Boxing in Las Vegas: The Silver Slipper Years

Published

5 years ago

April 23, 2020

Boxing-in-Las-Vegas-The-Silver-Slipper-Years

The Silver Slipper gambling saloon opened in 1950. Unlike its neighbors on the dusty highway that came to be called the Las Vegas Strip, it was never a hotel. The allurements were 24/7 gambling, entertainment, and the Chuck Wagon buffet, the first of its kind in Las Vegas.

The Silver Slipper was a grind joint, a place that catered to small-fry gamblers. It was also a bump-and-grind joint. Some of the era’s best-known strippers performed in the long-running burlesque show. The early show started at 10 pm and the late show at 2:45 am. Las Vegas locals and visitors had a lot more stamina in those days.

The gambling saloon also became identified with boxing. The Silver Slipper became the primary home of the “Strip Fight of the Week.” The fight cards there, more than 700 according to one count, were held in an upstairs ballroom.

Bill Miller, the promoter, began his first Silver Slipper “Fight of the Week” run on Oct. 2, 1961. The main event was a 10-round flyweight contest between Ray Pacheco, a local man, a painter by trade, and Willie Kee, a Navajo Indian from Reno. It must have been a humdinger of a fight because the local paper reported that “ecstatic” patrons showered the ring with coins at the conclusion of the bout.

“All Miller looks for is good action in a fight; names are not important,” wrote local sportswriter Bill Guthrie in 1965. But this wasn’t always true. More often than not, Miller matched the fighters that he had under contract very carefully – and Guthrie’s assertion came with a caveat. Many of Miller’s last-minute subs, he wrote, “weren’t really boxers. They were just warm and reasonably alive.”

While the bouts weren’t always rousing, the price was right — general admission tickets were priced at $5; ringside went for $7.50 – and you couldn’t beat the atmosphere. The room was loud and dark and smoky and the fights attracted some colorful characters. “(Man-to-man) wagers and propositions were as much a part of the atmosphere as the fights themselves,” reminisced Scott Schettler, the former Director of the iconic Stardust race and sports book.

Bill Miller, who grew up in Elmira, New York, owned the Thorobred Lounge which was situated a stone’s throw from the Silver Slipper, but on the opposite side of the street where the Wynn now stands. He out-fitted the basement of his lounge into a boxing gym.

A balding man with an ample midsection, often seen with a cigar clenched between his teeth, Miller was a man with boundless energy. Boxing was his passion; some would say his addiction. A promoter, manager, trainer, and cut man, his first fighter of note was Eddie Andrews, a middleweight from Lowell, Massachusetts, who finished his boxing career in Nevada while working as a blackjack dealer.

Andrews had a few good wins in Las Vegas rings, but quit the sport in 1963. Miller had far deeper runs with Ferd Hernandez, Denny Moyer, and Freddie Little. Like Andrews, they were middleweights for most of their careers.

One of four fighting brothers from Nebraska – three of whom fought at the Silver Slipper – Ferdinand “Ferd” Hernandez had 38 of his 57 pro fights in Las Vegas during an eight-year career that began in 1961. At his peak he was ranked #2 in The Ring ratings.

In retirement, Hernandez became, however briefly, Nevada’s top boxing referee. He then had a steady job as a graveyard shift bartender at a place called the Plush Horse. When he went to referee a show at the Silver Slipper, he often brought a gaggle of his regular customers with him. He was the only referee with an entourage.

Hernandez couldn’t solve Denny Moyer who out-pointed him twice. A comet coming out of the amateur ranks, the stylish Moyer had split two fights with a faded Sugar Ray Robinson at Madison Square Garden prior to winning a world title in the newly created 154-pound weight class. In Las Vegas, where he had 27 fights, 21 at the Silver Slipper, he breathed new life into his flagging career.

Moyer ran into a speed bump early into the second phase of his career in the form of Freddie Little who knocked him out in the fourth round. No one saw this coming. Moyer, who by then had 65 pro fights under his belt, had been stopped only once previously, that coming in Miami Beach against the great Cuban fighter Luis Rodriguez, a stablemate of Muhammad Ali.

Denny Moyer’s conqueror Freddie Little turned pro in New Orleans while attending school at Dillard University. He quit boxing after accepting a job as a schoolteacher in Chicago, but the itch returned. After stopping Moyer, he settled in Las Vegas. Bill Miller became his manager, so in hindsight Miller stood to gain no matter who won the Moyer-Little match.

The under-appreciated Little finished his career with a record of 54-6 that included a 4-2-1 mark in world title fights, all but one of which took place overseas.

In addition to the aforementioned Ferd Hernandez, several good fighters cut their eye teeth on Bill Miller’s shows. Ernie “Indian Red” Lopez had 22 fights in Las Vegas (six at the Silver Slipper) before becoming a big draw in Los Angeles. Featherweight Ruben Castillo, like Indian Red a future two-time world title challenger, fought nine times at the Silver Slipper when he was just starting out.

Marvin Camel, who came off the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, had 11 of his first 13 pro fights at the Slipper. Camel, who finished 45-13-4, wasn’t a great fighter but would acquire a unique distinction when he out-pointed Croatia’s Mate Parlov in 1980. It made him the very first cruiserweight champion. The cruiserweight lineage begins with him.

Earnie Shavers was still an unknown boxer when he appeared at the Silver Slipper on Jan. 6, 1971. Working his corner that night was his 29-year-old manager Dean Chance, the 1964 Cy Young Award winner, and Chance’s former roommate with the California Angels, the noted playboy Bo Belinsky.

Shavers, one of the hardest punchers in heavyweight history, made quick work of his opponents in his five Silver Slipper engagements. None of his fights lasted beyond the third round.

During the early 1970s, some good fighters emerged from the local amateur ranks. Junior bantamweight Willie “Birdlegs” Jensen and junior welterweight Leroy Haley made their pro debuts one month apart at the Silver Slipper in the spring of 1973.

Birdlegs Jensen came oh-so-close to winning the WBC 115-pound title in 1980 when he was held to a draw in a 15-round bout with Venezuela’s Rafael Orono in Caracas. Haley was born in Arkansas but was hailed as the first native Las Vegan to win a world title when he wrested the WBC 140-pound belt from Saoul Mamby in 1982.

For every fighter on the way up, however, Bill Miller roped in two on the way down. His standard purse for a main event fighter was $500 or one-half of 50 percent of the gate, whichever was higher. Some fighters commanded more, such as Harold Johnson, a top-shelf light heavyweight in his day, but when a man of Johnson’s caliber turned up at the Silver Slipper he was invariably in the sunset of his career.

Miller used some boxers over and over and over again. The busiest was Benito Juarez, a welterweight (as a rule) from San Antonio. Juarez packed 123 fights into an 11-year pro career, finishing 55-56-12. Forty-seven of those fights were at the Silver Slipper.

Juarez was fungible. It wasn’t unusual for him to fight in a 6-rounder, return the next week in a 10-rounder, win this fight and then turn up in a 5-rounder in his next outing. The running joke was that Miller didn’t pay Juarez per fight, but kept him on a retainer like an attorney. Bouts were constantly falling out at the 11^th hour and it was important to have a man like Benito Juarez in the bullpen.

Benito didn’t have much of a punch, but he was a high-octane fighter who always gave a good effort and the regulars never seemed to tire of him. Besides, for many the bill of fare was of no great import. The fights, which normally ran on Wednesdays, were like a gathering of fraternity brothers.

Eventually the Silver Slipper would be one of only two venues in the entire United States running a weekly fight card, sharing that distinction with LA’s Olympic Auditorium. The indefatigable Bill Miller found a way to keep the doors open in the face of constant challenges.

For a brief time, a rival promoter took to running weekly shows downtown at the Fremont Hotel using many of the same fighters that Miller had groomed. In mid-1964, Miller was forced to pull up stakes when the Nevada Gaming Control Board shuttered the Silver Slipper after undercover agents discovered craps dealers using shaved dice. After sitting dark for more than a year, the property reopened in October of 1965 under new ownership. During the interregnum, Miller shifted his Strip Fight of the Week to the Hacienda, a property at the south end of the Strip where Mandalay Bay now sits. Two other Strip properties, the Castaways and Circus Circus, also harbored his weekly shows during periods when he was at loggerheads with the Silver Slipper management, beefs that would eventually get patched-up.

One would think that being a boxing promoter, especially at the grass roots level, would be one of the world’s most stressful occupations; things constantly go wrong. In October of 1975, Miller suffered an external stress when an explosion of indeterminate origin destroyed his tavern and an adjacent Italian restaurant. It happened in the wee hours when neither place was occupied, but Miller wasn’t insured.

A hot-tempered workaholic, Bill Miller was a walking time bomb and it was no surprise that he died young, passing away in 1976 at age 49 during open-heart surgery. His wife Cheryl and son Tim took over but couldn’t make a go of it, nor could their successor, Elmer Boyce, a man from Missoula, Montana, who controlled the aforementioned Marvin Camel and a light heavyweight of note, Roger Rouse.

The fights ceased in 1982 and the Silver Slipper faded into memory six years later. All places like it along the Strip were fated to meet the wrecking ball as the city’s tourism industry matured and a new breed of corporate casino operators shunted aside the locals. In 1950, when the Slipper opened, Clark County, which encompasses Las Vegas, was home to 49,000. In the ensuing years before the property was demolished, the population increased almost ten-fold. (Today Clark County is home to 2.2 million and Las Vegas is a larger city than Baltimore, St. Louis, Cleveland or Pittsburgh.)

It’s hard to imagine anyone running a weekly fight card at a permanent location in the United States ever again. For one thing, the cost of accommodating the regulators has outpaced inflation. So, here’s a toast to the long-gone but not forgotten Silver Slipper and to the stouthearted Bill Miller, rest his soul.

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Arne K. Lang

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The Challenge of Playing Muhammad Ali

Published

5 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Thomas Hauser

There have been countless dramatizations of Muhammad Ali’s life and more will follow in the years ahead. The most heavily marketed of these so far have been the 1977 movie titled The Greatest starring Ali himself and the 2001 biopic Ali starring Will Smith.

The Greatest was fictionalized. Its saving grace apart from Ali’s presence on screen was the song “The Greatest Love of All” which was written for the film and later popularized by Whitney Houston. Beyond that, the movie was mediocre. “Of all our sports heroes,” Frank Deford wrote, “Ali needs least to be sanitized. But The Greatest is just a big vapid valentine. It took a dive.”

The 2001 film was equally bland but without the saving grace of Ali on camera. “I hated that film,” Spike Lee said. “It wasn’t Ali.” Jerry Izenberg was in accord, complaining, “Will Smith playing Ali was an impersonation, not a performance.”

The latest entry in the Ali registry is a play running this week off-Broadway at the AMT Theater (354 West 45th Street) in Manhattan.

The One: The Life of Muhammad Ali was written by David Serero, who has produced and directed the show in addition to playing the role of Angelo Dundee in the three-man drama. Serero, age 43, was born in Paris, is of Moroccan-French-Jewish heritage, and has excelled professionally as an opera singer (baritone) and actor (stage and screen).

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. The play is flawed. There are glaring factual inaccuracies in the script that add nothing to the dramatic arc and detract from its credibility.

On the plus side; Zack Bazile (pictured) is exceptionally good as Ali. And Serero (wearing his director’s hat) brings the most out of him.

Growing up, Bazile (now 28) excelled in multiple sports. In 2018, while attending Ohio State, he won the NCAA Long Jump Championship and was named Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year. He also dabbled in boxing, competed in two amateur fights in 2022, and won both by knockout. He began acting three years ago.

Serero received roughly one thousand resumes when he published notices for a casting call in search of an actor to play Ali. One-hundred-twenty respondents were invited to audition.

“I had people who looked like Ali and were accomplished actors,” Serero recalls. “But when they were in the room, I didn’t feel Ali in front of me. You have to remember; we’re dealing with someone who really existed and there’s video of him, so it’s not like asking someone to play George Washington.”

And Ali was Ali. That’s a hard act to follow.

Bazile is a near-perfect fit. At 6-feet-2-inches tall, 195 pounds, he conveys Ali’s physicality. His body is sculpted in the manner of the young Ali. He moves like an athlete because he is an athlete. His face resembles Ali’s and his expressions are very much on the mark in the way he transmits emotion to the audience. He uses his voice the way Ali did. He moves his eyes the way Ali did. He has THE LOOK.

Zack was born the year that Ali lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, so he has no first-hand memory of the young Ali who set the world ablaze. “But as an actor,” he says, “I’m representing Ali. That’s a responsibility I take very seriously. Everyone has an essence about them. I had to find the right balance – not too over the top – and capture that.”

Sitting in the audience watching Bazile, I felt at times as though it was Ali onstage in front of me. Zack has the pre-exile Ali down perfectly. The magic dissipates a bit as the stage Ali grows older. Bazile still has to add the weight of aging to his craft. But I couldn’t help but think, “Muhammad would have loved watching Zack play him.”

****

Twenty-four hours after the premiere of The One, David Serero left the stage for a night to shine brightly in a real boxing ring., The occasion was the tenth fight card that Larry Goldberg has promoted at Sony Hall in New York, a run that began with Goldberg’s first pro show ever on October 13, 2022.

Most of the fights on the six-bout card played out as expected. But two were tougher for the favorites than anticipated. Jacob Riley Solis was held to a draw by Daniel Jefferson. And Andy Dominguez was knocked down hard by Angel Meza in round three before rallying to claim a one-point split-decision triumph.

Serero sang the national anthem between the second and third fights and stilled the crowd with a virtuoso performance. Fans at sports events are usually restless during the singing of the anthem. This time, the crowd was captivated. Serero turned a flat ritual into an inspirational moment. People were turning to each other and saying “Wow!”

****

The unexpected happened in Tijuana last Saturday night when 25-to-1 underdog Bruno Surace climbed off the canvas after a second-round knockdown to score a shocking, one-punch, sixth-round stoppage of Jaime Munguia. There has been a lot of commentary since then about what happened that night. The best explanation I’ve heard came from a fan named John who wrote, “The fight was not over in the second round although Munguia thought it was because, if he caught him once, he would naturally catch him again. Plus he looked at this little four KO guy [Surace had scored 4 knockouts in 27 fights] the way all the fans did, like he had no punch. That is what a fan can afford to do. But a fighter should know better. The ref reminds you, ‘Protect yourself at all times.’ Somebody forgot that.”

photo (c) David Serero

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

Published

2 days ago

December 16, 2024

Arne K. Lang

L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

If asked to name a prominent boxing trainer who operates out of a gym in Los Angeles, the name Freddie Roach would jump immediately to mind. Best known for his work with Manny Pacquaio, Roach has been named the Trainer of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America a record seven times.

A mere seven miles from Roach’s iconic Wild Card Gym is the gym that Rudy Hernandez now calls home. Situated in the Little Tokyo neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles, the L.A. Boxing Gym – a relatively new addition to the SoCal boxing landscape — is as nondescript as its name. From the outside, one would not guess that two reigning world champions, Junto Nakatani and Anthony Olascuaga, were forged there.

As Freddie Roach will be forever linked with Manny Pacquiao, so will Rudy Hernandez be linked with Nakatani. The Japanese boxer was only 15 years old when his parents packed him off to the United States to be tutored by Hernandez. With Hernandez in his corner, the lanky southpaw won titles at 112 and 115 and currently holds the WBO bantamweight (118) belt. In his last start, he knocked out his Thai opponent, a 77-fight veteran who had never been stopped, advancing his record to 29-0 (22 KOs).

Nakatani’s name now appears on several pound-for-pound lists. A match with Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue is brewing. When that match comes to fruition, it will be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.

“Junto Nakatani is the greatest fighter I’ve ever trained. It’s easy to work with him because even when he came to me at age 15, his focus was only on boxing. It was to be a champion one day and nothing interfered with that dream,” Hernandez told sports journalist Manouk Akopyan writing for Boxing Scene.

Akin to Nakatani, Rudy Hernandez built Anthony Olascuaga from scratch. The LA native was rucked out of obscurity in April of 2023 when Jonathan Gonzalez contracted pneumonia and was forced to withdraw from his date in Tokyo with lineal light flyweight champion Kenshiro Teraji. Olascuaga, with only five pro fights under his belt, filled the breach on 10 days’ notice and although he lost (TKO by 9), he earned kudos for his gritty performance against the man recognized as the best fighter in his weight class.

Two fights later, back in Tokyo, Olascuaga copped the WBO world flyweight title with a third-round stoppage of Riku Kano. His first defense came in October, again in Japan, and Olascuaga retained his belt with a first-round stoppage of the aforementioned Gonzalez. (This bout was originally ruled a no-contest as it ended after Gonzalez suffered a cut from an accidental clash of heads. But the referee ruled that Gonzalez was fit to continue before the Puerto Rican said “no mas,” alleging his vision was impaired, and the WBO upheld a protest from the Olascuaga camp and changed the result to a TKO. Regardless, Rudy Hernandez’s fighter would have kept his title.)

Hernandez, 62, is the brother of the late Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez. A two-time world title-holder at 130 pounds who fought the likes of Azumah Nelson, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr., Chicanito passed away in 2011, a cancer victim at age 45.

Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez was one of the most popular fighters in the Hispanic communities of Southern California. Rudy Hernandez, a late bloomer of sorts – at least in terms of public recognition — has kept his brother’s flame alive with own achievements. He is a worthy honoree for the 2024 Trainer of the Year.

Note: This is the first in our series of annual awards. The others will arrive sporadically over the next two weeks.

Photo credit: Steve Kim

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A Shocker in Tijuana: Bruno Surace KOs Jaime Munguia !!

Published

4 days ago

December 15, 2024

Arne K. Lang

A-Shocker-in-Tijuana-Bruno-Sarace-KOs-Jaime-Munguia

It was a chilly night in Tijuana when Jaime Munguia entered the ring for his homecoming fight with Bruno Surace. The main event of a Zanfer/Top Rank co-promotion, Munguia vs. Surace was staged in the city’s 30,000-seat soccer stadium a stone’s throw from the U.S. border in the San Diego metroplex.

Surace, a Frenchman, brought a 25-0-2 record and a 22-fight winning streak, but a quick glance at his record showed that he had scant chance of holding his own with the house fighter. Only four of Surace’s 25 wins had come by stoppage and only eight of his wins had come against opponents with winning records. Munguia was making the first start in the city of his birth since February 2022. Surace had never fought outside Europe.

But hold the phone!

After losing every round heading into the sixth, Surace scored the Upset of the Year, ending the contest with a one-punch knockout.

It looked like a short and easy night for Munguia when he knocked Surace down with a left hook in the second stanza. From that point on, the Frenchman fought off his back foot, often with back to the ropes, throwing punches only in spurts. Munguia worked the body well and was seemingly on the way to wearing him down when he was struck by lightning in the form of an overhand right.

Down went Munguia, landing on his back. He struggled to get to his feet, but the referee waived it off a nano-second before reaching “10.” The official time was 2:36 of round six.

Munguia, who was 44-1 heading in with 35 KOs, was as high as a 35/1 favorite. In his only defeat, he had gone the distance with Canelo Alvarez. This was the biggest upset by a French fighter since Rene Jacquot outpointed Donald Curry in 1989 and Jacquot had the advantage of fighting in his homeland.

Co-Main

Mexico City’s Alan Picasso, ranked #1 by the WBC at 122 pounds, scored a third-round stoppage of last-minute sub Yehison Cuello in a scheduled 10-rounder contested at featherweight. Picaso (31-0-1, 17 KOs) is a solid technician. He ended the bout with a left to the rib cage, a punch that weaved around Cuello’s elbow and didn’t appear to be especially hard. The referee stopped his count at “nine” and waived the fight off.

A 29-year-old Colombian who reportedly had been training in Tijuana, the overmatched Cuello slumped to 13-3-1.

Other Bouts of Note

In a ho-hum affair, junior middleweight Jorge Garcia advanced to 32-4 (26) with a 10-round unanimous decision over Uzbekistan’s Kudratillo Abudukakhorov (20-4). The judges had it 97-92 and 99-90 twice. There were no knockdowns, but Garcia had a point deducted in round eight for low blows.

Garcia displayed none of the power that he showed in his most recent fight three months ago in Arizona and when he knocked out his German opponent in 46 seconds. Abudukakhorov, who has competed mostly as a welterweight, came in at 158 1/4 pounds and didn’t look in the best of shape. The Uzbek was purportedly 170-10 as an amateur (4-5 per boxrec).

Super bantamweight Sebastian Hernandez improved to 18-0 (17 KOs) with a seventh-round stoppage of Argentine import Sergio Martin (14-5). The end came at the 2:39 mark of round seven when Martin’s corner threw in the towel. Earlier in the round, Martin lost his mouthpiece and had a point deducted for holding.

Hernandez wasn’t all that impressive considering the high expectations born of his high knockout ratio, but appeared to have injured his right hand during the sixth round.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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