Tony La Rosa went down hard at the Park West nightclub. Not on the dance floor, where most nights find Chicago area couples shimmying and swaying into the wee hours. The dance floor was covered that night, the first Tuesday of the month, as it is the first Tuesday of each month, by a regulation 20-by-20- foot boxing ring.
La Rosa, the winner in his three previous professional fights, all by knockout and all at Park West, had come into the match in December as the hometown favorite. His family and friends, who hail from the Bridgeport neighborhood and who filled a ringside section of seats behind the press table, were stunned by the outcome.
David Hopkins, a fighter with a 0-1 record from Gary, making his Park West debut, caught La Rosa in the first round with a right to the head that buckled his knees and sent him briefly to the canvas. Appearing more annoyed that hurt, La Rosa took the mandatory eight count staring balefully past the referee at his opponent.
But moments later, Hopkins stuck a hard right to the face through La Rosa`s upraised gloves. The pride of Bridgeport hadn`t moved a glove in self- defense. He looked like he didn`t know what hit him.
As La Rosa`s personal cheering section rose silently to its feet, Hopkins pinned their hero against the ropes, where he finished him off with a few shots to the head. He hit once when he was standing up straight, again as he tilted along the ropes and a third time as he slid sideways to the canvas. With each blow, La Rosa`s face registered surprise.
As family and friends tried to console him after the fight in his makeshift dressing room, filled with stacks of chairs and gleaming silver refrigeration units, La Rosa appeared devastated but unhurt. ”Everyone`s gotta lose sometime,” one of his supporters gently suggested.
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Jack Cowen, the matchmaker for TenCount Promotions, which stages the Park West fights, usually four four-rounders and two six-rounders a night, simply said, ”That`s boxing. We lost a hero tonight, but it shows we`re running an honest show.” La Rosa`s loss is an indication, Cowen says, that his fights are evenly matched, not designed to pad the records of fighters on an inside track to success.
When Cowen was asked last spring by a group of friends and businessman, most fight fans from the Chicago Board of Trade, to head TenCount, which they were forming, his sole condition in accepting was that the fights be staged at Park West.
He felt a younger, more-affluent class of fight fans, primed by the success of the American boxing team in the Olympics, would support the fights if they were staged in an upscale location. Park West, with its 700 seats, glitzy nightclub atmosphere and Lincoln Park address, was perfect.
But Cowen`s main goal in staging monthly fights at Park West is to provide a forum where emerging professional boxers can develop their craft. Boxing has been in decline as a major sport for many reasons, not the least of which is the scarcity of venues for young boxers.
Former heavyweight champion Sonny Liston got his start fighting six-rounders in the old Midwest Gym on Chicago`s West Side. But today`s young fighters have lacked such outlets.
In Liston`s day, and for many years before that, boxing was a popular entertainment. Following the local fighters was a guys` night out, a father-son ritual, even a date for young couples. In Chicago, fans flocked to places like Marigold Gardens, Rainbow Arena, White City and numerous neighborhood gyms and clubs to follow their local heroes.
Cowen has been around the fight game since he and a friend managed a boxer named Otis Walker in 1957. To coach Walker, they hired an old trainer who once had worked with Joe Louis. It didn`t help. Walker lost six consecutive fights, and they gave up on him. But Cowen stayed with boxing: He earned a state license to work in the corner as a ”second,” assisting trainers in caring for and instructing fighters, and he has worked regionally and nationally for several years as a matchmaker and booking agent. He is also part owner of the Chicago Golden Gloves tournament for amateur boxers.
Long-time Chicago boxing impresario Ben Bentley, who now hosts ”the Sportswriters,” a Chicago-based radio and cable television program, called the Park West matches ”a throwback to the old days.” In the 1950s, Bentley was the matchmaker for main-event boxing at the Chicago Stadium. In those days, Bentley was able to go to neighborhood clubs and gyms to find good young fighters for the ”undercard,” the fights leading up to the featured bout of the evening.
Although Bentley hasn`t seen the fights at the Park West, he endorses TenCount`s concept. ”Somebody is going to be developed out of this,” he predicted. ”Somebody is going to catch the imagination of the boxing public.”
For young fighters like Tony ”The Rock” La Rosa, 21, and Phil
”Thunderstorm” Scott, 25, boxing at Park West has breathed life into dreams of professional careers. As two of the better fighters emerging from the Park West matches, they, in turn, breathe life into older men`s dreams of rejuvenating the local fight scene.
The two fighters met in the ring at a VFW fight in 1986. Later, they became friends and sparring partners, working out together five days a week at the Valentine Boys Club in Bridgeport.
”The fight game has kind of gone down,” Phil Scott says. ”But me and my partner are going to bring it back.”
Talking before their December bouts in the red corner dressing room-the one they shared with four other fighters working out of the red corner of the ring that night-they spoke confidently of victory and hammed it up for a press interview.
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The mood in the red corner dressing room after La Rosa`s fight was somber. Scott was dressed and warming up for his fight, the last of the bouts that evening. A 1987 Golden Gloves runner-up and winner of the Amateur Boxing Federation Regionals in 1988, Scott was making his pro debut against Brian Morgan, a young pro from Ft. Wayne, Ind., with a 1-0 record. Scott had lost once as an amateur to Morgan but had beaten him to gain the Amateur Federation championship.
Scott seemed to take his somber mood into the ring, where he patiently got the better of Morgan, scoring a technical knockout in the third round of a scheduled four-round bout.
Neither La Rosa nor Scott fought in January: La Rosa because of boxing regulations, after being knocked out in December; and Scott because he was ill.
Scott will fight this month on a card Cowen is putting together for the Racquet Club of Chicago, a private club that stages an annual boxing exhibition for its members.
La Rosa is itching to get back in the ring Tuesday at Park West. He said he was distracted before his loss to Hopkins by the attention he`d gained from his three knockout victories.
Other fighters on the Park West Card for February include Olympic bronze medal winner Kenny Gould; Wayne Hankins, a Chicago firefighter with a 2-0 pro record; and local fighters Mick Conte and Calvin Williams, both Park West alumni.
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If nothing else, the pungent atmosphere at Park West is worth the price of admission. It`s a scene not easily confused with, say, the friendly confines of Wrigley Field on a summer afternoon. It`s darker, slicker, deadlier and there`s a lot of cigar smoke.
”Who was the hardest puncher ever to come out of Chicago?” asks an elderly fight manager in the blue corner dressing room. A name is mentioned, and the old-timers erupt in knowing laughter.
”Oh, yeah. He could hit,” they say.
”He was a counter puncher,” somebody notes.
”Yes, he was.”
Almost inevitably, it is recalled that the fighter in question came to a tragic end. ”A pitiful story,” says the old fight manager. ”A pitiful story.”
A moment later he recalls another fighter of years past. ”Who was that big heavyweight who came out of Chicago?” he wonders, giving his listeners scant to go on, or so it seemed. But immediately someone supplies the name. Yeah, yeah, they say, that`s the one. And then someone adds, ”He died, too.” –
Outside the dressing rooms, the nouveau fight fans, many of them friends and business associates of TenCount`s partners, swirl in the capacity crowd. Quite a few well-heeled executive types are mixed with others who have paid the $20 admission: a woman in a black-leather jumpsuit with a plunging neckline, a young man in a Black Hawks jacket. It`s a more heterogeneous crowd than you`d ever find at Wrigley Field.
Still, there`s tradition, of sorts. Julie Craig, a former Board of Trade runner and her sister, Debbie Hower, a Tinley Park bartender and model, take turns circling the ring carrying signs that indicate the number of the upcoming round. They are the ”round girls.” The first time she performed her round girl duties, Julie Craig felt ”super embarrassed,” she said, but she has since come to enjoy her work.
A blond in the back of the room turned out to be the girls` mother, Diane Craig, who attends the matches to provide her daughters with moral support.
Diane Craig, a former model in south suburban boutiques, says she is
”proud of the way (her daughters) look.” She helps daughter Julie, 19, with her modeling career by entering her in competitions: bikini contests, lip syncing contests, contests for best legs and best ”buns.”
”You never know what may happen,” Diane Craig says of her daughters`
careers. ”You gotta expose yourself.” That very night, she says, her daughters were asked to appear in a video for Motor Trend magazine.
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Jack Cowen refers to his Park West boxing matches as ”the show,” and he`s making a new business of an old passion with calculated showmanship. Park West recently was put up for sale, but he doesn`t expect new ownership to affect the matches.
”If you can`t own a baseball club, you manage a fighter,” he likes to say.
