Carbajal Was a Good Thing In a Small Package

By Bernard Fernandez

When you are Michael Carbajal’s size, which approximates the dimensions of one of Wladimir Klitschko’s legs, your athletic options are by necessity limited. You can become a jockey and hope to get the mount on the Kentucky Derby winner, or you can take up boxing and try to punch your way into the public consciousness against similarly pugnacious Lilliputians.

Michael “Little Hands of Stone” Carbajal, so named because his favorite fighter was Panamanian legend Roberto Duran, isn’t much of a horse guy. So the Phoenix resident, all 5-5½, 106 pounds of him, became a boxer and claimed the silver medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. And he should have fared better; the judges’ verdict for Bulgaria’s Ivalio Hristov in the light flyweight title bout was scandalously unfair. Even then, however, the injustice done to Carbajal was eclipsed by the blatant robbery committed to his larger and more celebrated American teammate, Roy Jones Jr., who looked on incredulously as the South Korean opponent he had just pummeled had his hand raised in victory.
Talk about not being able to win for losing …

So Carbajal, doomed by fate and genetics to a professional career in a weight class in which there are few Americans and precious little interest in this country, went home to what should have been an uncertain future. The number of major promoters who initially stepped forward with offers to kick-start that career: zero.

“When Richie Sandoval (a former WBC bantamweight champion) brought Michael to my office, I thought he was out of his mind,” said Top Rank founder and CEO Bob Arum. “I had seen Michael in the Olympics, but he was, like, 106 pounds. What the hell were we going to do with someone that little? But there was something about Michael that intrigued Richie, and he pleaded for me to take Michael on.

“The more I listened to Richie make his case, the more I came around. Finally, I said, `I don’t know if we can make this work, but what the heck, I’m going to give it a try.’”
It was a leap not only of faith, but of hope and charity. American fight fans have always been infatuated with heavyweights, and their enthusiam for any division south of lightweight has tended to drop off precipitously. Carbajal could fight, all right, but, physically, he was what he was. There was no way he could eat, stretch or contort himself into something bigger, if not necessarily better.

“The first fight we put him into was a four-rounder, in Atlantic City, against this kid, Will Grigsby, who went on to win a world championship and probably was the second-best 108-pounder in the United States,” Arum recalled. “Some matchmaking, huh? But we didn’t know what to do with a 108-pound fighter. We had never handled anyone that small before.
“But gradually we worked our way into it. I remember one fight in Phoenix when (heavyweight) Tommy Morrison was on the card with Carbajal. This casino executive, who shall remain forever nameless, came to the fight to check out Morrison. He was sitting right near me and he said, when they introduced the Carbajal fight, `You ought to be ashamed of yourself, promoting midgets.’ I’ll never forget that.”

Arum was right; it is difficult finding quality opponents for American fighters Carbajal’s size. But, Arum said, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. There are a lot of great Thai fighters, Filipino fighters, Japanese fighters and Mexican fighters at 108 pounds. We found them. And, of course, `Chiquita’ came later.”

Humberto “Chiquita” Gonzalez, a Mexican mighty mite who stood only 5-1, served as Joe Frazier to Carbajal’s Muhammad Ali, or maybe it was the other way around. In any case, their three bouts, of which Gonzalez won two, comprise one of the sport’s great trilogies. Carbajal even made financial history when his $1 million purse for his second classic showdown with Gonzalez enabled him to become the first junior flyweight to earn seven figures for a single night’s work.

Sandoval and Arum had been right to take a chance on a very good thing in a very small package. Sometimes it really is possible to overlook what is right beneath our noses, but if a fighter has a big punch and a bigger heart, he can walk with the giants, at least figuratively.

On Sunday, June 11, Carbajal and Gonzalez, who put each other to trial by fire in 31 rounds spread over three fights, take their place among ring immortals when they are inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y.

Carbajal, 38, last fought on July 31, 1999, when he wrested the WBO light flyweight title from Jorge Arcel on an 11th-round stoppage in Tijuana, Mexico. He retired with a 49-4 record that includes 33 victories inside the distance, and he stands, if not quite alone, as a leading example of what a hopeful boxing ant with a wicked left hook can do to a rubber tree plant.
Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward said Carbajal almost singlehandedly popularized boxing in this country involving fighters who scarcely topped three digits when they stepped onto the scales.

“He was a pioneer in a lot of ways,” Steward said of Carbajal. “His punching power for his size was phenomenal.”

But if no opponent could break Carbajal inside the ropes, Ed Brophy, executive director of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, reduced boxing’s little big man into a weeping fountain of happiness with just a phone call.

“I still cry whenever I think about it,” Carbajal, who now owns and operates the Ninth Street Gym in Phoenix, said of the emotions which flood over him whenever he ponders his impending admission into boxing’s most exclusive club. “I can’t even imagine that this is going to happen. I’m going to be with the greats. It’s a feeling I can’t even describe.
“Me and Chiquita going in makes it even more special, for both of us. I respect him a lot. He respects me. We fought three times and they were all great fights. We have that history together, you know.

“I mean, I loved representing my country in the Olympics. I loved being a world champion. But the Hall of Fame is the most special thing that can happen to any fighter. That lasts forever. It’s something that no one can ever take away from me.

“I’ve been to Canastota before. Once you’ve been there, and you’re a fighter, you dream of going back again, to be inducted. But for it to actually happen … man, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

There are those – come on, you know who you are – who will argue that Carbajal’s credentials for the Hall of Fame fall, well, a bit short. The skeptics say he benefited from a rule which requires Hall voters to select four modern inductees from a pool of candidates that isn’t always that deep. They contend that Carbajal has a more recognizable name than more deserving fighters who have yet to heed the call to the Hall, and that too much emphasis has been placed upon his three memorable brawls with Gonzalez.

Arum, who had to be convinced to even sign Carbajal, said the naysayers are, well, full of it. And what’s wrong with being identified so extensively for a series with a single opponent, if that series is special enough to stand the test of time?

“Look, nothing ever was handed to Michael on a platter,” Arum said. “Because he was entertaining and exciting, he established a tremendous home base of support in Phoenix. He always drew extremely well in his hometown.

“The networks, HBO and Showtime, God bless ’em, wouldn’t touch Michael because he was a 108-pounder, so he made all his money, essentially, in pay-per-view fights that we underwrote. We took a big, big risk in doing so, but we had faith in Michael and he never disappointed us. We were doing between 100,000 and 150,000 buys for his fights, which are tremendous numbers for such a little guy.”

Like Joe Frazier, whose most indelible memories of his hallowed trilogy with Ali are of the first fight, which he won, Carbajal – who was introduced to boxing by his father, Manuel, and who was trained and managed as a pro by his older brother, Danny -- prefers to dwell on his Dec. 7, 1992, first scrap with Gonzalez, at the Las Vegas Hilton.

Carbajal rose from two knockdowns to dramatically stop Gonzalez, the WBC junior flyweight titlist, in the ninth round in what The Ring magazine later cited as its Fight of the Year.
“That one was the best, the pinnacle of my career,” Carbajal said. “My other two fights with Chiquita (who won by split and majority decisions in 1994) were great, but that one was the one that will always stand out in my mind. I went down twice, but I got back up and fought harder.”

What Arum remembers is the sportsmanship and genuine respect Carbajal and Gonzalez always demonstrated toward one another, and still do.

“We kept hearing about Chiquita, who was mostly fighting in the Forum in Inglewood (California),” Arum said. “It just seemed like Chiquita and Michael made for a natural rivalry, and we were on good terms with Chiquita’s promoter, John Jackson, who was running Forum Boxing at the time.

“All three fights were tremendous, but that first one was one of the great fights of all time. But the thing that has stuck with me is how much class and dignity Michael and Chiquita had. There was absolutely no trash-talking. Real fighters don’t have to resort to that kind of crud.”

For his part, Carbajal claims to have no regrets about his time in boxing. Well, almost none.
“I think I did everything right,” he said. “I’m happy with the way my career went. The only person I really wanted to fight who I didn’t get to fight was Ricardo Lopez. (Lopez retired in 2001 with a 51-0-1 record.) Me and him, I think we had some of the same attributes, but I had some intangibles I don’t believe he would have been able to deal with.”