing to wait for part-time employment. He didn’t care what kind of job it was, so long as it was honest work and it paid enough to get him from fight to fight. If he could rack up a string of knockouts in a hurry, and word about him got out to promoters, he could make enough money fighting to quit work and focus only on becoming Champion of the World.

He hoped for ten, maybe twelve strong wins as a four-round fighter, and then move up to six- and eight-round matches before becoming a ten-round fighter. If Velasco had the juice he said he had, Chicky felt he’d be on his way in a year and a half. He knew that most fighters didn’t move up that quickly, but he also knew that most fighters didn’t hit as hard as he. Being a southpaw was an advantage he was grateful for.

His grandfather would have told him not to count his chickens before they hatched. Only the best managers in the world could move him the way he hoped to be moved, and that meant he would need a promoter backing him as well, one who would invest time and money in
him, with the expectation of big gates. Promoters were antsy about fighters, since pugs were known to turn to smoke, figuratively and literally. Promoters weren’t standing in line to back unknowns. And what about the kind of training Chicky would need, now that Dan Cooley was dead? And what if Chicky lost? Could he handle that? Or was hurt? Or if the people in his corner were crooks, or simply incompetent?

But Eloy wasn’t there to talk horse sense to Chicky. The kid was all alone. The last thing Velasco cared about was teaching his fighters to win. How was an eighteen-year-old kid to keep himself from dreaming his dream?

I
t had been a month since Chicky had called home. When he called from his room in the motel, his grandfather sounded drunk, and the conversation was one-sided. Once Chicky got a good payday, he would send his
abuelo
money for an airline ticket to L.A., or maybe he would make a quick trip back to Poteet. He knew his granddaddy was hurting, and he missed the old man, but Chicky also knew that his first goal was to get himself going as a pro. It’s what his granddaddy would want, too.

But why did Velasco keep telling him to punch hard, and not to worry about catching and slipping and blocking punches? Fuck, he could already hit hard. Good fighters could do that and more, were taught the head game of boxing, and Chicky wanted slick as well as power. A puncher could take you out with one shot, but the real boxer would usually win. Chicky hoped to become a boxer-puncher. Maybe Velasco would bring in a better trainer once he saw Chicky fight and win big, maybe get a KO his first time out, maybe get it in the first round. This fight in Vegas might be the make-or-break.

Aside from Chicky’s
$400,
he also got a nonrefundable round-trip plane ticket, room in a squat motel for three days, and meal tickets for
the motel buffet. The morning before the fight, he got his medical exams and blood test. At the noon weigh-in, he came in at
145¾
pounds. His black opponent weighed 147, even, and would fill up on carbs and fluids and weigh 158 by fight time. Chicky would only hit
148¼
. Along with the local boy’s experience and KO record, the
9¾
-pound weight difference gave him a clear enough advantage that only the Mexican busboys bet on Chicky.

The Vegas promoter and Velasco were in cahoots. The promoter backed the local boy, who was eleven and zero, with eight KOs. Seven of the eleven wins were rigged fights, though the black kid didn’t know it. He didn’t know that his manager would one day sell his contract, either, or that he had to keep winning big—otherwise,
he
would become the “opponent.”

Commission guys are good for the most part, and they will seldom sanction fights in which one fighter has considerably more experience than the other, if for no other reason than to cover their asses should the boy with less experience get killed in the ring. But records can be doctored by crooked managers and hungry fighters, who inflate or deflate their records depending on the circumstances. Promoters will go along with it, even instigate it, especially if they have trouble putting a card together.

Velasco and the promoter told the Vegas Commission that Chicky was eight and one, with six KOs, and that all his fights had been in Alabama, Georgia, and Ensenada, Baja California. Back at the gym in Bell, Velasco had told Chicky that his opponent was only three and two, and had no knockouts.

Chicky said, “Yeah, but that’s five fights to my none.”

Velasco said, “Don’t worry about it. He don’t have your amateur experience.”

The fight was held at the Black Canary, a third-rate casino on the west side of Vegas, blacktown. Chicky wore his maroon-and-white shorts from the Regionals. The crowd was predominately black, some white, and a scattering of Latinos who bought lottery tickets and played the nickel slots. Velasco, acting as chief second, worked the corner with a local cut man.

At the introduction, the ring announcer called the fighters’ names, weights, and gave their ring records. When Chicky heard his opponent’s record of eleven and zero, with eight KOs, he did a one-eighty to face Velasco.

“What’s with this dude’s record? And they got me with fights I don’t have.”

Velasco was silky, spoke in a confiding whisper. “The fuckin promoter changed the card on us at the last minute,
m’hijo,
and I had to make you look good to the Commission, that’s all.”

Chicky said, “I don’t lie.”

“This ain’t lyin, this is business.”

“Hail, this’s like cuttin me off at the knees.”

Velasco had plenty of practice in handling this particular situation. “I only went along with it so you could turn pro. That’s what you said you wanted, right? What about all your amateur fights, and you’re a southpaw? You can take this nigga easy.” Velasco was again guilty of the sin of omission, failing to mention the other guy’s amateur record of sixty-four wins out of seventy-two amateur fights, thirty-one of those wins by knockout.