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chapter 8 The Secret Government The tournament loss might have sent a lesser fighter into a death spiral. But Gaspar Ortega wasn’t nearly ready to give up on his dream. So Gaspar fought his way back into position, and after beating Mickey Crawford, he found himself again ranked the number one contender in the welterweight division. By October 1958, Gaspar was at the doorstep of a title fight, closer in fact than he had ever been. But things would take a turn for the surreal. The Indian would discover the other, hidden side of the world of professional boxing. The underside. Before the strange events of October sent Gaspar reeling, the aspiring boxer discovered that his celebrity in America was growing. In August 1958, the New York Times profiled him before his scheduled ABC Wednesday Night Fight rematch with Mickey Crawford. The substantial article included an accompanying close-up photo of Indio as he prepared for battle. The Times described him as “a quiet, somewhat moody person with high cheek bones, piercing brown eyes, and close-cropped black hair. In public he always wears a coat and tie, and a small scar on his right cheek is his only mark of ring warfare.” The author of the piece, Howard M. Tuckner, rehearsed Gaspar’s humble origins of working odd jobs and then bullfighting in Tijuana, along with his Indian heritage (incorrectly identified as Mayan) and his brief stint as lieutenant in the Mexican Army Reserves. Back when he was seventeen, Gaspar had served a mandatory one-year tour in the army. His dad’s connections had landed him an officer’s berth. When asked what he liked about being in the military, Chapter 8. The Secret Government 119 Gaspar curtly responded (through Happy), “Nothing. What’s to like?”1 His honesty probably did not help him earn any new American fans. It was clear to the Times reporter that Gaspar was a driven man. He was also, by contemporary standards, a rich man. By 1957 Indio was earning $8,000 for a single TV bout. His take from his third battle with DeMarco at the Boston Garden that year netted him more than $11,000. By way of comparison, the mean annual income for an American male who worked fifty weeks in 1957 was $4,700.2 Of course, Gaspar did not have a money manager, long-term investments, a tax attorney, or any of the typical protections the wealthy cannot live without. After each fight, he would take the check made out to him and go to the bank with Nick Corby, where papers would be signed and a wad of cash handed over. From there it was on to a hotel room someplace, where the dough was divvied out by his management on a bed. The managers got 33 percent (corresponding to the maximum they could take as fixed by law) and the trainers got 10 percent. Then there were the expenses, which left Indio typically with around 40 percent of the total. For a televised match, Gaspar usually received between $6,000 and $9,000 ($4,000 for the TV show plus another $2,000 or more from his percentage of the gate). Of this he might take home around $3,000. From this, Gaspar might wire up to half home to his extended family in Tijuana. Then there were the New York City bills to be paid. He didn’t spend much on himself. He didn’t have any expensive habits on which to blow his money anyway. The 1958 Crawford-Ortega rematch ended as a draw, with one judge favoring Gaspar, the other Crawford, and the referee scoring it as a tie. Crawford loudly proclaimed that he had been robbed.3 Though he didn’t lose, Gaspar had not put on an impressive performance for a man who was the number one contender. The New York Times wrote the next day that Gaspar “lost a great deal of his high standing last night.”4 Reporters believed that now there would be a rubber match set up to decide who would make a go at Akins’s title. But this was not to be. Gaspar’s next opponent was a young man named Don Jordan. Don “Geronimo” Jordan seemed to have come up from nowhere. His pro career started in 1953, when he began waging battles in Southern California and even once in Mexico. In 1954 Jordan had clinched the California state welterweight title, and...

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