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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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis Wins Welterweight Showdown in Atlantic City

Published

5 days ago

April 12, 2025

David A. Avila

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In the showdown between undefeated welterweight champions Jaron “Boots Ennis walked away with the victory by technical knockout over Eamantis Stanionis and the WBA and IBF titles on Saturday.

No doubt. Ennis was the superior fighter.

“He’s a great fighter. He’s a good guy,” said Ennis.

Philadelphia’s Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs) faced Lithuania’s Stanionis (15-1, 10 KOs) at demonstrated an overpowering southpaw and orthodox attack in front of a sold-out crowd at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

It might have been confusing but whether he was in a southpaw stance or not Ennis busted the body with power shots and jabbed away in a withering pace in the first two rounds.

Stanionis looked surprised when his counter shots seemed impotent.

In the third round the Lithuanian fighter who trains at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, began using a rocket jab to gain some semblance of control. Then he launched lead rights to the jaw of Ennis. Though Stanionis connected solidly, the Philly fighter was still standing and seemingly unfazed by the blows.

That was a bad sign for Stanionis.

Ennis returned to his lightning jabs and blows to the body and Stanionis continued his marauding style like a Sherman Tank looking to eventually run over his foe. He just couldn’t muster enough firepower.

In the fifth round Stanionis opened up with a powerful body attack and seemed to have Ennis in retreat. But the Philadelphia fighter opened up with a speedy combination that ended with blood dripping from the nose of Stanionis.

It was not looking optimistic for the Lithuanian fighter who had never lost.

Stanionis opened up the sixth round with a three-punch combination and Ennis met him with a combination of his own. Stanionis was suddenly in retreat and Ennis chased him like a leopard pouncing on prey. A lightning five-punch combination that included four consecutive uppercuts delivered Stanionis to the floor for the count. He got up and survived the rest of the round.

After returning shakily to his corner, the trainer whispered to him and then told the referee that they had surrendered.

Ennis jumped in happiness and now holds the WBA and IBF welterweight titles.

“I felt like I was getting in my groove. I had a dream I got a stoppage just like this,” said Ennis.

Stanionis looked like he could continue, but perhaps it was a wise move by his trainer. The Lithuanian fighter’s wife is expecting their first child at any moment.

Meanwhile, Ennis finally proved the expectations of greatness by experts. It was a thorough display of superiority over a very good champion.

“The biggest part was being myself and having a live body in front of me,” said Ennis. “I’m just getting started.”

Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn was jubilant over the performance of the Philadelphia fighter.

“What a wonderful humble man. This is one of the finest fighters today. By far the best fighter in the division,” said Hearn. “You are witnessing true greatness.”

Other Bouts

Former featherweight world champion Raymond Ford (17-1-1, 8 KOs) showed that moving up in weight would not be a problem even against the rugged and taller Thomas Mattice (22-5-1, 17 KOs) in winning by a convincing unanimous decision.

The quicksilver southpaw Ford ravaged Mattice in the first round then basically cruised the remaining nine rounds like a jackhammer set on automatic. Four-punch combinations pummeled Mattice but never put him down.

“He was a smart veteran. He could take a hit,” said Ford.

Still, there was no doubt on who won the super featherweight contest. After 10 rounds all three judges gave Ford every round and scored it 100-90 for the New Jersey fighter who formerly held the WBA featherweight title which was wrested from him by Nick Ball.

Shakhram Giyasov (17-0, 10 KOs) made good on a promise to his departed daughter by knocking out Argentina’s Franco Ocampo (17-3, 8 KOs) in their welterweight battle.

Giyasov floored Ocampo in the first round with an overhand right but the Argentine fighter was able to recover and fight on for several more rounds.

In the fourth frame, Giyasov launched a lead right to the liver and collapsed Ocampo with the body shot for the count of 10 at 1:57 of the fourth round.

“I had a very hard camp because I lost my daughter,” Giyasov explained. “I promised I would be world champion.”

In his second pro fight Omari Jones (2-0) needed only seconds to disable William Jackson (13-6-2) with a counter right to the body for a knockout win. The former Olympic medalist was looking for rounds but reacted to his opponent’s actions.

“He was a veteran he came out strong,” said Jones who won a bronze medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics. “But I just stayed tight and I looked for the shot and I landed it.”

After a feint, Jackson attacked and was countered by a right to the rib cage and down he went for the count at 1:40 of the first round in the welterweight contest.

Photo credit: Matchroom

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