A Boxing Memory: Bobby Chacon

A Boxing Memory: Bobby Chacon

The Hall of Famer Bobby Chacon fought hard. He lived hard. Because of both, his prime was cut short. His life also. Chacon was only 64 when he sadly passed away in 2016. The old warrior had long been suffering from dementia pugilistica, and a fall he suffered in a hospice in California was the final part of a true boxing rock and roll story.

Tragedy was never far away. His first wife, Valorie, shot herself in 1982 the day before Chacon was scheduled to fight Salvador Ugalde. Chacon still fought. He won in three rounds. There were tears in the ring and a dedication to his wife, who had long pleaded with her husband to stop fighting. Not long after, Chacon had thoughts to kill himself. With a gun in his hand, Chacon, always a troubled soul, seriously thought about ending it all, but he had second thoughts. In many ways, he fought on.

It seemed as though his career was on a permanent decline. Valorie had fears Chacon would die in the ring and that he had no more safely to give. But an old rival entered his life once again. Rafael “Bazooka” Limon had shared a ring with Chacon three times previously. They couldn’t be split, a win each, and an unsatisfactory draw left the need for a fourth fight to shed daylight on their rivalry. The pair didn’t like each other. Their fights told us that. Unrelenting ferocity, that took away plenty from both. The fourth fight wasn’t a repeat of the first three. It was even more brutal, beyond savage. Limon defended his WBC super-featherweight title.

Chacon fought for something different. It was as if his life depended on it. Maybe it did. If it was one last shot of glory, Chacon was in no mood to waste his final bullet. Chacon tasted the canvas twice, in the 3rd and a far heavier knockdown in the 10th. But on either side of those knockdowns, Chacon went to war again. Limon more than obliged his wishes. A forgotten classic, a fitting final act in their bitter rivalry. The final five rounds were Chacon at his best. Finding something that separates champions and challengers. In the final few seconds, Chacon had the final word. Limon found himself on the floor. He survived, but when the decision was announced, his title was gone. It was close. Chacon needed what he found in the 15th round. At 31, Bobby Chacon was a world champion once again.

It seemed an unlikely Indian summer revival for a professional career that started in 1972. Two years after his debut and after only one solitary defeat, Chacon was the WBC featherweight champion of the world courtesy of a 9th stoppage of Alfredo Marcano. But just two fights later, he wasn’t. Ruben Olivares, who inflicted the first blemish on the boxing resume of Chacon, did it again. In 1973, Chacon lasted nine rounds. Two years later, he only lasted two. Chacon had the ‘schoolboy’ moniker attached to him for his youthful good looks for much of his career. Limon would have taught him many lessons in those two fights. Another defeat swiftly followed. His first meeting with his bitter-rival Limon ended with Chacon coming home short on points in a terribly one-sided fight. The discipline had slipped, the partying had started, and his wife started to echo the first words to Chacon that his life in boxing was over.

But Chacon largely kept on fighting. And winning. Only a loss to Arturo Leon in 1977 and the draw with Limon in 1979 ruined his momentum. Alexis Arguello stopped Chacon in seven rounds, denying his challenger becoming a two-time champion of the world. And despite squeaking past Limon in their third fight, a defeat to Cornelious Boza-Edwards in another failed attempt to reclaim his old title seemed to indicate his career had peaked. Even finished. The fight with Boza-Edwards in 1981 was another typical Chacon affair. Stopped in thirteen rounds in another pulsating fight that excites and ages in equal measure, the cries for retirement grew louder. But out of the tragedy of his wife’s suicide came the inspiration and motivation for that one final glorious act.

The fourth and final fight with Limon was followed by Chacon insisting on rematching Boza-Edwards, a decision that ultimately ended his reign. Instead of fighting Hector Camacho, he took a more lucrative fight with his mandatory challenger and would later be stripped of his title for failing to fulfil supposed outstanding contractual obligations from his title-winning effort against Limon. Don King-led lawsuits came close to stopping the fight, but eventually, the rematch got the green light. In the 1983 Ring Magazine Fight of the Year, Boza-Edwards overcame early knockdowns to slice open Chacon’s face nearly, resulting in the fight being stopped. Arguably, it should have. As early as the 6th round, Chacon seemed on the brink of defeat. Before round 8, it looked inevitable. Behind on points, his face a bloody mess from lacerations over both eyes, it seemed only a matter of time. But time and time again, Chacon won a reprieve from the ringside doctor, and as Boza-Edwards fatigued, Chacon found something extra.

In a near repeat of his fight with Limon, Chacon dropped Boza-Edwards in the 12th and final round to seal the victory after twelve incredibly hard rounds in a bout the WBC refused to sanction as a world title fight. It was the last great night of his career.

Don King eventually got his way when the Camacho saga couldn’t be resolved mutually, and he was stripped of his title in what can only be described as the politics of the day. A move up to lightweight to challenge the WBA champion Ray Mancini ended badly in three rounds, and although he won seven straight fights after he was all but done. The final fight was in 1988 against Bobby Jones. The points win over Jones was finally and belatedly the end. Chacon retired at 36. But it had come too late. The long goodbye added to the darkness that would soon follow.

They were very different times. Chacon fought frequently, in truth, far too frequently. From 1975 through to 1979, he had eighteen fights. He was a fan favourite for a reason. His fights were never short of action or drama. But as ever, it came at a price. It shortens the prime. And life itself. Chacon suffered badly in later life. The signs of decay obvious. Boxing makes many a young man old.

Retirement was as brutal as many of his ring wars. In 1991, one of his sons was killed in a gangland shooting in 1991. A stint in jail followed a conviction for beating his second wife. Chacon started his life in poverty, and it ended the same way. It’s a sad if all too familiar story. Chacon had overcome a difficult start to his life, boxing was his escape from the street gang life he once lived, and while the end always seems to be the same, it never gets any easier to relay. What made Bobby Chacon almost certainly destroyed him.