Their Eyes Remain on Real Prize

Eleven months have gone by. The grandly named rematch-- La Revancha Explosiva! --will be a week from Saturday at the Forum. It is a prizefight a lot of people have been waiting for, particularly the prizefighters themselves. Michael Carbajal has been waiting, and not simply because the prize he’s getting for it is a million dollars.

You don’t ordinarily make a million for a fight when you weigh 108 pounds. But boxing is in dire need of a new face, a new star. The Haglers, Hearnses, Durans and Leonards are history or on their last legs. Chavez is invincible no more. Norris got pounded. Tyson is behind bars, Foreman is doing sitcoms, Bowe has been beaten and Holyfield is handsome and brave but hardly Mr. Charisma. So it could be up to Michael Carbajal, the lightning-flashy light-flyweight, to save the day for boxing, to be the man.

He is still undefeated. Not much of that going around anymore. But the memory of that rumble last March 13, of that wild evening in the ring he spent, remains vivid. Carbajal will never forget that main event. Neither will those who saw it go down, who saw him go down.

“Wasn’t that some fight?” Michael himself asked when it was over.

Yes, it was.

Some even called it the greatest fight they ever saw. Carbajal was mixing it up in Las Vegas with this lantern-chinned character everybody kept calling Chiquita, which means little one. The name fit. Even wearing boxing boots, Chiquita Gonzalez, going 5 feet 1, barely stood as high as his opponent’s mouthpiece. But relentlessly the little one kept boring in, boring in, boring in, until abruptly a left-right combination lashed out at his face and then there stood Chiquita, looking down on him .

Nobody had ever knocked down Michael Carbajal. Not even back home in his nails-hard neighborhood, in La Nueve, there in the meanest part of Phoenix, where the gangs, the cholos , had terrorized the area with “drive-by shootings, stabbings, everything,” Michael remembers. About the only reason few punks messed with any of the nine Carbajal kids was because their fighter father had taught every one of them, sisters included, how to put up their dukes.

Phoenix has had its share of tough customers, in all shapes and sizes. Most everybody was aware that Charles Barkley, the tall basketball player for the Suns, had been known to land a solid left hook in a corner cantina. Buddy Ryan, the round football coach just hired by the Cardinals, had recently been seen aiming a roundhouse right at a colleague’s kisser. Could be that Carbajal would be called upon to offer the new bully in town a few pointers.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Michael says. “He hits pretty good for a guy that old.”

Humberto Gonzalez hits pretty good for a guy that small. Humberto is Chiquita. He is 27 and a father of three, and he hails from Ciudad Neza, Mexico, where he once worked in his father’s butcher shop. Chiquita is fearless. In a ring, he doesn’t box, he stalks. Sometimes he fights right-handed, sometimes left-handed, but always he goes forward, swinging away, leaving himself open to be easily hit, not very fast but forever dangerous. His record is 37-2 and he has knocked out 26 opponents. One of them was almost Michael Carbajal.

It was Round 2, and already Chiquita had won the first. Carbajal attempted a combination and missed. Gonzalez put him down. It was the first time the 1988 Olympic silver medalist had been horizontal, and his brother Danny, who trains him, grew anxious in the Carbajal corner until his brother staggered back to his stool between rounds.

“He kept telling me not to worry, that he was OK, that he was getting stronger and was ready to lay out Chiquita,” Danny said. “And that’s what he did.”

Not without resistance. After winning the third and fourth rounds, Michael ran into a strong right hand during the fifth and again hit the deck. He rose, more slowly than before, and survived the remainder of the round. But Chiquita kept after him, dominating the sixth round, backing Carbajal into a neutral corner with four rat-a-tat-tat punches. Ahead by four points on all the judges’ scorecards, Gonzalez was within striking distance of the undisputed light-flyweight championship of the world.

With seconds remaining in the seventh round, however, Chiquita was sent reeling into the ropes by a left hook to that amazingly square jaw of his. Headfirst he crashed to the canvas, where he was counted out. At the moment when referee Mills Lane said “10, yer out,” there was one second remaining in the round.

No wonder the rematch prospect excites people so. More than a thousand milled around the Forum’s parking lot last weekend when Carbajal, Gonzalez and several others from this superb Feb. 19 card came by for a little grandstanding and gentle sparring. Carbajal was mobbed, same way he is back home in Phoenix, where his popularity is such that Barkley and Ryan might fight over which of them will be the town’s second favorite.

Gonzalez had his own backers on hand, as did classy Rafael Ruelas and wacky Jorge Paez, both of whom also are part of this card. But none of the name-calling and threats of humiliation that accompany many fights were noticeable here, Carbajal and Gonzalez behaving civilly toward one another and even posing together for photos.

Carbajal (30-0) does use a few psychological tactics.

“Chiquita’s punches weren’t all that much,” Carbajal said. “I made a couple of mistakes he better not expect me to make this time.”

He made a couple of mistakes in his most recent fight, too, last Oct. 30 at Phoenix. One was a haircut. The other was leaving himself open for a punch from Domingo Sosa that split the right side of his head. Blood streamed down Carbajal’s smoothly shaved temples--he wore what amounted to a Mohawk--instead of being absorbed by his hair. It spilled into his eyes, so luridly that Danny Carbajal nearly threw in the towel from the corner. But Michael rallied from the three-inch gash to beat Sosa with a sixth-round TKO.

He has been waiting for the Chiquita rematch ever since.

“Who hasn’t?” Carbajal asked. “That was probably the fight of the year.”

And this one will be. . . ?

“Shorter,” he said.