I spent the majority of last week in Hawaii, covering Brian Viloria’s defense of his WBC jr. flyweight title against Jesus Iribe. It was the first title fight in this state in 33 years. So what’s it like for a boxing scribe on fight day in paradise?
You’ll find out…
7:48 am: The fight hotel is the Queen Kapiolani, which is just a block or two from Waikiki Beach. It’s an old-school hotel, but it gets the job done. Hey, you’re in Hawaii, not Kosovo, what’s there to really complain about? I’m in room 1703 and for whatever reason I’ve been sleeping really well throughout the week. I wake up feeling pretty refreshed. The night before I had turned in relatively early after hanging out a bit with California referee’s Ray Corona and Jack Reiss, who were brought in for the card.
8:14 am: I head down to the third story restaurant, the Garden Lanai Restaurant, where I see various members of the card from the ALA Gym, Dennis Laurente, Alfonso Gomez and his opponent Raul Munoz and cornerman, Ruben Gomez. Everyone associated with this promotion has been given a $50 a day voucher for this establishment.
8:24 am: After ten minutes, I still don’t even have a menu. Which is a theme, the food( which gets mixed reviews, at best) is decent in my mind but the service is absolutely terrible. It’s a family owned shop and you can tell they’re a bit new at this. Gomez, sick of waiting for another cup of coffee, just gets up and gets a pot and pours one for himself- and then everyone else.” I can’t make it in boxing,” cracked Gomez, who perhaps provided the best service in this establishment all week long but still didn’t earn any tips.
8:41 am: I finally get my steak and eggs- but with no A1 Sauce, which takes another five minutes to arrive. Who serves steak without steak sauce? The consensus is clear, the service at this joint is the worst ever. Another patron, who comes in at around the same time I finally get my breakfast, gets up off her seat to grab her own menu. I guess sometimes you just have to take things into your own hands. I wonder, did she eventually cook her own meal, too?
8:52 am: As I’m settling my bill at the counter, Brian Viloria and his camp come down. I say to Brian,” Hey, you eating here?” And he shakes his head in a way that suggests that if this was the last place on earth, he would have to think about it. But his trainer Robert Garcia- who I hung out with on Thursday night at Lulu’s- asks,’ Hey, did we go to a gay bar couple nights ago? That’s what Brian said that place was.’ Now, as Jerry Seinfeld would say,’ Not that there’s anything wrong with that.’ but no, it wasn’t a gay bar. In fact, there was plenty of heterosexual interaction taking place all around. It turned out that they had their establishments mixed up. But Brian still got a good kick out of that. I don’t think Garcia could go back to Oxnard in good standing if he had actually gone to a gay bar, though. So I think he was very relieved.
( By the way, I had the best crab-cake sandwich at Lulu’s the day before. So whatever your sexual orientation, that places come very highly recommended.)
8:55 am: I get up to my room and I begin to pen my column for Monday. Since I’m scheduled to leave on Sunday, I decide to get this out of the way. My story will focus on the upcoming boxing schedule for the rest of 2009. Like many others, I’m very excited about what lies ahead.
9:57 am: I get on the phone and I talk with several sources about the various goings on in the sport. One thing about boxing folks, they love scuttlebutt and today there is plenty of it. But throughout the week I have to be careful of what time I call since I’m three hours behind Pacific time, I have to be very mindful of when I call someone on the east coast.
11:52 am:I finally pound out my piece and answer a cadre of emails while watching the Dodgers-Reds game. This is a huge weight off my shoulders because now I don’t have to worry about anything else the next day but making sure I get to the airport on time.
12:25 am: I make plans to meet noted publicist Bill Caplin downstairs for lunch when I get a call from Billy Keane, who is extremely close with trainer Freddie Roach. He informs me that his brother, Joey, had passed away earlier today in Las Vegas. The news left me stunned, I saw Joey periodically throughout the years as he visited Freddie at the Wild Card Boxing Club.
12:32 am: I grab a seat and I’m joined by Corona and Reiss. We leave a message for Roach on his cell phone with our condolences. Caplin come down a few minutes later and we have to move our table because he wants to watch the game. Caplin, is an ardent Dodger fan. He is relieved when the Blue puts on a late power surge to pull away. The service is as bad as ever, and by this time, we take perverse pride in putting up with it. You know it’s bad when it annoys Caplin, who’s as cheerful as they come.
We surmise that perhaps it’s part of the plan. Starve us to a point, where anything tastes good. Reiss said at the fire station they have a motto along those lines,” Feed’em late, feed’em great.”
Reiss, who’s working the undercard, is worried about missing the whole card, as he waits for his order. Reiss and Corona, are great guys and close associates. And they couldn’t be any more contrasting. Reiss, has been a fireman for over 30 years and is close to his retirement. Corona, is a former gang member, who has turned his life around. He know drives a truck for a living and ironically, one of his sons is now in the LAPD. These guys are like an odd couple and witnessing them rip on each other is quite amusing.
1:45 pm: I’m craving ice cream for whatever reason and I walk down the street and walk into a ‘Cold Stones’, a fancy ice cream parlor. They don’t have my two favorite flavors, chocolate chip and mint chip. OK, so I decide to mix it up a bit, I get one scoop of mint and one scoop of cotton candy, with nuts mixed in. I have to tell ya, it might be the best ice cream I ever had.
As I get back to my room I start gabbing on the phone with a friend while watching the 49ers-Cowboys pre-season game. I keep having to remind myself that I’m three hours behind Pacific time. I’m still not completely used to it as I see these games start so early.
3:02 am: I want to take a quick dip, but don’t necessarily want to head back to the beach, where I went on Friday. It’s incredible, no matter how hard you try, you always bring back a little sand with you. I head down to the hotel pool where I jump in real quick and just lounge for a few minutes. I’m meeting Caplin at 4:30 for the last shuttle to the Blaisdell Center.
I get back up to my room about a half hour later and I iron my clothes. At this point, my room is pretty much a mess, with all my worn clothes and footwear strewn all over the place. When the cleaning crew comes, by Friday I had begun to just ask them for new towels and to make the bed.
4:27 pm: I’m in a van now heading over to the arena and in addition to Caplin, there are several members of Iribe’s team. Blaisdell is about 10 to 15 minutes from the hotel. After we get checked in and get our credentials I see Viloria’s manager, Gary Gittelsohn, who is about as nervous as father giving away a bride or a young husband expecting his first child. While Top Rank is the promoter of ‘the Hawaiian Punch’ it was Gittelsohn who pushed for this fight in Honolulu and enlisted Tom Moffatt, a well-known concert promoter in the area, to run the show.
You sense just how this means to him. This romp to Hawaii has been no vacation for him.
4:55 pm: You can tell they don’t have much experience doing this out here as the media credentials doesn’t come with a seat assignment and there is no press row. Instead, we are seated right on the ring apron next to a judge and commission members. To my right are the Spanish broadcasters, which include Fernando Paramo, who at one time was the editor of the LA Opinion.
4:56 pm: Gomez and Munoz enter the ring.
4:59 pm: Just like that it’s over. In the early stages of round one, a booming right sends Munoz down and then a body shot finishes him. He’s done his part to make a showdown with Jesus Soto-Karass on November 14Th, a reality. I see Gittelsohn- who also handles Gomez’s career- and tell him,” Get this guy in shape, you gotta shot.” And I really believe that. While most pundits believe Soto-Karass is at a different level than Gomez, I think Gomez is a live dog, here.
5:15 pm: A women’s bout between Kuulei Kupihea and Shelby Padilla has just wrapped up and it’s Kupihea winning by fourth round stoppage.
5:18 pm: You gotta love this, the fighters are being brought in extremely quickly. And next up is a pair of 140-pounders, Laurente and Zaid Zavaleta, best known for getting stopped by Edwin Valero, a while back.
6:00 pm: After ten rounds the appreciative crowd gives both men a loud ovation. Laurente wins this bout easily by the scores of 100-90( twice) and 99-91. One thing I noticed about this crowd is that a pretty good amount of them not only came early, but stayed throughout the night even after the main event. And they were enthusiastic and lively. You can tell those who had shown up were yearning for some boxing.
6:04 pm: Now in the ring was a bout between Donald Gonzalez Jr at Isaac Arasato. Gonzalez has a mark of 1-1 and Arasato is 4-0. Gonzalez has basketball shorts on instead of boxing trunks. I can tell because his black and red shorts have an NBA logo on them and come with pockets. Boxing trunks, don’t come with pockets. Gonzalez gets bounced out of their in the first as he came up with an elbow injury after hitting the canvas earlier in the round.
Reiss would rule:” TKO, due to self-injury.” I had never heard that one before, but it was certainly the right call.
6:14 pm: The semi-main is a bout between flyweights AJ Banal and Jose Beranza. Not too long ago, ‘the Bazooka’ was considered the best young Filipino prospect. This was a very awkward and difficult fight to referee, and Corona has to constantly remind both men to watch their heads, which came together more and more as the rounds progressed. By the ninth frame, both men were cut and bloodied.
Banal, lands the cleaner, harder punches- especially to the body- to earn a unanimous decision. But it wasn’t easy.
7:00 pm: Next up is the main event and I try and run to the restroom which is located outside the arena, and the line is long. I’ll just have to hold it because I can hear the Mexican music, meaning the Iribe, was making his way.
7:05 pm: With the theme song to ‘Hawaii Five-O’ blaring and cast of Hula dancers marking his arrival, Viloria makes his ring entrance, which is greeted with a loud roar from the crowd, which has filled in quite nicely at the Blaisdell.
7:08 pm: The first bell rings and what is noticeable is that Iribe, who needed a few attempts to make the 108-pound weight limit is noticeably bigger than Viloria. It looks like a bantamweight against a small flyweight. Viloria though has the advantage in speed and quickness and he boxes well early on.
7:12 pm: One of the drawback of sitting so close to the action is that you can get hit with bodily fluids from fighters and as it turns out, if you’re too close to a fighters corner, like I was with Iribe, you can get doused with water, as me and Paramo were, as they tried to cool down Iribe after the first inning.
7:23 pm: After four rounds, I have it 3-1 Viloria, who boxes well from the outside and begins to pound the body in hopes of breaking Iribe down. But Iribe is a tough nut to crack. He isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
7:40 pm: Eight rounds down, and while Viloria has won the majority of rounds, he’s had to work hard every round. Iribe is very steady and because of his size, he’s held up very well to the body shots he’s taken.
7:56 pm: All Viloria has to do in the 12Th and final round is to stay on his feet and he retains his title. Instead, perhaps sensing that he has faded late in fights in the past and doesn’t always finish with a flourish, he goes toe-to-toe with Iribe and the crowd is on it’s feet for much of the round. It’s the most exciting round that Viloria has ever been involved in. He doesn’t win every exchange, but he certainly gives as well as he takes and he shows a flair for the dramatic. It’s stuff like this that will have fans coming back for more.
As the final bell sounds, the audience is in a frenzy and both can finally exhale.
8:01 pm: The verdict is in, Viloria wins by the scores of 119-110. 117-112 and 117-111. But the fight wasn’t indicative of just how tough this fight was on many levels. This was a good, solid outing for Viloria, who grabs the mic and addresses the crowd.
8:09 pm: The post-fight press conference is held in one of the back room of the arena and it’s well-attended by the local media, which has supported this event well throughout the week. Viloria, is gracious as ever, while Iribe complains of breaking his right-hand. As far as homecomings go, I think you can call this one a success.
9:29 pm: A group that includes Gittelsohn, his wife, Gomez and his father, go to a Chinese restaurant that comes highly recommended by the locals. It’s called the Fook Yuen( seriously, it is and across the other side of this strip mall where it’s located is another restaurant named ‘Phucket’, which has me and Alfonso giggling like little kids in the back seat) and a big room in the back has been reserved for our party.
Later on, Viloria and his camp come through. Later on executives from Solar Sports, which broadcast this fight back to the Philippines, join our group, along with Tom Moffatt, who promoted Elvis on the islands long ago. We share stories as we eat delicacies like shark tail soup and Peking duck.
11:03 pm: I go with Viloria and his group to his after-party at the Ocean 808 club. But first we have to drop off Gomez at the Queen Kapiolani. As we drive up, we see something very disturbing, the ALA crew is waiting in the front lobby and behind us is an ambulance. It turns out it’s for Banal, who is essentially dragged to it by his handlers. The last I had seen of him, he was getting stitched up in the dressing room, about two hours after his bout. The thing that worried me was that he and Baranza had clashed heads repeatedly in the late rounds of their fight.
Viloria’s girlfriend, Erica, calls someone from Solar Sports informing them of Banal’s condition. Thus far, I haven’t heard anything more. Perhaps he was just exhausted or dehydrated. I hope it’s nothing worse than that.
11:16 pm: We get to Oceans 808 and Viloria is greeted by a throng of his fans, well-wishers and family members. There is a VIP area waiting for us and we basically drink a bit too much for our own good. Gomez, is in great spirits and he tells me he can’t wait for November 14th. He believes in his heart that he more than held his own versus Soto-Karass during their sparring sessions. Garcia and I trade jokes as we take shots of Patron and I have a few Captain and Cokes.
Hey, why not, were in Hawaii?
I tell Brian later on,” Hey, this beats the Alameda Swap Meet doesn’t it?” We both laugh. He’s come a long way.
2:33 am: We finally get back to the hotel. My flight doesn’t leave till 8:30 that night. So it’s decided I’ll hang out with Brian tomorrow, he’s got a few commitments to make and afterwords he’ll show me around his old stomping grounds.
As I stagger into my room, I transcribe some quotes from the post-fight presser as I’ll have to do the post-fight report when I get up. I don’t think I’ll be hungover.
That badly.
