In just a few weeks, the 2024 Summer Olympics will open in Paris. 100 years ago, two American boxers, Fidel La Barba and Jackie Fields, won Olympic gold medals in the same city. We featured Fields in a previous article. Now it's La Barba's turn.
The fifth of seven children born to Italian immigrants, Fidel La Barba turned pro in his hometown of Los Angeles three months after returning from Paris, where he had won a flyweight bout. He went on to have a Hall of Fame career as a pro, but it didn't start out that way: after five pro bouts, his record was two wins, two losses and one draw.
There were extenuating circumstances: the loss and the draw came at the hands of Jimmy McLarnin, a baby-faced man who was actually younger than La Barba but had more experience and, as history has shown, was not just a formidable opponent but one of the greatest fighters of all time.
La Barba had to settle for another draw in just his eighth professional fight, but this was a good result for him. Newsboy Brown, undefeated and with 36 professional fights under his belt, was considered too strong for Fidel, but in a ten-round bout at Hollywood's Legion Stadium, La Barba was a perfect match. Most newspaper reporters criticized the bout, saying, “Fidel's rounds were more decisive and he was the better of the two.” [the only] “Knockdown. He was clearly ahead on points,” wrote Sid Ziff of the Los Angeles Evening Express.
Three bouts later, La Barba faced Frankie Gennaro in what was believed to be the first professional bout between two former Olympic gold medalists: Gennaro, a New York native, had won the gold medal in Antwerp in 1920.
La Barba's professional record was 6 wins, 2 losses and 2 draws. Frankie Gennaro Boxrechad a professional record of 52 wins, 3 losses and 4 draws.
Gennaro was recognized as the United States flyweight champion. As was common at the time, the champion was given the right to bring his own referee if he fought in his opponent's backyard. Gennaro chose Harry Ertl of New Jersey, best known as the third in-ring referee for the Dempsey-Carpentier fight.
The La Barba-Genaro fight took place before a crowd of about 18,000 at Ascot Park in Los Angeles, where a motorcycle race was taking place as usual. After 10 intense rounds, Ertl didn't hesitate to raise La Barba's hand. According to a reporter from the San Francisco Examiner, 25 police officers were needed to hold back the cheering crowd while La Barba was escorted back to the dressing room.
The bout took on much brighter shades the previous month when the great Filipino boxer Pancho Villa, who was the recognized world flyweight champion, died at age 23 after surgery for a crushed dental ulcer. With the title now vacant, La Barba vs. Genaro was upgraded to a world title bout, although it is not recognized as such in all jurisdictions.
At this point, Fidel La Barba was 19 years old and had been a professional for less than a year. In a 2019 article, noted boxing historian Matt McGrane wrote that La Barba's win over Genaro may have been the greatest victory recorded by a teenager in boxing history.
La Barba stayed busy after this bout, fighting 14 more bouts over the next 17 months, most of which were no-decision matches, meaning La Barba could retain the title unless he was knocked out. On January 21, 1927, he fought Scotland's Elkie Clarke in a 12-round bout at Madison Square Garden.
The New York Boxing Commission, which is at odds with the National Boxing Association (NBA), has never officially recognised the Californian as world flyweight champion, and if he could beat Clark, the undisputed European champion, he would win the commission's approval and unify the titles.
The 29-year-old Clarke had a lot of experience in 20-round fights and, as his cauliflower ears suggest, he was a serious contender. The Scotsman fought to the end, but Fidel sent Clarke to the canvas five times, winning every round.
Reportedly a class president at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles, La Barba had always aspired to attend Stanford University, and in the fall of 1927 he achieved that dream, giving up boxing to enroll at the prestigious university, living in the freshman dormitory and helping out with the school's boxing team, but left Stanford after a year to return to the ring.
When he returned to boxing, he was no longer a champion, having outgrown his weight class. He was also married, having been married to the former wife of famous newspaper cartoonist Billy DeBecque (the first of Fidel's three wives). After four bouts in Los Angeles and one in San Francisco, he embarked on a belated honeymoon in Australia, where La Barba fought four bouts in seven weeks, all scheduled for 15 rounds. He won them all.
Trilogy
The highlight of La Barba's post-college boxing career was a triple-bout series against Kid Chocolate, one of the greatest trilogies in boxing history. The two first faced off on May 22, 1929 at the New York Coliseum in the Bronx in a show hosted by Jess McMahon, grandfather of WWE mogul Vince McMahon.
According to a Brooklyn newspaper article, Chocolate (whose real name was Eligio Sardinas) was undefeated in 146 fights, including amateur bouts in Cuba. There is no way to verify the record, but the Havana Bonbon was undefeated on American soil and was considered a future world champion.
At 5 feet 6 inches tall, Chocolate was three inches taller than Fidel and had a significant reach advantage, but Fidel was able to block his punches and, according to a Pennsylvania newspaper reporter, after five rounds La Barba “had such a lead that Chocolate couldn't catch him even with his deputy.”
But Chocolate caught him and won the 10-round bout by majority decision.”[Fidel] “It ignores one of the central tenets of gambling,” he writes. “It simply demands that any winnings you win should be yours to keep.”
The decision was unpopular, and it was inevitable that La Barba and Kid Chocolate would face off again in a sequel that was performed at Madison Square Garden on November 3, 1930.
It was La Barba's greatest moment since beating Frankie Genaro in his early days. He took the Cuban on from the moment the opening bell rang, and by the end of the 10-round bout, his victory was certain. “By the end,” wrote a ringside reporter for the Buffalo News, “the normally dancing, jumping Cuban was left with tired legs and a wild swing.” (The decision was unanimous; no score was released.)
Twenty-five months passed until his final fight. Kid Chocolate had suffered three losses in that time, but they had come up against top-tier opponents, including Battaling Battalino, Tony Canzoneri, and Jack Kidd-Berg, all of whom were close enough to win. LaBarba also lost to Battalino, failing to take Bat's featherweight belt in a boring 15-round bout, but the LaBarba Chocolate III fight had a certain panache that hadn't existed in the first two bouts. In New York and some other places, Chocolate was recognized as a two-division champion, winning the featherweight and (deserved) junior lightweight belts.
A New York Daily News reporter estimated the final match was a 7-7 stalemate after 14 rounds, but Fidel ran out of bullets and Chocolate beat him in the final round.
La Barba finished the bout with a torn retina in his left eye, but fought three more bouts before finishing his career: a 10-round decision loss to four-time rival and top-flight fighter from Buffalo, Tommy Paul, a 12-round decision loss to British featherweight champion Seaman “Tommy” Watson, and a 10-round decision win over a Pittsburgh club fighter. His final record was 69 wins, 15 losses, and 7 draws, and he was never stopped.
Post-retirement
La Barba studied finance at Stanford University, but after retiring he discovered he had a talent for writing. Two of his Collier's stories were turned into screenplays: the 1939 Western Savannah of the Mounties, starring Shirley Temple and Randolph Scott, and the 1942 musical Footlight Serenade, starring Victor Mature as a former boxing champion turned Broadway actor. Both films were produced by 20th Century Fox; studio head Darryl F. Zanuck was a close friend.
During World War II, La Barba enlisted in the Army. He was blind in one eye and could not serve in combat. He was discovered by a reporter in Naples, Italy, and found a role in a bomb shelter, comforting elderly women traumatized by air raids. During the Korean War, he served as a physical training instructor at March Air Force Base in Southern California.
La Barba was also a sports reporter for two short-lived newspapers, the Wilmington (California) Daily Press Journal and the Santa Monica Evening Outlook, where he served as sports editor. In the mid-1950s, he served as a member of the California Athletic Commission, coached a paraplegic wheelchair basketball team, and gained notoriety as the manager of promising heavyweight boxer Elmer Wilhoit, a former All-American football lineman at the University of Southern California who gave up a professional boxing career after only four bouts because of hand problems.
Fidel La Barba died on October 2, 1981 at the age of 76 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Los Angeles while being treated for heart disease. He was posthumously inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the class of 1996.
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A recognized authority on the history of boxing and the history of sports betting in America, TSS Editor-in-Chief Arne K. Lang is the author of five books, including Prizefighting: An American History, published by McFarland in 2008 and republished in paperback in 2020.
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