Joe Cortez Mourns the Loss of Gaspar Ortega, His Friend of 60-plus Years

Published

3 years ago

December 21, 2021

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“Gaspar Ortega has fought everybody who was anybody in the welterweight division since he turned professional in 1953. He’s been on television more times than Ben Casey and he’s had more fights than most pugs have had workouts. What he doesn’t know about boxing hasn’t been invented.”

So wrote Ron Amos in the May 14, 1964 issue of the Las Vegas Review Journal in reference to Ortega’s forthcoming fight at the Castaways, a little hotel-casino that sat next to a gas station in the center of the Las Vegas Strip. This would be Ortega’s only appearance in Nevada, but the vagabond prizefighter, a self-described boxing gypsy, sure did get around. He fought all over the U.S. and made three trips overseas during a career in which he had 176 documented fights and likely a few dozen more that weren’t recorded. His record, per boxrec.com, was 131-39-6 with 69 KOs.

Ortega passed away at age 86 on Dec. 13 in Naples, Florida, where he had had gone to live with a daughter following the death of his wife Iraida who passed away in November of last year. Gaspar and Iraida, a native New Yorker, were married for 64 years.

Born in Mexicali, Gaspar Ortega spent his formative years in Tijuana where lore has it that the home he shared with his parents and 11 siblings had no electricity and a dirt floor. He had his first twenty-three documented fights in northern Mexico and his twenty-fourth at Madison Square Garden where he gradually built himself into a headliner.

Ortega developed rivalries with most of the top welterweights of his day including the tough Cubans Isaac Logart and Florentino Fernandez. He won two out of three from future Hall of Famer Tony DeMarco, a trilogy shoe-horned into only 68 days. “After a fight,” Ortega recalled, “my manager would say, ‘Stay in shape. We might need you to fight again tomorrow.’ I would say, ‘I’m ready.’”

Ortega’s father was of Spanish descent and his mother was a Zapotec Indian. The elaborate Indian headdress that he wore into the ring was ostensibly meant to honor her although one suspects that the idea of it may have been conceived by a wily press agent. It made him one of the most well-known ring personalities in a day when there were two and sometimes three nationally televised fights every week. Indeed, he may have been the most well-known boxer of his era that never held a world title.

Ortega had one crack at it. On June 3, 1961, in his eighty-second documented bout, he challenged Emile Griffith at LA’s fabled Olympic Auditorium. They had met once before with Griffith winning a split decision, but on this particular night Griffith had all the best of it until the referee called it off in the 12^th round.

Incredibly, Ortega wouldn’t be stopped again until very late in his career when he was stopped by junior middleweight champion Sandro Mazzinghi in a non-title bout in Rome. Ortega’s corner pulled him out at the conclusion of the sixth round. And that may be the most remarkable fact about Gaspar Ortega’s boxing career – that not once in 176 documented fights was “El Indio” ever knocked down for the count.

When Ortega moved to New York, he took up residence in an apartment building in a complex of six-story buildings on East 99^th Street which was a few subway stops away from Stillman’s Gym where he trained under the watchful eye of the noted trainer and cut man Freddie Brown. Joe Cortez and his brother Mike lived with their divorced mother and two siblings in the building right next door.

Mike, a year older than Joe, was thirteen years old when Ortega became his neighbor. According to an article in the New York Daily News, Mike took to following Ortega around when the boxer did his roadwork and mimicked Ortega’s shadow boxing. That served him well when he took up the sport at the boys’ club on 111^th Street.

Joe followed his brother into the squared circle and both became stars on the regional amateur circuit. The Cortez brothers won back-to-back New York Golden Gloves titles in 1960 and 1961, Mike at 126 and then 135 pounds, Joe at 112 and 118. (The 1961 finals at Madison Square Garden attracted a crowd of 16,119, indicative of the role that amateur boxing played back then in the sporting life of the city.)

Joe (l) and Mike

As a pro, Mike Cortez never went far, finishing 16-10-2. Joe fared better, 18-1 (13-1 documented), but never advanced beyond the preliminary stage. His final fight was at the La Concha Resort in San Juan, not far from Fajardo, Puerto Rico, where Joe worked as an assistant manager at the Conquistador Hotel after starting as a front desk clerk.

Although they weren’t that far apart in age, Ortega was something of a surrogate father to the Cortez brothers. He mentored them and Joe returned the favor, mentoring Gaspar’s son Mike Ortega who, like Joe, would go on to become a world class referee. Joe Cortez is Mike Ortega’s godfather. (Although he grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where his parents eventually settled, Mike Ortega was actually born at a hospital in Hollywood, California. Papa wasn’t there. Gaspar was at work at LA’s Pacific Coast League baseball park, Wrigley Field, carving out a split decision over Kid Gavilan.)

“I talked with [Gaspar] every month on the phone for the last 50 years,” Cortez told this reporter. “He was like family. I got him hired as an extra in the Rocky Balboa film and he stayed in our house during the six days they were filming here in Las Vegas.” In the 2006 movie, Cortez is the third man in the ring for the climactic fight scenes. Ortega is seen seated at a ringside table portraying a boxing commissioner.

Gaspar Ortega kept mentoring novice boxers almost to the end of his days. In Connecticut, he worked as a counselor for a nonprofit agency for troubled teenagers and volunteered his time as a boxing instructor at a community center. He didn’t leave the sport with a lot of money, but with enough to live comfortably. It was his habit to return to Tijuana for one or two weeks every year where, according to Iraida, he was welcomed like visiting royalty.

In documented fights, Ortega answered the bell for 1293 rounds. A boxer with this many rounds on his dossier figures to be walking on his heels with marbles in his mouth before he is old enough to draw social security, but “El Indio” was one of the lucky ones, blessed with a cast-iron constitution. More amazing, for many years he was a pack-a-day cigarette smoker.

Joe Cortez, who was enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2011, has had some tough times in recent years. In 2009, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer (it’s in remission). His wife Sylvia is a two-time breast cancer survivor. Their daughter Cindy has been in a wheelchair since 1996, the result of a rollover accident caused by a defective tire that left her a qudriplegic. And in November of last year Joe came down with Covid which resulted in a five-month hospital stay during which he wasn’t allowed to have any visitors.

“I weathered the storms,” says Cortez, 77, proudly. But the hits keep coming, even if they don’t directly impact his immediate family. For Joe Cortez, losing Gaspar Ortega was like losing a brother.

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Arne K. Lang

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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Published

16 hours ago

May 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.

It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.

In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.

Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.

It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.

“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.

Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.

Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.

Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.

We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.

Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”

But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.

“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”

Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.

Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”

If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38^th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.

Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”

Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.

Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.

On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.

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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

Published

3 days ago

May 6, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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Arne’s Almanac: The Good, the Bad, and the (Mostly) Ugly; a Weekend Boxing Recap and More

It’s old news now, but on back-to-back nights on the first weekend of May, there were three fights that finished in the top six snoozefests ever as measured by punch activity. That’s according to CompuBox which has been around for 40 years.

In Times Square, the boxing match between Devin Haney and Jose Carlos Ramirez had the fifth-fewest number of punches thrown, but the main event, Ryan Garcia vs. Rolly Romero, was even more of a snoozefest, landing in third place on this ignoble list.

Those standings would be revised the next night – knocked down a peg when Canelo Alvarez and William Scull combined to throw a historically low 445 punches in their match in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 152 by the victorious Canelo who at least pressed the action, unlike Scull (pictured) whose effort reminded this reporter of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” – no, not the movie starring Paul Newman, just the title.

CompuBox numbers, it says here, are best understood as approximations, but no amount of rejiggering can alter the fact that these three fights were stinkers. Making matters worse, these were pay-per-views. If one had bundled the two events, rather than buying each separately, one would have been out $90 bucks.

****

Thankfully, the Sunday card on ESPN from Las Vegas was redemptive. It was just what the sport needed at this moment – entertaining fights to expunge some of the bad odor. In the main go, Naoya Inoue showed why he trails only Shohei Ohtani as the most revered athlete in Japan.

Throughout history, the baby-faced assassin has been a boxing promoter’s dream. It’s no coincidence that down through the ages the most common nickname for a fighter – and by an overwhelming margin — is “Kid.”

And that partly explains Naoya Inoue’s charisma. The guy is 32 years old, but here in America he could pass for 17.

Joey Archer

Joey Archer, who passed away last week at age 87 in Rensselaer, New York, was one of the last links to an era of boxing identified with the nationally televised Friday Night Fights at Madison Square Garden.

Joey Archer

Archer made his debut as an MSG headliner on Feb. 4, 1961, and had 12 more fights at the iconic mid-Manhattan sock palace over the next six years. The final two were world title fights with defending middleweight champion Emile Griffith.

Archer etched his name in the history books in November of 1965 in Pittsburgh where he won a comfortable 10-round decision over Sugar Ray Robinson, sending the greatest fighter of all time into retirement. (At age 45, Robinson was then far past his peak.)

Born and raised in the Bronx, Joey Archer was a cutie; a clever counter-puncher recognized for his defense and ultimately for his granite chin. His style was embedded in his DNA and reinforced by his mentors.

Early in his career, Archer was domiciled in Houston where he was handled by veteran trainer Bill Gore who was then working with world lightweight champion Joe Brown. Gore would ride into the Hall of Fame on the coattails of his most famous fighter, “Will-o’-the Wisp” Willie Pep. If Joey Archer had any thoughts of becoming a banger, Bill Gore would have disabused him of that notion.

In all honesty, Archer’s style would have been box office poison if he had been black. It helped immensely that he was a native New Yorker of Irish stock, albeit the Irish angle didn’t have as much pull as it had several decades earlier. But that observation may not be fair to Archer who was bypassed twice for world title fights after upsetting Hurricane Carter and Dick Tiger.

When he finally caught up with Emile Griffith, the former hat maker wasn’t quite the fighter he had been a few years earlier but Griffith, a two-time Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the BWAA and a future first ballot Hall of Famer, was still a hard nut to crack.

Archer went 30 rounds with Griffith, losing two relatively tight decisions and then, although not quite 30 years old, called it quits. He finished 45-4 with 8 KOs and was reportedly never knocked down, yet alone stopped, while answering the bell for 365 rounds. In retirement, he ran two popular taverns with his older brother Jimmy Archer, a former boxer who was Joey’s trainer and manager late in Joey’s career.

May he rest in peace.

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Bombs Away in Las Vegas where Inoue and Espinoza Scored Smashing Triumphs

Published

4 days ago

May 4, 2025

David A. Avila

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Japan’s Naoya “Monster” Inoue banged it out with Mexico’s Ramon Cardenas, survived an early knockdown and pounded out a stoppage win to retain the undisputed super bantamweight world championship on Sunday.

Japan and Mexico delivered for boxing fans again after American stars failed in back-to-back days.

“By watching tonight’s fight, everyone is well aware that I like to brawl,” Inoue said.

Inoue (30-0, 27 KOs), and Cardenas (26-2, 14 KOs) and his wicked left hook, showed the world and 8,474 fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that prizefighting is about punching, not running.

After massive exposure for three days of fights that began in New York City, then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and then to Nevada, it was the casino capital of the world that delivered what most boxing fans appreciate- pure unadulterated action fights.

Monster Inoue immediately went to work as soon as the opening bell rang with a consistent attack on Cardenas, who very few people knew anything about.

One thing promised by Cardenas’ trainer Joel Diaz was that his fighter “can crack.”

Cardenas proved his trainer’s words truthful when he caught Inoue after a short violent exchange with a short left hook and down went the Japanese champion on his back. The crowd was shocked to its toes.

“I was very surprised,” said Inoue about getting dropped. ““In the first round, I felt I had good distance. It got loose in the second round. From then on, I made sure to not take that punch again.”

Inoue had no trouble getting up, but he did have trouble avoiding some of Cardenas massive blows delivered with evil intentions. Though Inoue did not go down again, a look of total astonishment blanketed his face.

A real fight was happening.

Cardenas, who resembles actor Andy Garcia, was never overly aggressive but kept that left hook of his cocked and ready to launch whenever he saw the moment. There were many moments against the hyper-aggressive Inoue.

Both fighters pack power and both looked to find the right moment. But after Inoue was knocked down by the left hook counter, he discovered a way to eliminate that weapon from Cardenas. Still, the Texas-based fighter had a strong right too.

In the sixth round Inoue opened up with one of his lightning combinations responsible for 10 consecutive knockout wins. Cardenas backed against the ropes and Inoue blasted away with blow after blow. Then suddenly, Cardenas turned Inoue around and had him on the ropes as the Mexican fighter unloaded nasty combinations to the body and head. Fans roared their approval.

“I dreamed about fighting in front of thousands of people in Las Vegas,” said Cardenas. “So, I came to give everything.”

Inoue looked a little surprised and had a slight Mona Lisa grin across his face. In the seventh round, the Japanese four-division world champion seemed ready to attack again full force and launched into the round guns blazing. Cardenas tried to catch Inoue again with counter left hooks but Inoue’s combos rained like deadly hail. Four consecutive rights by Inoue blasted Cardenas almost through the ropes. The referee Tom Taylor ruled it a knockdown. Cardenas beat the count and survived the round.

In the eighth round Inoue looked eager to attack and at the bell launched across the ring and unloaded more blows on Cardenas. A barrage of 14 unanswered blows forced the referee to stop the fight at 45 seconds of round eight for a technical knockout win.

“I knew he was tough,” said Inoue. “Boxing is not that easy.”

Espinoza Wins

WBO featherweight titlist Rafael Espinosa (27-0, 23 KOs) uppercut his way to a knockout win over Edward Vazquez (17-3, 4 KOs) in the seventh round.

“I wanted to fight a game fighter to show what I am capable,” said Espinoza.

Espinosa used the leverage of his six-foot, one-inch height to slice uppercuts under the guard of Vazquez. And when the tall Mexican from Guadalajara targeted the body, it was then that the Texas fighter began to wilt. But he never surrendered.

Though he connected against Espinoza in every round, he was not able to slow down the taller fighter and that allowed the Mexican fighter to unleash a 10-punch barrage including four consecutive uppercuts. The referee stopped the fight at 1:47 of the seventh round.

It was Espinoza’s third title defense.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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