U.S. Olympic Gold Medalist Fidel La Barba Was a Phenom After a Rocky Start

Published

3 months ago

June 30, 2024

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In just a few weeks, the 2024 Summer Olympics will commence in Paris. One hundred years ago, also in Paris, two American boxers – Fidel La Barba and Jackie Fields — captured Olympic gold medals. In an earlier story, we profiled Fields. Now it’s La Barba’s turn.

The fifth of seven children born to Italian immigrants, Fidel La Barba turned pro in his hometown of Los Angeles three months after returning from Paris where he won the flyweight competition. As a pro, he would carve out a Hall of Fame career, but it sure didn’t start out that way. After five pro bouts, his record stood 2-2-1.

There was an extenuating circumstance. Both losses and the draw came at the hands of Jimmy McLarnin. The baby-faced McLarnin was actually younger than La Barba, but he was more experienced and history would show that he was much more than a formidable foe; he can be fairly numbered among the all-time greats.

La Barba had to settle for another draw in his eighth pro fight, but this redounded well to him. Newsboy Brown, undefeated and with 36 pro fights under his belt, was thought to be too good for Fidel, but La Barba was every bit his equal in their 10-rounder at Hollywood’s Legion Stadium. Most of the newspapermen shaded the match to him. ”Fidel’s rounds were more decisive and he scored [the only] knockdown. On points he was clearly ahead,” wrote Sid Ziff in the Los Angeles Evening Express.

Three fights later, La Barba was thrust against Frankie Genaro in what was believed to be the first pro fight between former Olympic gold medalists. Genaro, a New Yorker, had won his diadem in Antwerp in 1920.

As a pro, La Barba was 6-2-2. Frankie Genaro, per boxrec, brought a professional record of 52-3-4.

Genaro was recognized as the American Flyweight Champion. As was common in those days, the champion was accorded the right to bring his own referee when he fought in his opponent’s backyard. Genaro picked New Jersey’s Harry Ertle, best known for being the third man in the ring for Dempsey-Carpentier.

La Barba vs Genaro was contested before an estimated 18,000 at LA’s Ascot Park where the usual bill of fare was motorcycle racing. At the end of 10 lusty rounds, the honorable Ertle raised La Barba’s hand without a moment’s hesitation. According to the correspondent for the San Francisco Examiner, a phalanx of 25 policemen were needed to keep well-wishers at bay as La Barba was being herded back to his dressing room.

This fight had taken on a much brighter tint the previous month when the great Filipino boxer Pancho Villa, recognized as the world flyweight champion, passed away at age 23 following surgery for an ulcerated tooth. With the title vacant, La Barba vs Genaro was elevated into a world title fight although not recognized as such in every jurisdiction.

At this juncture, Fidel La Barba was 19 years old and had been a pro for less than a year. Writing in 2019, the prominent boxing historian Matt McGrain mused that La Barba’s conquest of Genaro just may be the best win ever recorded by a teenager in all of boxing history.

La Barba stayed busy after this fight with 14 bouts in the next 17 months. Most were no-decision affairs meaning that La Barba would get to keep his title unless he got knocked out. On Jan. 21, 1927, he was matched against Scotland’s Elky Clark in a 12-rounder at Madison Square Garden.

The New York boxing commission, at odds with the National Boxing Association (NBA), had never formally recognized the Californian as the world flyweight champion. If Fidel were able to get past Clark, the undisputed European champion, he would receive their blessing and unify the title.

Clark, 29, had fought a slew of 20-round fights. As manifested in his cauliflower ears, he had a lot of mileage on him. The Scotsman lasted the distance, but Fidel had him on the canvas five times and won every round.

La Barba, who had reportedly been the president of his senior class at LA’s Lincoln High School, had always aspired to attend Stanford and in the fall of 1927 he did just that, turning his back on boxing to enter the prestigious university where he lived in the freshman dorm and helped-out with the school’s boxing team. But he left Stanford after one year and returned to the ring.

When he returned to boxing, he was no longer a champion, having outgrown the division, and a married man, having wed the ex-wife of prominent newspaper cartoonist Billy DeBeck (the first of Fidel’s three wives). Four fights in LA and one in San Francisco prefaced a belated honeymoon in Australia where La Barba had four fights in seven weeks, all scheduled for 15 rounds. He won them all.

The Trilogy

The highlight of La Barba’s post-college boxing career was his three-fight series with Kid Chocolate, one of the best trilogies in boxing history. They first met on May 22, 1929 at the New York Coliseum in the Bronx on a show promoted by Jess McMahon (the grandfather of WWE magnate Vince McMahon).

According to a story in a Brooklyn paper, Chocolate, born Eligio Sardinas, was unbeaten in 146 fights which included his amateur bouts in Cuba. There was no way to verify that record but the Havana Bon Bon was undefeated in bouts on American soil and was looked upon as a future world champion.

At five-foot-six, Chocolate was the taller man by three inches and he had a substantial edge in reach, but Fidel was able to smother his punches and after five rounds, said a reporter for a Pennsylvania paper, La Barba “was so far out in front that Chocolate wouldn’t be able to catch him with a deputy sheriff.”

But Chocolate did catch him and won the 10-round fight on a majority decision. “[Fidel] flouted one of the major tenets of gaming,” he wrote. “This merely demands that when you have the pot won, keep it won.”

The verdict was unpopular and it was inevitable that La Barba and Kid Chocolate would meet up again. The sequel was staged at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 3, 1930.

This would be La Barba’s finest hour since his conquest of Frankie Genaro back when he was just starting out. He took the fight to the Cuban right from the opening bell and at the end of the 10-round contest there was no doubt that his hand would be raised. “At the end,” wrote the ringside reporter for the Buffalo News, “the usually dancing, darting Cuban was flat-footed, leg-weary and swinging wildly.” (The decision was unanimous; the scores were not announced.)

Twenty-five months would elapse before the rubber match. In the interim, Kid Chocolate suffered three defeats, but against top-tier opponents — Battling Battalino, Tony Canzoneri, and Jack “Kid” Berg – in bouts so closely contested they could have gone either way. LaBarba also lost to Battalino, failing to capture Bat’s featherweight strap in a dull 15-round fight, but La Barba-Chocolate III had a patina that was lacking in the first two encounters. In New York and a few other places, Chocolate had come to be recognized as a two-division champion, having laid claim to the featherweight and (lightly regarded) junior lightweight belts.

After 14 rounds, in the estimation of the New York Daily News man, the rubber match was deadlocked 7-7. But Fidel had run out of bullets and Chocolate out-slugged him in the final stanza.

La Barba emerged from this bout with a torn retina in his left eye, but would have three more fights before his career was finished. He lost a 10-round decision to four-time rival Tommy Paul, a first-rate fighter from Buffalo, lost a 12-round decision to British featherweight champion Seaman Tommy Watson, and ended his career on a winning note with a 10-round decision over a Pittsburgh club fighter in Pittsburgh. His final record was 69-15-7 and he was never stopped.

In Retirement

Although La Barba went to Stanford to study finance, in retirement he discovered he had a knack for writing. Two of his stories, one of which was published in Collier’s, were adapted into screenplays: “Savannah of the Mounties,” a 1939 western starring Shirley Temple and Randolph Scott, and “Footlight Serenade,” a 1942 musical wherein Victor Mature plays a former boxing champion turned Broadway stage actor. Both films were produced by Twentieth-Century Fox. Studio head Darryl F. Zanuck was a close friend.

During World War II, La Barba enlisted in the Army. Having only one good eye precluded him from combat duty. Discovered by a reporter in Naples, Italy, he defined his role as comforting old ladies in air raid shelters who were traumatized by the bombing. During the Korean conflict, he served as a physical fitness instructor at Southern California’s March Air Force Base.

La Barba was also a sportswriter for two short-lived newspapers, the Wilmington (CA) Daily Press Journal and the Santa Monica Evening Outlook where he was named Sports Editor. In the mid-1950s, he served on the California Athletic Commission, coached a paraplegic wheelchair basketball team, and attracted notice as the manager of promising heavyweight Elmer Willhoite, a former All American football lineman at USC who aborted his boxing career after only four pro fights because of brittle hands.

Fidel La Barba passed away on Oct. 2, 1981 at age 76 at a VA hospital in Los Angeles where he was being treated for a heart condition. He was inducted posthumously into the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 1996.

—-

A recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling, TSS editor-in-chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books including “Prizefighting: An American History,” released by McFarland in 2008 and re-released in a paperback edition in 2020.

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WBA Feather Champ Nick Ball Chops Down Rugged Ronny Rios in Liverpool

Published

6 hours ago

October 5, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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In his first fight in his native Liverpool since February of 2020, Nick Ball successfully defended his WBA title with a 10^th-round stoppage of SoCal veteran Ronny Rios. The five-foot-two “Wrecking Ball” was making the first defense of a world featherweight strap he won in his second stab at it, taking the belt from Raymond Ford on a split decision after previously fighting Rey Vargas to a draw in a match that many thought Ball had won.

This fight looked like it was going to be over early. Ball strafed Rios with an assortment of punches in the first two rounds, and likely came within a punch or two of ending the match in the third when he put Rios on the canvas with a short left hook and then tore after him relentlessly. But Rios, a glutton for punishment, weathered the storm and actually had some good moments in round four and five.

The brother of welterweight contender Alexis Rocha and a two-time world title challenger at 122 pounds, Rios returned to the ring in April on a ProBox card in Florida and this was his second start after being out of the ring for 28 months. He would be on the canvas twice more before the bout was halted. The punch that knocked him off his pins in round seven wasn’t a clean shot, but he would be in dire straits three rounds later when he was hammered onto the ring apron with a barrage of punches. He managed to maneuver his way back into the ring, but his corner sensibly threw in the towel when it seemed as if referee Bob Williams would let the match continue.

The official time was 2:06 of round ten. Ball improved to 21-0-1 (12 KOs). Rios, 34, declined to 34-5.

Semi-wind-up

A bout contested for a multiplicity of regional 140-pound titles produced a mild upset when Jack Rafferty wore down and eventually stopped Henry Turner whose corner pulled him out after the ninth frame.

Both fighters were undefeated coming in. Turner, now 13-1, was the better boxer and had the best of the early rounds. However, he used up a lot of energy moving side-to-side as he fought off his back foot, and Rafferty, who improved to 24-0 (15 KOs), never wavered as he continued to press forward.

The tide turned dramatically in round eight. One could see Turner’s legs getting loggy and the confidence draining from his face. The ninth round was all Rafferty. Turner was a cooked goose when Rafferty collapsed him with four unanswered body punches, but he made it to the final bell before his corner wisely pulled him out. Through the completed rounds, two of the judges had it even and the third had the vanquished Turner up by 4 points.

Other Bouts of Note

In a lightweight affair, Jadier Herrera, a highly-touted 22-year-old Cuban who had been campaigning in Dubai, advanced to 16-0 (14 KOs) with a third-round stoppage of Oliver Flores (31-6-2) a Nicaraguan southpaw making his UK debut. After two even rounds, Herrera put Flores on the deck with a left to the solar plexus. Flores spit out his mouthpiece as he lay there in obvious distress and referee Steve Gray waived the fight off as he was attempting to rise. The end came 30 seconds into round three.

In a bantamweight contest slated for 10, Liverpool’s Andrew Cain (13-1, 12 KOs) dismissed Colombia’s Lazaro Casseres at the 1:48 mark of the second round.

A stablemate and sparring partner of Nick Ball, Cain knocked Casseres to the canvas in the second round with a short uppercut and forced the stoppage later in the round when he knocked the Colombian into the ropes with a double left hook. Casseres. 27, brought an 11-1 record but had defeated only two opponents with winning records.

In a contest between super welterweights, Walter Fury pitched a 4-round shutout over Dale Arrowsmith. This was the second pro fight for the 27-year-old Fury who had his famous cousin Tyson Fury rooting him on from ringside. Stylistically, Walter resembles Tyson, but his defense is hardly as tight; he was clipped a few times.

Arrowsmith is a weekend warrior and a professional loser, a species indigenous to the British Isles. This was his twenty-fourth fight this year and his 186^th pro fight overall! His record is “illuminated” by nine wins and 10 draws.

A Queensberry Promotion, the Ball vs Rios card aired in the UK on TNT Sports and in the US on ESPN+.

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Alimkhanuly TKOs Mikhailovich and Motu TKOs O’Connell in Sydney

Published

2 days ago

October 4, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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IBF/WBO world middleweight champion Janibek Alimkhanuly, generally regarded as the best of the current crop of middleweights, retained his IBF title today in Sydney, Australia, with a ninth-round stoppage of game but overmatched Andrei Mikhailovich. The end came at the 2:45 mark of round nine.

Favored in the 8/1 range although he was in a hostile environment, Alimkhanuly (16-0, 11 KOs) beat Mikhailovich to a pulp in the second round and knocked him down with one second remaining in the frame, but Mikhailovich survived the onslaught and had several good moments in the ensuing rounds as he pressed the action. However, Alimkhanuly’s punches were cleaner and one could sense that it was only a matter of time before the referee would rescue Mikhailovich from further punishment. When a short left deposited Mikhailovich on the seat of his pants on the lower strand of rope, the ref had seen enough.

Alimkhanuly, a 2016 Olympian for Kazakhstan, was making his first start since October of last year. He and Mikhailovich were slated to fight in Las Vegas in July, but the bout fell apart after the weigh-in when the Kazakh fainted from dehydration.

Owing to a technicality, Alimkhanuly’s WBO belt wasn’t at stake today. Although he has expressed an interest in unifying the title –Eislandy Lara (WBA) and Carlos Adames (WBC) are the other middleweight belt-holders — Alimkhanuly is big for the weight class and it’s a fair assumption that this was his final fight at 160.

The brave Mikhailovich, who was born in Russia but grew up in New Zealand after he and his twin brother were adopted, suffered his first pro loss, declining to 21-1.

Semi-wind-up

Topping the flimsy undercard was a scheduled 8-rounder between Mikhailovich’s stablemate Mea Motu, a 34-year-old Maori, and veteran Australian campaigner Shannon O’Connell, 41. The ladies share eight children between them (Motu, trained by her mother in her amateur days, has five).

A clash of heads in the opening round left O’Connell with a bad gash on her forehead. She had a big lump developing over her right eye when her corner threw in the towel at the 1:06 mark of round four.

Motu (20-0, 8 KOs) was set to challenge IBF/WBO world featherweight champion Ellie Scotney later this month in Manchester, England, underneath Catterall-Prograis, but that match was postponed when Scotney suffered an injury in training. Motu took this fight, which was contested at the catchweight of 125 pounds, to stay busy. O’Connell, 29-8-1, previously had a cup of coffee as a WBA world champion (haven’t we all).

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 299: Golden Boy in Saudi Arabia and More

Published

2 days ago

October 3, 2024

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 299: Golden Boy in Saudi Arabia and More

A small brigade of Mexican and Latino-American fighters gathered at the beautiful Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday.

Their mission: to export Mexican style fighting to the Saudi Arabia desert.

Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez defends the WBA cruiserweight title against WBO cruiserweight titlist Chris Billam-Smith and they will be joined by several other top Golden Boy Promotion fighters on Nov. 16 at the Venue in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

DAZN will stream the Golden Boy and BOXXER promotions card called “The Venue Riyadh Season.”

Mexican fighters are known worldwide for their ferocity and durability. Ramirez, a former super middleweight champion, surprised many with his convincing win over former champion Arsen Goulamirian last March.

Now Ramirez seeks to unify the cruiserweight titles against United Kingdom’s Smith who has never fought outside of his native country.

“I will become the first Mexican cruiserweight unified champion. It’s exciting because my dream will come true this November 16,” said Ramirez.

Smith has a similar goal.

“This opportunity for me is huge,” said Smith. “I’ve been written off many times before.”

The cruiserweights will be joined by two top super lightweight warriors who’ve been itching to face each other like a pair of fighting roosters.

Arnold Barboza, an undefeated super lightweight contender from Los Angeles, has been chasing top contenders and world champions for the past six years. Former super lightweight champion Jose Ramirez simply wants action and a return to elite status.

“I’ve been wanting this fight since 2019 for whatever reason it never happened,” said Barboza. “I want to give credit and thanks to Oscar, he’s a man of his word. When I signed to Golden Boy, he said he was going to give me this fight.”

“It’s honorable Barboza saying he’s been chasing the fight since 2019. Now that he stands in the way for me to reclaim my titles it’s time to get that fight on,” said Ramirez.

Others on the Riyadh fight card include Puerto Rico’s WBO minimumweight world titlist Oscar Collazo defending against Thailand’s Thammanoon Niyomtrong, along with Oscar Duarte and lightweight contenders William Zepeda and Tevin Farmer.

One fighter missing from the card is Charles Conwell, the super welterweight contender they recently signed earlier in the year. He last performed on the Vergil Ortiz Jr. and Serhii Bohachuk clash in Las Vegas.

Conwell has similar talent to those two.

And what about the women fighters”

Yokasta Valle recently re-signed with Golden Boy Promotions. What is her next scheduled fight? She was spotted facing up against Australia’s Lulu “Bang, Bang” Hawton at a fight card. Is that on the horizon?

West Coast venues

Speaking of the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles, its just a few buildings north of the Belasco Theater where Golden Boy was staging its club shows for several years.

A majority of the boxing media favored that location for its cozy atmosphere and proximity to LA Live. A number of prospects that developed into contenders and world champions fought there including Vergil Ortiz Jr., Ryan Garcia, Joshua Franco, and Oscar Duarte.

On any given fight night celebrities like Mario Lopez, George Lopez and others would show up in the small venue that held several hundred fans in its ornate theater setting.

The Mayan Theater and Belasco Theater are still open for business. According to one source, LA Laker owner Jeannie Buss stages a pro wrestling show at one of those theaters.

World title fight

England’s Nick Ball (20-0-1, 11 KOs) defends the WBA featherweight world title against Southern California’s Ronny Rios (34-4, 17 KOs) on Saturday Oct. 5, at M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England. Starting time for the Queensberry and Top Rank promotion card is 11 a.m. PT.

Ball was last seen nearly toppling WBC featherweight titlist Rey Vargas but lost last March. He then defeated Ray Ford for the WBA title

Fights to Watch

Fri. ESPN+ 2 a.m. PT Janibek Alimkhanuly (15-0) vs Andrei Mikhailovich (21-0)

Sat. ESPN+ 11 a.m. PT Nick Ball (20-0-1) vs Ronny Rios (34-4)

Photo credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy

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