30 years later: remembering Bobby Chacón

NEW YORK

 

“Ever” is defined classically as being timeless – or on Facebook and Twitter as being off the top of the head of the writer who cannot remember what he had for lunch yesterday. As in Saturday’s Manny Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Márquez fight was “the greatest I have ever seen.”

 

Yawn. Nice fight. But it did not even come close to the greatest sports event I have ever seen. Yes, I – who never says ever – said ever.

 

It was 30 years ago today – Saturday, December 11, 1982 – when I was 23 years old, 50-60 pounds lighter, parting my hair down the middle and being so bold as to wear blue sunglasses inside the old Sacramento Memorial Auditiorium.

 

Google “Limón-Chacón 1982.” Better yet, YouTube it. If you see a better fight or sports event than that in your own version of “ever,” you should consider yourself both fortunate and privileged.

 

Mark Whicker of the Orange County Register reminded me – and all of his readers the other day – that Bobby Chacón and Rafael “Bazooka” Limón staged their own best-of-four series that ended with Ring magazine’s 1982 Fight of the Year.

 

I was working at the time in Northern California for KORV Radio and the Oroville Mercury-Register – both small outlets. As I do now, I thought I had all the answers. But at age 23, I truly had far fewer of them. And I spent that year learning a lot covering Chacón, who had only recently moved from Southern California to Oroville.

 

Among the things I learned was that Chacón moved north to get away from the slippery slopes of his San Fernando Valley upbringing. Translation: drugs. His wife wanted him to stop boxing. To use all that money he earned to buy their young family some stability.

 

Chacón promised Valerie he would quit fighting. He broke that promise. At age 30 he said he had one more title run in him. She did not. On the Ides of March in ’82, Valerie Chacón took her own life. One day and an hour’s drive to Sacramento later Bobby Chacón beat the hell out of some guy named Sálvador Ugalde who played the role of the Other Guy in the ring for three rounds.

 

That was the last Chacón fight that year that I did not attend. Again, I was still learning – this time how to cover a prize fighter and prize fights – especially at the just-shy-of-big-time level at which Chacón was competing barely two years after he lost his first world championship.

 

I had taken over the beat from a guy named Mac McDonald, who decided to leave the Mercury to take over the Carmel Pine Cone. Only in California. Me? I was a guy who knew his way around high school and small college sports and even how to call the San Francisco 49ers and get game credentials for the NFC Championship. But this boxing thing was a whole, new world.

 

I eventually came to learn about who to listen to and who to ignore. Self-styled friends of Chacón who glommed onto media tykes like me were the sorts of B.S. artists that boxing especially attracts. And that the moment I wrote or broadcast something they did not like, I would find myself out of their favor. Maybe getting access to Chacón through them – one husky fellow in particular – was a bad idea.

 

That’s also when I learned I should go directly to the subject I was covering. To that end Chacón was great. When he gave me his phone number I could bypass those “friends” of his who had about as much loyalty as big-time college coach looking for a better job.

 

After two more victories that spring, Chacón and his growing legion of followers in Oroville had to wait and see if a title shot would be coming. Finally, it arrived when Don King bought Chacón’s contractual rights away from Don Chargin – the modest, nice-guy promoter from L.A. who had put on Chacón’s shows that year in Sacramento.

 

Chacón signed a contract full of options that King held, and the day would come that he would break the contract and keep plenty of lawyers busy (I remember some cat named Sy Swerdlow swooping in from L.A.). But not before he had one more shot at a world title – the World Boxing Council super-featherweight championship held by his rival Limón. In their three prior fights, each won once with the odd “technical draw” in between when Limón could not continue after an accidental head butt from Chacón.

 

My radio station and newspaper wanted blanket coverage of this fight, but they also wanted me to do my usual announcing and writing duties back in Oroville. So I did a lot of driving that week. I broadcast a couple high-school basketball games, and in between I raced to Sacramento to check in on Chacón. I even managed to extract a private dinner with Limón and his manager – who was there to translate Limón’s Spanish that sounded a lot more like silence to me. Again, I was only 23 – and learning.

 

As big a story as Chacón was, he was not the biggest on fight day for the people of Oroville. That morning there was a march to promote racial tolerance. My foggy recollection is that some extremists had been putting hatred-promoting flyers into the lockers of school children, provoking an outcry that led to the organization of the march. It attracted thousands of participants, and it led to a fair amount of tension for a town of about 30,000-40,000 people, most of which preferred to hide and hope everything would return to whatever passed for normal.

 

Back in Sacramento there were only about 3,500 seats available in that relic of a building on J Street downtown – so tickets for the average fan from Oroville were next to impossible. The old Memorial Auditorium was 56 years old at the time, but with a balcony that looked like it could have been the scene of some gunfights in the Old West, it seemed at least twice that age.

 

I remember getting to the arena extremely early. A short time later Bill Royer, the sports editor of the Mercury, showed up to take photos. Bill was and I presume remains an especially talented photographer – a fact that many would learn shortly after the fight.

 

We made small talk about what was going on with the march back in Oroville, about the fight, about the 49ers and whatever else we could think of. A mutual acquaintance came up to us and noticed one of the long, cylindrical microphones put at ringside for the telecast on ABC. He made a rude joke about it that I still dare not repeat 30 years later – even as it still resonates in my mind’s ear.

 

Bill took his place with his camera positioned on the east apron of the ring. I sat in the ringside media section on the south side. The place slowly filled, and there were preliminary fights that I simply do not remember. No, I could not have told you until I just now looked it up that Julio César Chávez made his U.S. debut that afternoon with a knockout of Jerry Lewis on the undercard. Yes, it was that Julio César Chávez. (No, it was not that Jerry Lewis. I don’t think.)

 

Being the child of media that I was, I took notice that the ABC cameras were on the stage north of the ring and would be pointed at me through the entire fight. I also took note of Keith Jackson in the northwest corner of the ring preparing to broadcast the main event. Years later I reminded him of that day, and he remembered every detail of the fight as if it were going on right in front of him all over again.

 

Just after 2 p.m., after the anthems were sung and Hank Renner introduced the fighters and the anthems, it was time for boxing. The whole fight I was chattering away at the reporter next to me – and he back at me. I think he was from the San Jose Mercury News, but that is just a blurry guess all these years later. I took a ton of notes non-stop without ever looking at my pad. How I translated them later is anyone’s guess.

 

You can find the whole fight on line and see Chacón get floored in the third and 10th rounds. Limón seemed on the verge of victory at least twice when the attending doctor looked at the huge gashes spewing blood down Chacón’s nose and cheek.

 

But the fight went the distance, and back then the distance was not 12 but 15 rounds. A month earlier Duk Koo Kim died from the injuries he received in the 14th round of a loss to Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini. The WBC almost immediately declared an end to its 15-round title fights effective in 1983. That meant Limón-Chacón would be perhaps the last sanctioned only by the WBC to go 15.

 

For Chacón it’s a good thing, since he needed nearly every second of those 45 minutes. A hard-charging right floored Limón with 12 seconds left. Limón would rise, but it was the last punch of a fight that that writer next to me called a real-life version of “Rocky II.” Or III or IV.

 

Now came the obligatory confusion. The rows of seats at ringside were becoming disarrayed as the crowd edged forward. I happened to be near the place where the judges cards were being tallied.

 

Royal Courtain, then of KHSL-TV in Chico (near Oroville) was asking me, “Who won? Who won?”

 

I read the total on the first card. “One judge has Chacón,” I yelled.

 

Then I looked at the second. “Another one for Chacón.”

 

I didn’t wait for the third. Chacón, it turned out, won by one point on two cards and two points on the other, meaning the very last punch of the fight was the difference between a victory and a majority draw.

 

I raced toward the door to stand and watch the announcement of Chacón’s victory, to see everyone’s reaction – and then to muscle my way to a pay phone to call KORV. In an era before Twitter and before texting, there was also no live telecast of the fight on the West Coast. Being part of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” the bout was on a three-hour delay in California. So for Oroville, I would be bearing the news.

 

Once I breathlessly got on the air to say what happened, I realized I had left a bag back at my ringside seat. In it was a camera with a long, zoom lens. When I went back it was long gone. Having lost a camera, I could not now lose Chacón. I finally found where he was doing interviews – in some anteroom that may well have been used as a dressing area for a USO show in World War II. I talked to Chacón but never again found Limón. That was fine; I had what I really needed – save an explanation for my Mercury bosses about that camera.

 

That night I returned to Oroville, where I was told the big march was peaceful – and that it turned into a real positive for everyone involved.

 

Since the Mercury was a Monday-through-Saturday paper, I had an extra day to write my story and concoct an alibi. And without the reality of digital cameras, Bill relished the extra day to develop his photos in the newspaper’s darkroom. That is where his brilliance was delivered, since he shot the quintessential photo of the last punch of the fight. I remember it was printed and reprinted and reprinted again. It got around so much that Bill was robbed of the credit for it when he should have received it over and over.

 

When Chacón got back to town, the mayor planned a big day in his honor. High school bands played. Speeches were offered. So was a key to the city. And our newspaper’s coverage of the fight was packaged and reprinted into a special section – the better to attract a few more advertising dollars.

 

Thirty years later that paper exists only as a shadow publication of another one across the county. The newsroom is now being used as a community theater.

 

Me? I am in New York City working for Fox News Radio as well as serving as international correspondent for the Australian sports radio station RSN.

 

I lost track of Bill Royer, who I believe retired from his work for an insurance association in Colorado.

 

I still chat regularly with Royal Courtain, who spent something like quarter century doing TV sports in Chico. Now he is selling TV advertising there.

 

Don Chargin is still going at 84, according to what I just read, although his wonderful wife and aide-de-camp Lorraine passed away a couple years ago. They were married about 49 years. I last talked to Don about 10 or 15 years ago for something I was working on for ESPN.

 

I presume Don King is still around. He’s like styrofoam.

 

Sacramento Memorial Auditorium is still there – although it was vacated so it could be brought up to code and made part of a new convention center. All the fights were moved to the two arenas north of town that the Sacramento Kings called home from 1985 to whenever they are moved out of their mercy in the next couple years.

 

Limón’s whereabouts are a mystery to me. His name came up with Héctor Camacho died last month, since Camacho beat Limón in 1983 after Chacón refused to fight him. More accurately he refused to give another fight to Don King.

 

And Chacón? He had a couple more decent paydays – beating Cornelius Boza Edwards in Las Vegas in 1983 before losing a lopsided fight to Mancini in Reno in ’84. He remarried at least once that I know of. He was eventually divorced from Melissa Chacón, who kept his surname and I believe is still an assignment editor at KCRA-TV in Sacramento.

 

As the years went by Chacón was in and out of retirement, on his way out of money and, sadly, on his way into pugilistic dementia. He just turned 61 last month, and the last I heard he was being looked after in Los Angeles by some kind-hearted people at a church. He also lost his son to a gang-war murder.

 

For all the events I have seen and covered since, including three years in Australia and a month covering soccer’s World Cup in South Africa, and all the Super Bowls and World Series and Olympics and big-time horse races, that Saturday afternoon in Sacramento is still the best.

 

Yes, Limón-Chacón IV was the greatest fight I have ever seen. The greatest sporting event I have ever covered.

 

There I said it. I just didn’t Tweet it.