Yaqui Lopez Remembers

September 2, 2015

Home » Commentary » Yaqui Lopez Remembers

Please trust that people often used to tell me, “You have the best memory of anyone I ever met.” I could, and often still can, recall details of events decades ago and usually enhance the anecdote by noting the month and year: I moved to California in July 1958, I got my first car in February 1969, you got drunk at the party and fell on the floor in June 1970, and, yes, I was already down there.

Though I knew time had diminished my ability to rapidly memorize a roomful of names and faces, I was unprepared for the following display of forgetfulness during a recent fundraiser in Anaheim for former champion boxer Bobby Chacon, who is now impaired by dementia pugilistica. I was drying my hands in the men’s room when a light heavyweight contender from the seventies, Yaqui Lopez, entered.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Tom Clark and would like to tell you that your fights against, against, uh, your fights against….Marvin Johnson.”

“I never fought Marvin Johnson,” said Yaqui, a gentle man who kindly looked at me as I struggled.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “I meant those great fights you had with…with…”

“Matthew Saad Muhammad. His name used to be Matt Franklin.”

“Of course. I just said Johnson to come up with someone from that era.”

What’s perplexing is why I couldn’t remember Muhammad, about whom I’d written just last year when he passed away: “Matthew Saad Muhammad Goes Home”

“I’d like to tell you that your second fight with Muhammad was one of the greatest fights of the century.”

Yaqui Lopez is a modest man but he didn’t deflect the compliment. He knows it was one of the most rousing slugfests in the annals of pugilism.

In their first fight, in 1979, Lopez and Muhammad had pummeled each other for eleven rounds until Lopez wilted while the supernaturally robust champion kept firing. The following year the men resumed their bombardments and in the eighth round Muhammad was hitting Lopez with power punches, backing him against the ropes, and commentator Gil Clancy prepared to bury Yaqui when, suddenly and with sustained ferocity, he landed a right and left and right and a left, some of the left hooks to the body, others to the head, the rights hitting Muhammad’s concrete jaw, and Yaqui continued unloading big lefts and rights, punching accurately, punching frenetically, knowing that now, after four unsuccessful title attempts, he was close, he was ready to become champion of the world. Matthew Saad Muhammad, as he’d so often done – but would not be able to do much longer – took more punishment than his opponent should’ve been delivering, and Yaqui tired late in the round and was stopped in the fourteenth. This collision was voted 1980 fight of the year and the immortal eighth was of course the round of the year.

“Thank you,” said Yaqui Lopez. He shook my hand in the soft style of boxers who protects their hands and those of others.

Yaqui Lopez had seventy-six professional fights, many against exceptional fighters – Michael Spinks, Victor Galindez, John Conteh, James Scott, and others – yet at age sixty-four his memory, at least at that moment, worked better than mine. I wasn’t a gladiator but ancient nocturnal habits may have damaged me and be why Yaqui scored a knockout in this meeting of minds.

The Unforgettable Eighth Round: Lopez v. Muhammad

George Thomas Clark

George Thomas Clark is the author of Hitler Here, a biographical novel published in India and the Czech Republic as well as the United States. His commentaries for GeorgeThomasClark.com are read in more than 50 countries a month.

Recent Commentary

Books

HITLER HERE is a well researched and lyrically written biographical novel offering first-person stories by the Fuehrer and a variety of other characters. This intimate approach invites the reader to peer into Hitler’s mind, talk to Eva Braun, joust with Goering, Goebbels, and Himmler, debate with the generals, fight on land and at sea and…
See More
Art history and fiction merge to reveal the lives and emotions of great painters Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, William H. Johnson, Lee Krasner, and many others.
See More
This fast-moving collection blends fiction and movie history to illuminate the stimulating lives and careers of noted actors, actresses, and directors. Stars of this book include Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood, Cate Blanchett, and Spike Lee.
See More
In this collection of thirty-eight chiseled short stories, George Thomas Clark introduces readers to actors, alcoholics, addicts, writers famous and unknown, a general, a lovelorn farmer, a family besieged by cancer, extraterrestrials threatening the world, a couple time traveling back to a critical battle, a deranged husband chasing his wife, and many more memorable people…
See More
Anne Frank On Tour and Other Stories
This lively collection offers literary short stories founded on History, Love, Need, Excess, and Final Acts.
See More
In lucid prose author George Thomas Clark recalls the challenges of growing up in a family beset by divorce, depression, and alcoholism, and battling similar problems as an adult.
See More
Let’s invite many of the greatest boxers and their contemporaries to tell their own stories, some true, others tales based on history. The result is a fascinating look into the lives and battles of those who thrilled millions but often ruined themselves while so doing.
See More
In a rousing trip through the worlds of basketball and football, George Thomas Clark explores the professional basketball league in Mexico, the Herculean talents of Wilt Chamberlain, the artistry of LeBron James, the brilliance of Bill Walsh, and lots more. Half the stories are nonfiction and others are satirical pieces guided by the unwavering hand of an inspired storyteller.
See More
Get on board this collection of satirical stories, based on news, about the entertaining but absurd and often quite dangerous events following the election of President Donald J. Trump in November 2016 until January 6, 2021, shortly after his loss to Joe Biden.
See More
Join Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and other notables on a raucous ride into a fictional world infused with facts from one of the roughest political races in modern U.S. history.
See More
History and literary fiction enliven the Barack Obama phenomenon from the African roots of his father and grandfather to the United States where young Obama struggles to control vices and establish his racial identity. Soon, the young politician is soaring but under fire from a variety of adversaries including Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh.
See More
These satirical columns allow startlingly candid Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush to explain their need to control the destinies of countries, regions, and, ultimately, the world. Osama bin Laden, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Karl Rove, and other notables, not all famous, also demand part of the stage.
See More
Where Will We Sleep
Determined to learn more about those who fate did not favor, the author toured tattered, handmade refuges of those without homes and interviewed them on the streets and in homeless shelters, and conversed with the poor in the United States, Mexico, Ecuador, and Spain, and on occasion wrote composite stories to illuminate their difficult lives.
See More
In search of stimulating stories, the author interviewed prostitutes in Madrid, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua and on many boulevards in the United States, and he talked to detectives and rode the rough roads of social workers who deal with human trafficking, which is contemporary slavery, and sometimes used several lives to create stories, and everywhere he ventured he witnessed struggles of those whose lives are bound In Other Hands.
See More
In compressed language Clark presents a compilation of short stories and creative columns about relationships between men and women.
See More