Down but Not Out

So I’m watching Fox TV’s “Celebrity Boxing 2” and wondering why. Why is Darva Conger pounding on wee Olga Korbut as though not merely her next 15 minutes of fame but her life depends on it? Why does Horshack from “Welcome Back, Kotter,” who’s being whapped in the face by “Saved by the Bell’s” Screech, look as though he hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep in months?

And why do we bother to watch? Is it because we are so miffed that we once bestowed that most ephemeral of modern gifts, fame, upon these people that we need to see them beat on one another? “It’s the cheese factor,” says my boyfriend, passing the popcorn.

That cheese and boxing might be conceptually linked is a relatively recent phenomenon, especially in Los Angeles, which for much of the 20th century was a serious boxing town: Ninety-four world title bouts were held at the Forum; the Olympic Auditorium, which opened in 1925, hosted thousands of cards. By the ‘80s, however, the Olympic had fallen into disrepair, and the Forum held its last fight in 1999. In their heyday, they drew the top fighters and crowds of more than 15,000.

The big purses for the big bouts have moved on to Nevada, and Southern Californians who don’t feel like traveling and shelling out hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a ticket make do with pay-per-view.Still there is a reason to search out live boxing in L.A.--not for the freak show but for the quickening, the concentration; the way the spectacle in the ring becomes the only thing; the prospect that one of the fighters you see might punch his or her way into the big time. Besides, who among us cannot appreciate the human condition distilled and decided in 12 rounds?

To discover the current boxing scene, condensed yet intense, is to search the city’s edges where it foments. The venues have dropped to a handful. The boxing itself ranges from small-time pro bouts to the violent beauty of kickboxing. And the crowds? Often just 1,500 people gathered in a hotel ballroom to see if the flyweight they’ve heard about has a future, or because they and their buddies make a monthly constitutional of Thursday night fights, or because their brother’s fighting, or because, after years of watching boxers get punched on TV, they’ve got to see it up close.

As for boxing’s appeal for the rest of us, Joyce Carol Oates writes of it in “On Boxing,” her book-length encomium to the sport: “Each boxing match is a story--a unique and highly condensed drama without words. [Boxers] will know, as few of us can know of ourselves, what physical and psychic powers they possess--of how much, or how little, they are capable.”

Thursday, 7 p.m.

At the Irvine Marriott, the parking lot is packed with BMWs and high-end sports cars. In the lobby, a heavily male crowd buys beer and sushi (you can also get hot dogs and other traditional stadium food fare) from the bar before migrating toward the crystal-chandeliered ballroom, where a monthly event that’s been going on for more than 17 years is about to start. “Welcome to Battle in the Ballroom, the biggest little boxing show in America!” intones the tuxedoed emcee, nodding at BITB’s brand-new promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, the World Boxing Council’s junior-middleweight champion, who waves to the 2,000-plus crowd--an olio of businessmen and surfer dudes, car salesmen and cops--and pretends not to hear a group of hecklers chant, “Vargas! Vargas!,” a reference to Fernando Vargas, whom De La Hoya will fight Sept. 14.

As latecomers settle into folding chairs, the first bout on the six-bout card begins. Felipe Gonzalez, who has “El Compadre” embroidered on the waistband of his shorts, and Rogelio Ramirez, making his debut, trade body blows; Ramirez takes one on the chin, then two more. One sees the red welts rise and bloom on the boxers’ torsos, the bloodied spit fly out of their mouths; hears the crowd keen with anguish and elation each time a punch lands with a dull smack. After what seems like an eternity, the round ends, and we can relax. Yes, we. Although one might give a hearty “Ooh” while watching a fighter on TV take a punch, in person the experience is excruciating--the involvement in his pain visceral and necessary and arousing.

“Get him,” screams the crowd, as the timekeeper slaps the mat (marking 10 seconds left to the round), and Gonzalez gets in a left jab. “It’s definitely different to see a guy get knocked out in person than it is on TV,” says Steve Andrijowych, a surfer from Orange County with a scruff of goatee. “I like that it’s a small venue; it’s a little bit more intimate.”

“Last time we were here, it was all knockouts,” says his buddy, Joe Doddy. “That’s why you come, for the knockouts.” Andrijowych considers. “I disagree. I’m more here to see the sporting punch.”

Between fights, the Miller Lite card girls promenade around the ring wearing sea-blue bathing suits and towering Lucite heels. They toss complimentary T-shirts and baseball caps to the crowd, which goes bananas, no one more than an 11-year-old boy ecstatically waving his arms and screaming, “Meeeeeee.” There are two messy fights, with one opponent clearly outmatching the other, and then a bout between two junior-bantamweight women. I can only say that watching women box after watching men box is like watching a WNBA game after an NBA game, in that it looks as though the participants are moving at half-speed. Even this level of experience, however, is too grueling for first-time boxing spectator Lisa Jaramillo.

“If they come this way, I’m sheltering myself,” she says, holding up a copy of Ring Sports magazine. “There are bodily fluids flying everywhere. I’m not scared, but I find myself asking, ‘Why do they do this?’ ” “I tried to explain it but it didn’t go over,” says her husband, George, the assistant sheriff for Orange County. “Boxing shows courage and determination, and there’s a certain one-on-one aspect that’s different from other sports. There’s a danger involved, and finesse, and strength, and all the things that one looks to sports for, and boxing really encompasses all of them.”

The last bout results in the evening’s first knockout, the junior-welterweight’s head landing directly in front of De La Hoya. What was it like for him to be on the other side of the ropes?

“Strange,” says De La Hoya. “If a fighter would see me from inside the ring, and kind of look and want to say hi to me or something, I had to be impartial, or else the other fighter would think, ‘Oh, you’re favoring him,’ so I just kept a straight face, trying to be like a promoter. But as far as the show, gosh, it went great.”

Friday, 8 p.m.

It’s a different Marriott, this time in Norwalk, and a different type of boxing, muay Thai, or kickboxing. The national sport of Thailand, and fast gaining popularity here, muay Thai varies from American boxing in that fighters can hit their opponents anywhere (except the eyes and groin), with anything: fists, feet, limbs, head.

“People think of muay Thai as legalized street fighting; it looks so hard-core that it frightens them,” says Paolo Tocha, a former world champion who helped introduce muay Thai to America in such films as “Bloodsport.” “But really, it’s a science, and very spiritual.” The ring in the ballroom is wreathed in red, white and blue bunting, and the crowd of about 600 includes a lot of teenagers and toddlers, many of whom are here to watch siblings compete.

“The kicks over the head, the grabbing, those are all natural moves for little kids,” says Tocha, watching a 2-year-old perform a kick-and-roll onto the carpet. “Still, muay Thai is nonstop violence; it’s no joke,” adds Tocha, getting ready to ref the first bout, an exhibition between two 12-year-old boys. “If you don’t understand the technique and how to block, you can get hurt very badly.”

The two 95-pound boys--one in royal blue shorts, the other in aqua--spring at each other: Aqua lands a spinning kick in Royal’s gut within the first 10 seconds, causing him to curl up like a caterpillar. Tocha lifts Royal from beneath his armpits and tells him, “Breathe! Breathe!” Royal rallies and dives at Aqua; the crowd cheers, and the music--horns, gongs and bells--revs faster and louder. The boys grapple in and almost careen through the ropes, they kick and hit each other with whatever is available, and watching it is indeed as riveting and awful and adrenaline-producing as watching a street fight, in that one literally cannot not take one’s eyes off the action. “I don’t like seeing him up there,” says Angel Plascencia Sr., covering his face as his son Angel Jr.--Aqua--takes a shot to the teeth.

The violence ebbs and surges: Boxers perform the elegant wai kru, a ritual that involves bowing to all four sides of the ring and asking for protection; this, just before someone juts an elbow in an opponent’s throat or a jabs a knee that snaps bone, as in the case of Jeff Fierro, who goes down in the sixth round with a broken femur. Maybe. “Some of these guys,” says Tocha, staring skeptically at the mauve flush on Fierro’s thigh, “they just don’t want to get up.”

Saturday, 7 p.m.

The parking lot of Arrowhead Pond is dotted with guys sitting on tailgates drinking beer. It’s Saturday night, date night, and a polyglot crowd of more than 5,000 people, including a preponderance of couples, has shown up for Fight Night Live at the Pond. The venue is massive (Arrowhead Pond is where the Mighty Ducks play), the setup one we’ve seen in dozens of boxing movies: the dark arena, the brightly lighted ring, the refs in zebra stripes and emcee with a helmet of hair.

“For years, I went to the Olympic Auditorium; that was in the early ‘70s,” says boxing fan Jim Sheble. “We came here last season, and they had some pretty good fights--that’s why we came back. We got season tickets.”

“Though the season’s shorter, maybe five fights all year,” says his friend Al Aguirre. Now in his 70s, he once managed former WBC featherweight champ Danny “Little Red” Lopez. The fights are supposed to start at 7 but don’t, which gives people time to drink a lot of beer and ogle the girls. Beloved, Summer and Michelle, three dancers from a bikini bar in Long Beach, wear all-but-transparent, rhinestone-studded gowns and parade up and down the aisles and around the ring for no apparent reason but to inflame the audience. Finally, there’s a fight, between super-featherweights Jesus Zatarin (21-5-4) and Arnulfo Castillo (35-1-3). They come out, touch gloves once, and begin some sort of love cha-cha; after 60 seconds, no one has thrown a punch. The crowd jeers.

“Twenty-one KOs, against who? A sheep?”

“Stop fighting like you’re best friends!”

Finally, Zatarin lands one, just as the round ends. “She’s got a better knockout,” says Aquirre, as the Miller Lite girl’s keister fills the big screen suspended over the ring.

“The card here tonight is not the greatest,” says Peter Palmiere, host of “Boxing Inside TV” on San Pedro’s public-access station, KPTV. “The local promotions don’t have the money to bring in good fighters, so even though it’s interesting to see a lot of fighters make their pro debuts, they make them against fighters with deficit track records. Look at Joey Torres, against a guy with 0-1.” That Joey Torres is on the card at all tonight is, we’re told during a weepy video promo, something of a miracle: “They told me I’d never get out of prison,” says Torres, who did 21 years for a murder he says he did not commit, and, at age 41, is making his boxing debut.

“It’s a joke, a freak show,” says Palmiere. “But the American people are attracted to the freak show.”

And speaking of cheese, here comes Torres, in a robe that reads “Thug Life” and shedding crocodile tears. The crowd cheers, sentimental favorite and all that, until he takes off his robe: At 5 feet 8, 199 pounds, he has a gut that is distended and sloppy, wet and lumpy. Meanwhile, his opponent, Perry Williams, from Uganda, is a taut 5 feet 11, 178 pounds.

“With Williams’ reach, he’s gonna kill him,” says Aguirre. Torres hangs out in his corner, punching himself in the head. When the bell dings, he turns and sort of stares at Williams, who, 10 seconds into the first round, taps Torres on the shoulder, and down he goes. Looking shocked, Torres rolls onto his side; the ref wants to call a TKO, but Torres bobbles up and over to Williams, who, at the mere touch of Torres’ glove, starts to weave.

“What are you doing?” someone screams, as Williams falls into the ropes. The crowd becomes enraged, yelling, “WWF! WWF!” as Williams stumbles repeatedly. When he goes down in the second round and Torres wins by TKO, the crowd chants its disgust.

“Matches like that can really hurt the sport,” says Palmiere. “That was as bad as it gets.”

The crowd wants a real fight with heart and gets it: light-heavyweights Julio Gonzalez (28-1) versus Joseph “The African Express” Kiwanuka (27-4), who come out tough right away. They’re fast, they’re in shape, they’re evenly matched. The action is nonstop, body blows and head shots; by the fifth round, both fighters’ shorts are covered in blood, and Gonzalez delivers two punches to Kiwanuka’s nose that send blood shooting through the air. “Oh, God ... “ moans the crowd, unable to look away from what is stomach-churning, spellbinding, surreal and not our responsibility to stop.

Just as Gonzalez lands another on (“Oh, God”) Kiwanuka’s nose, there’s a flurry outside the ring, one guy punching another in the face; the guy falls backward and overturns a press table, people pour down from the stands and make it a melee. A dozen cops appear and swing their clubs but can’t stop the fight. Meanwhile, the fight inside the ring is still going on, the crowd on its feet trying to watch both sets of action. The perpetrators are finally handcuffed and led up the aisle, where they break loose, setting off another free-for-all; several dozen more people jump in, one knocks over a cameraman and a cop, who almost lands in the lap of yours truly; I stand on the arms of my chair and watch as the cop Maces the guy in the face. The crowd is apoplectic with glee as people are handcuffed and dragged from the arena.

“Now that reminds me of the Olympic,” shouts Sheble. Meanwhile, the fight in the ring is called in the eighth, in favor of Gonzalez, though few see what happened.

The last bout of the night is the heavyweight division. At 5 feet 11, 272 pounds, Ronnie “The Bear” Smith (6-21) is one very big boy; Javier Mora (12-0-1), 6 feet 2 and 243, wears a mouthpiece the colors of the Mexican flag.

The bell rings; Smith lumbers out, his body jiggling; he throws punches as though he were asleep. Smith goes down in the second round; the night is over. “Well, at least he tried,” says Palmiere. “Clearly, he was overweight, too old and outmatched, but he tried.”