Vegas can boast of two big-name prize fights

     Las Vegas doesn’t appear on a globe of the world, nor does it often show up on a U.S. map.
     A satellite photo of New Mexico, provided by my former student Martha Johnsen, when she was an intern with NASA, shows Las Vegas as barely discernible.
     Correspondingly, there aren’t many opportunities for the Meadow City to draw attention. Worse, on the few occasions in which there is a chance for favorable exposure, we’re often mistaken for the impostor in Nevada.

     Recently, when the nation got to watch local boxer Frankie Archuleta on NBC television, the ring announcer, Michael Buffer, botched it. In his preoccupation with prolonging every syllable, he said, “Let’s get ready to rrummmble.” Then he gave Frankie’s hometown as Las Vegas, NEVADA. Michael Buffer, please do your rreesseeaarrcchh and give Frankie his due.
     With Friday night’s televised bout between promising local pugilist Archuleta and five-time world champion Johnny Tapia, Las Vegas has another shot at national and even global exposure. And it seems that only 92 years ago Las Vegas hosted another world champion boxer, Jack Johnson.
     Another event that gave our town national publicity was in the early ‘50s, when a national radio program, “Queen for a Day,” gave that day’s winner a train trip to our Las Vegas, where she stayed free in our hotels and was a guest of the Rough Riders reunion and rodeo. KFUN owner Ernie Thwaites happily replayed the tape of the announcement to appreciative listeners in Las Vegas.
     The host of the program, Jack Bailey, was careful to locate us in God’s Country, not Nevada.
     Every jab, feint and blow of the Tapia-Archuleta bout ought to be reported in detail by Jesse Gallegos and the other members of the Optic sports staff, not to mention an army of regional news outlets and even a Spanish-language TV station.
     So this column is not so much about the featherweights but about the scheduled 45-rounder (that’s right–45!) between heavyweights Jack Johnson and challenger Jim Flynn, on July 4, 1912.
     Chris Tomasson of the Albuquerque Journal wrote an item in 1997 about the 85th anniversary of the fight. He mentioned my father, J.D. Trujillo, as one of the few living people who had attended the fight, held in this area.
     Meanwhile, Marcella LeDoux, a native Las Vegan, has provided a blow-up of a promotional postcard of the Johnson-Flynn fight, with the Gallinas bridge and a streetcar in the background. It shows the combatants superimposed over the photo. Marcella’s collection is filled with photographic bits of Las Vegas history.
     Tomasson wrote of the fact that Johnson, a black, “shocked some locals by being seen regularly in public with his white wife.” Tomasson explained that Johnson was later convicted of violating the Mann Act by “transporting his wife across state lines for so-called immoral purposes.”
     My father’s recollection of the fight was that it was held near Montezuma, and that at age 9, he watched with his father as Johnson bloodied Flynn’s face in the first round. Local sports-of-all-sorts maven Bruce Wertz, however, locates the actual fight at what was called the Wester House, at Sixth and Friedman, which, Wertz says, was then at the edge of New Town.
     The article mentions that a local electrician, Charles O’Malley, promoted the fight and put up a guarantee of $100,000. A 17,000-seat arena reportedly was built, but since tickets sold for “as much as $50, only about 4,000 fans showed up.”
     Tomasson reported that Ed Baca, a youngster, sold lemonade to people who came to watch Johnson train. Johnson worked out at a location on North Gonzales, while Flynn trained at the Montezuma Hotel.
     According to the article, the fight ended in the ninth round, when “Capt. Fred Fornoff of the state police jumped into the ring and declared that it was ‘a brutal exhibition and that Flynn’s foul tactics (repeated head-butting) made its continuance impossible.’”
     Johnson earned $31,000 for the championship fight, and the only other person to make money was Baca, the lemonade salesboy, while the rest of the community took a financial bath.
     Also mentioned in the article is Timmy Solano, a former boxer, who got to keep the ringside bell used in that fight. O’Malley, who saw Solano’s dedication to the sport, gave it to the former Golden Gloves champion, who treasures it to this day.
     A historian visiting Highlands University in the ‘80s showed a film of the fight. Unfortunately, in 1912 there was no such thing as instant replay, super-slow-mo, or even telephoto lenses. Johnson, with a longer reach, repeatedly placed both gloves on Flynn’s shoulders and pushed him back. The nine rounds of the fight are shown from a fixed position, and the boredom quickly sets in for people used to receiving “hits” of every conceivable visual and aural stimulus.
     This week’s fight is scheduled for only 10 rounds, not the 45 of the 1912 bout, and we can be assured no state policeman will jump into the ring to declare it “a brutal exhibition.”
     Las Vegas, NEW MEXICO, does indeed draw favorable widespread publicity–but sometimes we have to wait a while for it to arrive.