Legendary boxing promoter Don Chargin is in Salinas, California tonight with a solid card at the Salinas Sports Complex which will be televised on Telefutura’s Solo Boxeo. The event, dubbed “History in the Making,” not only marks the return of professional boxing to a city that has hosted a few events, but serves as a benchmark for a Hall of Famer, as 60 years ago this weekend Don Chargin promoted his first of many shows.
Chargin had been closely involved in the sport before one event gave him the motivation to break out on his own and promote his first show in 1951. “I had assisted other promoters on shows and then a promoter had a big outdoor show and he was going through a terrible divorce and I was feeling bad for him,” recalls Chargin. “He went through like a two-week drunk and I did everything from setting up the chairs to making all the preliminaries to running the whole thing. Then when the show was over, he gave me 50 dollars. 50 dollars was a lot more then in 1951, but it was still nothing for the amount of work and time and the way I killed myself. That day I wouldn’t accept the 50 dollars and told him I was going to promote on my own and I promised him right there I would take his drawing card from him, which was Eddie Chavez, which I did.”
In fact, Chargin’s first show, which took place on September 3, 1951 in San Jose, California, would be headlined by Eddie Chavez. Chargin had known the fighting Chavez family for some time, and put the popular Eddie on in the featured attraction against name that would surely sell. “It was one of my boyhood idols, the great Manuel Ortiz, who was bantamweight champion for like ten or eleven years,” Chargin remembers. “This was at the end of his career, but he fought his first fight for me on Labor Day, 1951. It was just a great, toe-to-toe slugfest, and Chavez won a decision.”
“That first show was so successful, I thought it was going to be easy,” says Chargin. “I thought I was on my way to making a million dollars.”
Chargin’s success has been well chronicled. From the late 1950’s through the mid 1960’s Chargin put together a successful run of cards together for promoter Jimmy Dundee at the Oakland Auditorium. Most famously perhaps he got the nickname “War-A-Week” matching cards at the Olympic Auditorium for twenty years beginning in the 1964, while promoting his successful run of shows in Sacramento, helping develop world champions like Tony Lopez, Loreto Garza and later Willie Jorrin.
One thing that separates Chargin from some of the other established promoters of longevity has been his willingness to mentor aspiring promoters and matchmakers. “They got their own way of doing things,” says Chargin in reference to some other promoters. “I like to see young people in the business, and any way I can help…because I went through it when I was young. When I first started promoting, I jumped in my old car and I’d go to Newman’s Gym and Dolph Thomas’ Royal Gym and all the old managers and trainers would say, ‘Here’s that kid again, here’s that pest.’ But they wouldn’t do anything to help me until I started putting on successful shows. I swore at that time I would never be that way with young people that were interested in boxing.”
One of Chargin’s pupils is Golden Boy Promotions’ matchmaker Eric Gomez. “Eric Gomez, I am very, very fond of,” says Chargin. “He is like a son to me. He is a good matchmaker, and he is going to be a great matchmaker in time.”
This year Chargin has helped revitalize professional boxing in Northern California, co-promoting four shows in Fairfield and two in San Francisco prior to tonight’s card in Salinas. Working alongside Chargin on those shows have been upstart promoters Paco Damian and John Chavez.
When Damian, who owns and operates a successful restaurant in Woodland, California, Paco’s Mexican Restaurant, decided he wanted to go into boxing promoting he immediately sought after Chargin. “I went to the commission to just ask for information and I had already searched for Don, because I knew he had done all the shows in this area,” recalls Damian. “And as a matter of fact he had just left the office that day I was there. One day I went to one of the shows he was doing at Feather Falls Casino in Oroville, and I told him my passion for boxing and that I wanted to be a promoter. And I don’t know whether he saw it or not, but when I was talking to him I don’t know if he was able to feel the vibe that I had, but he invited me to follow him around and check what really goes on.”
“He sounded so nice and sincere,” recalls Chargin. “I mentioned it to my wife and she said, ‘Yeah, let him do it. You always like having young guys around.’ So we did it and we’ve been friends ever since. He watches out for me now. He’s always worried about my health or that I might lose money. But he has been a real friend.”
Eventually Damian went to work and started learning the ropes from the ground up. “They started taking me to all the shows here in Sacramento, the shows in Tucson, Arizona, all the shows in Oroville,” says Damian. “Then I just started doing the minimum stuff, like assigning the fighters their dressing rooms, their gloves, getting the contracts ready and delivering to them, translating if the fighters didn’t speak English. Little by little I just started learning more and here I am now.”
Studying at the School of Don Chargin meant learning from his wife and partner Lorraine, who past away last year after a bout with cancer. “She was afraid somebody would come and brainwash me to do some big show and I would lose all this money,” remembers Damian. “That is what she was really afraid of. I am just trying to keep my work ethic the same as when Lorraine was there, trying to do things the same, because she was amazing. Thanks for her, things used to run so smoothly. Now that she’s gone, everything is a little more difficult.”
Chavez, a longtime fight scribe for various web sites, met the Chargin as a writer and quickly became friends with the couple. “I was doing some writing about Lorraine,” recalls Chavez. “They were just stories that were underreported. They had been in boxing for so many years. I just felt it was important. Little by little, I just started to learn more about how boxing works from Don. From the fan’s perspective, I got to see some of the issues that are going on with the sport and Don gave me perspective on what was going on now as well as the past.”
“We started talking on the phone, and he would mention fights or fighters,” says Chargin. “I would always to best of my ability give him an honest answer. We just became closer and my wife was very fond of John also. We used to have John come down to our home in Cambria on weekends.”
When Chargin brought shows to the Longshoremen’s Hall in San Francisco in February and April, Chavez was a major part of the promotion. “It was a natural thing when I decided to go in San Francisco, because John had always said ‘Let’s do something in San Francisco,’ that John would be apart of it,” says Chargin.
“We had always talked about doing a show together because I had wanted to get into it to see what promoting was all about,” says Chavez. “We had the opportunity this year to make it a reality. For me, it is a damn shame because Lorraine is not around. When I think of Don I think of her too.”
In his time with the Chargins, Chavez has seen firsthand what has separated them from some of their contemporaries. “They are pretty much the opposite [of other promoters,]” says Chavez. “Lorraine took me in like a part of her family. They are like night and day and just so humble, unlike some of the other promoters that always feel like they should be in the spotlight. It seems like in boxing, it doesn’t matter if it’s a writer or a fighter or a manager, they always are badmouthing somebody. When it came to them, it was never like that at all. It was always a positive note and they never had anything bad to say about anybody.”
When the day comes that Don Chargin decides he’s had enough of the boxing game, he will have left at least two promoters with some of his wisdom, though both understand they could never duplicate their mentor. “There is not going to be any replacing Don, that’s for sure, because he has knowledge that not anyone else can come close to in this sport,” says Chavez. “I just want to keep on the legacy of honesty. It’s a high level of honesty that he operates with, regardless of what other people say. I would like to continue to promote like that and be a straight shooter.”
“I don’t think I kind of deserve that,” says Paco in regards to carrying on the Chargin legacy. “He has worked so hard, sixty years, can you imagine? Him and Lorraine used to do one show a week, sometimes two. They would do one here and one in L.A. in the same week. Two in one week. It drains me and takes everything out of me. It just exhausts me mentally and physically. I go to sleep late every night at least one week before the fight. I just have no idea how they did it.
Humbly, not because I am not going to be able to do it, I would love to. Just being humble about it, I don’t want to think that far away. I want to think he is going to keep doing it and I am going to do it with him, learn and have fun and just keep doing it. If one day, he decides he wants me to give me the opportunity to carry on his company name with my name, it would be a privilege and an honor to use his name in every show that I do. So I would have him as my partner even if he doesn’t want to do the boxing anymore or decides to say he is going to take it easy. If he gives me that opportunity, I would use Don Chargin Productions in association with Paco Presents for every show I do.”
The name of the event is “History in the Making,” which was something main eventer Eloy Perez’ manager Kathy Garcia came up with, likely referring to her charge’s road to a title or bringing boxing back to Salinas. However, it’s a fitting title to describe the show for another obvious reason.
“Whatever Kathy had that clicked in her mind to put that name, that was a great name,” says Paco. “She didn’t even know that this fight would be celebrating his 60th year as a promoter. When she found out, I told her that is the perfect name that we would be able to pick for this fight because a living legend and a Hall of Famer will be celebrating his 60th year of promoting boxing, and nobody in boxing history has done that. To me, it’s a privilege and an honor to be part of his team and to learn the ropes from him. Sometimes I can’t find the words to describe it, because he didn’t have to do this for me. He is a top notch guy and has all the contacts. I don’t know what he saw in me, but he saw something in me to give me the opportunity to be with him all these years.”
It is hard to imagine doing something, anything really, for 60 straight years, but Don Chargin would not have had it any other way, “I knew early on I didn’t want to do anything else.”
Photo by Stephanie Trapp/trappfotos@gmail.com
Mario Ortega Jr. can be reached at ortega15rds@lycos.com.
