The Tale of Two Fighters : 21 Years After Bobby Chacon and Danny Lopez Faced Off at the Sports Arena, Their Lives Have Taken Dramatic Turns

F eatherweight Bobby Chacon’s eyes were glittering as brightly as the rhinestones on his black trunks. Finally, after eight ferocious rounds of one of the biggest and best fights in Los Angeles ring history, he was hearing the words he had been waiting for.

Joe Ponce, Chacon’s manager, motioned toward the other corner , where undefeated Danny (Little Red) Lopez was struggling to find life in his beaten body .

“Danny’s done. His legs won’t take him where he wants to go,” Ponce said.

“Are you sure?” said Chacon. “Then I’ll go get him.”

Now , it was Ponce’s turn to b e excited.

“I thought he was going to jump clear out of the ring,” the manager said later.

It was May 24, 1974. In front of 16,080 wildly cheering fans at the Sports Arena, Chacon was about to dramatically, triumphantly , end the greatest night of his young life.

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Twenty-one years later, Chacon, 43, sits on a couch in his mother’s Pacoima home and tries to remember that night.

Sometimes, it is difficult for him to remember the previous night. The collective punishment of 18 years in the ring, of too many blows to the head and body, of too many nights trying to reduce body fluids in order to lose weight, have left him with slurred speech, loss of memory, disorientation and other classic symptoms of pugilistica dementia, a condition sometimes found in former boxers. He also has damaged kidneys.

Around his waist, Chacon wears a pouch to hold a notebook in which he writes notes to himself so he will not forget where he has been and where he is going.

“I have to write down everything I do or am going to do,” he says, embarrassed. “One time, I was a mile from my house and I couldn’t figure out how to get home.”

His condition didn’t come on suddenly. Chacon knew even before he hung up his gloves for the final time how dark his days beyond boxing might become.

Recalling a 10-rounder near the end of his career, he says: “In the second round, I asked myself, ‘Where am I? What am I doing?’ I fought eight more rounds even though I didn’t know where I was.

He knows he damaged too many brain cells by fighting too long, engaging in 67 bouts over an 18-year career.

All the money from all his paydays--he says half a million dollars--is gone, lost to ex-wives, ex-handlers and who knows where else.

Also gone are most of his belts and trophies, stolen by who knows who.

“I fought too long in order to get it all back,” he says. “I wanted to fight to get back into the limelight, to get some money and get out. But it never happened. I didn’t want to fight, but I had to. What could I do? I wasn’t no surgeon.

“I was always alone. Bobby Chacon has been alone all his life. What a mess.”

*

To equal the hype and anticipation surrounding the May 6 bout in Las Vegas between Oscar De La Hoya and Rafael Ruelas, you would have to go back to Chacon-Lopez to find such excitement for a pair of Los Angeles fighters.

They had 47 fights between them, and only one loss. The 21-year-old Lopez was 23-0 , the 22-year-old Chacon 23-1.

Lopez, known for his one-punch KOs, had knocked out seven opponents in the first round and had taken 17 out before the end of the fourth round. Chacon had five first-round knockouts and 16 within five rounds.

Fight fans in Los Angeles were so excited about this dream matchup that the Sports Arena was overflowing and 2,671 more paid to watch on closed-circuit television in the Olympic Auditorium. Each fighter received $56,000.

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Life has been kinder to Lopez than Chacon.

Two years after losing to Chacon, he won the World Boxing Council featherweight title with a 15-round decision over David Kotey.

Lopez defended the title eight times before losing to Salvador Sanchez on a 13th-round knockout in February 1980. Lopez got a rematch four months later and lost again, also by knockout, this time in the 14th.

At 28, with a record of 42-5 and 39 knockouts, Lopez retired.

Part Mexican and part Native American from the Ute tribe, he spent the first eight years of his life in a tin-roofed shack on the Ft. Duchesne reservation in Utah.

He now lives in Diamond Bar with his wife, Bonnie, and has three children, all boys. He is in good health and works steadily, doing demolition work for a cement company.

“I guess everything worked out for the better,” he says.

It took him a long time to get boxing out of his system. Two years ago, nearly a dozen years after his retirement, Lopez tried a comeback against Jorge Rodriguez, a journeyman with a losing record. Lopez lasted little more than a round, getting stopped 37 seconds into Round 2.

Finally, even he had to admit what his former manager, Benny Georgino, told him years before: It was over.

A year of training and preparation had allowed Lopez to last only 3 1/2 minutes against a fighter he would have demolished at his peak.

“I missed the life,” Lopez says. “This construction work is tough. I figured if I was going to be working this hard, I may as well be in the gym doing something I know.

“And when I would see guys like George Foreman still fighting, I would think, ‘If he can do it, I can do it.’ But Father Time takes your reflexes away from you.”

So he returned to his sledgehammer, his dreams of a comeback shattered.

His only regret is that he was born too soon, that he retired before fighters’ paychecks went from thousands to millions.

“Bobby and I could have had the millions if we fought now,” Lopez says. “Then I wouldn’t have to be working my buns off in construction.”

Lopez is into another stage now, proudly watching his sons pursue interests of their own. His 20-year-old son, Jeremy, is cutting his first album as part of a musical group named Moon Wash.

None of the boys pursued boxing further then their back yard, where they would usually fight one other.

That’s fine with Lopez.

“Boxing is a tough business,” he says. “I’m glad they’re not in it.”

*

In the early rounds of that memorable night in 1974, both fighters absorbed and delivered a terrifying amount of punishment. If not for the breaks between rounds, there would have been no time to breathe. But by the end of the fourth round, having seen and survived the best Lopez had to offer, Chacon took command.

After Ponce’s exhortation in the corner, Chacon leaped up in the ninth round, unleashing his deadly right hand. That right was the best weapon Chacon had and the weapon Lopez was least able to counter.

Chacon hit Lopez so hard that Lopez staggered across the ring into the ropes. Chacon was on him like a panther ready to devour dinner, continuing the assault with both fists.

Lopez went down, but immediately got up on legs that made him look like a passenger on a boat caught in a typhoon.

“I was in a daze,” Lopez said in recalling that night. “Instinct got me on my feet. I should have stayed down and maybe cleared my head , but it wasn’t meant to be. The way I bounced up, I acted like I had a spring on my butt. I tried to fight back, but it was like everything was in slow motion.”

Chacon maneuvered Lopez into the ropes. Lopez dropped his hands and Chacon moved in for the kill. But referee John Thomas stepped in and ended it.

Chacon’s mother, Gloria Banegas, embraced him.

Bobby Chacon was on top of the world.

*

Chacon had already fought for a championship by the time he met Lopez, having lost to Ruben Olivares on a ninth-round knockout in a 1973 battle for the North American Boxing Federation featherweight title.

But four months after beating Lopez, Chacon returned to the ring and won the WBC featherweight crown with a ninth-round knockout of Alfredo Marcano. Chacon successfully defended that title only once before losing it to Olivares. Chacon fought three times for the WBC junior-lightweight title, losing to Alexis Arguello and Cornelius Boza-Edwards before finally winning that title in 1982 with a 15-round decision over Bazooka Limon.

Chacon finished with a record of 58-7-1, including 46 knockouts.

But the blows he absorbed in the ring paled in comparison to those he received outside boxing.

The first of his four wives, Valerie, committed suicide in 1982. One of his three children, 17-year-old Bobby (Chico) Chacon, was killed in a gang confrontation in 1991.

Chacon himself was put on probation in 1984 after a conviction for beating his second wife, Deborah, and was jailed three years later for violating probation after investigators found alcohol in his house and a trace of marijuana in his urine.

Chacon finally met his father for the first time that he can recall in 1989. Two years later, Bobby Sr. died.

“We finally make contact and he dies,” says Chacon with a shake of his head. “Great move, Dad.”

Chacon says he has put all that behind him. He lives in a one-bedroom house in Pacoima, close to his mother. The sparsely furnished living room is dominated by a huge fight poster of Chacon at the peak of his career. His two brothers, daughter Johna and son Jayme visit often. So does a new girlfriend.

“He’s happier than he’s been in five years,” says a brother, Johnny Banegas.

Chacon takes antidepressants and survives on medical disability, as well as the money he gets from recycling aluminum cans he collects while traveling around on a bicycle.

“He cleans the earth,” Johna says.

Times staff writer Greg Sandoval contributed to this story.