You Can't Keep A Good Man Down

The first thing you look for on the kid is a bulge, or a bump, or something that might look vaguely like a muscle. What you find instead is a body built like a mailman's arches. The guy doesn't even have knobby knees, and the only things skinnier than his legs are his arms. It just doesn't seem right. If Danny (Little Red) Lopez were not the WBC featherweight champion of the world, you would probably call him scrawny, even if you wouldn't say it to his face.

Not that there is a rule that says all boxers have to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sandy Saddler, who was the featherweight champ off and on from 1948 to 1957, was built to have sand kicked in his face. There is also no rule that equates physique with power. Saddler knocked out 103 of 162 opponents, and Lopez may well be one of the hardest hitters in the game. "Pound for pound, Danny is the hardest puncher in all of boxing today," says Don Chargin, the veteran matchmaker at Los Angeles' Olympic Auditorium. Lopez has 39 victories in 42 fights, 36 of them by knockout. Even more remarkable is his ability to absorb punishment. By his own manager's estimate, Little Red has been knocked down in as many as a dozen fights—and then has gotten up and knocked out his opponent.

The hoary "pound for pound" claim is admittedly impossible to prove. For one thing, 126-pound featherweights and 220-pound heavyweights never get into the ring together. World lightweight champion Roberto Duran, he of the fabled stone hands, has knocked out 79.6% of his opponents compared with 85.7% for Lopez. Bantamweight champ Carlos Zarate has knocked out 52 opponents in 53 fights, but it has been suggested that Zarate has fattened his record on an assortment of adagio dancers and tamale makers. "A lot of the experts rate Danny as the third or fourth alltime greatest puncher—based on knockouts—and he ain't finished yet," says Bennie Georgino, Lopez' manager and trainer. "He don't fight stiffs off the street the way Zarate does. Danny fights legitimate challengers, and he sends 'em to the hospital."

Lopez first began packing them off to the wards in 1971 at the Olympic, the venerable downtown boxing cathedral that sits beside the San Bernardino Freeway like some squat stucco troll. The Olympic is a sanctuary for the hundreds of pepperpot Latin fighters who come out of the Los Angeles barrios. After a good fight at the Olympic, coins rain down on the ring from the stands, and both the victor and the vanquished kneel to retrieve their tribute. These are boxing's little guys, and in this country Danny Lopez is their proud little monarch.

It didn't take Lopez long to build his following. By his 11th professional fight he was already so popular that the Olympic sold out its 10,000 seats in one day, and had to turn away 5,000 more customers at the door. Lopez has always been a favorite of the Latin fight fans, many of whom may have mistakenly assumed because of his name that he is of Mexican descent. More than that, however, his popularity derives from his toe-to-toe slugging style.

"The little guys are the great fighters," says Georgino, who handles six fighters, all in the lighter weight classes. "They punch fast, hit hard," he says. "The heavyweights don't do that; usually they give you the worst show. People in these local arenas love the little guys, but the TV networks don't understand that."

Georgino first saw Lopez fight as a 16-year-old amateur in Las Vegas, and even then Bennie's brother, the late Al Georgino, could see the kid had potential. "Danny was just a puny 115-pounder then," Bennie says, "but Al could see something in him nobody else could see, that someday he was going to be a champion." Then as now, the big punch and the revolving-door defense set Lopez apart, and if the refinement of his boxing skills at age 26 is any indication, he must have been a total brawler at 16.

One of seven brothers and sisters, Lopez grew up on a Ute Indian reservation in Fort Duquesne, Utah. His father, who left home when Lopez was young, was a Mission Indian from northern California. Lopez' maternal grandmother was three-quarters Ute, and his maternal grandfather was part Irish.

The family lived in a two-bedroom shack with only a wood-burning stove to stave off the cold of the Utah winters. Danny hunted rabbits and other small game with a bow and arrow (Hollywood, are you listening?); with only a government welfare check to be spread eight ways, rabbit meat was often a luxury. "I remember eating mostly powdered eggs," Lopez says. "My sister Carol and I used to eat sugar sandwiches. We thought that was a great delicacy."

When his mother could no longer afford to support the family, she was forced to place several of her children in foster homes. Along with his brother Larry and Carol, Danny went to a family named Moon in Jensen, Utah. The Moons eventually adopted him legally, so from the time he was eight until he was 13, Little Red Lopez was legally Danny Moon. Later he would have his name changed back to Lopez.