California Boxing

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Keeny Teran

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Keeny Teran I first met around 1949 at the Teamsters Gym. Working out at the same time, we became good gym friends. Keeny was a great prospect as a very young teenager. He was so good that he was forced to turn pro just after his seventeenth birthday. His true age was discovered about two months before he turned eighteen and he was forced to sit out those two months.


Keeny was on a roll with some good wins and only a draw with cross-town Gil Cadilli to mar his record when he got KO’d by Tommy Umeda at the Olympic Auditorium. We at the arena couldn’t believe what we had just witnessed. The following week the news broke that Keeny was a drug addict. We learned through the newspapers that he had being using heroin since he was about twelve years old. Some Hollywood money backers sent him and his wife Sally to the mountains to try and clean up. Months later he came back to fight some good fights, most of which he won, against fighters like Pappy Gault, Hugh Riley, Johnny Ortega, and Billy Peacock. He also defeated Tommy Uemda in a rematch. Keeny’s last fight was a KO loss to Memo Diaz in 1955. We later found out that he had taken a shot of heroin the afternoon of the fight.


I didn’t see Keeny again till the late 1970s when he showed up one night at the Olympic Auditorium to see my son Frankie fight. We sat for a while and reminisced about the old days at the Teamsters Gym. After that he would show up every time Frankie or Tony were fighting, and we would sit and reminisce some more.


Keeny Teran was one of the most memorable fighters I've ever seen. As a boxer, Keeny Teran mostly battled his own demons, denying himself a chance to fight for the world title. Whatever else can be said, he was a good men.

Keeny Teran died from cancer in 1995

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Davey Moore with his trainer Terry Bentham as he was getting ready for the Sugar Ramos fight

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Davey Moore vs SugarRamos

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Fights at Dodger Stadium


The original date for the fights at Dodgers Stadium was a week before the fights actually took place. A week before that ill-fated night Connie and I were sitting ringside in a down pour of rain when in the 11th hour a decision was made to postpone the fights. A week later, give or take a day the fights were held and we all know the outcome of that tragic night.


Also killed that night in an auto accident on his way home from the fights that night was Hank Weaver. Hank was the ringside TV announcer for the Hollywood Legion Stadium fights in the early 1950's. He also had a short segment on TV before the fights, "Under the Pepper Trees" where he would interview fighters and fans as they came into the Stadium.


Would the outcome been different for Davey Moore and Hank Weaver had the fights been held on the original date? We'll never know, will we?

[Senor Pepe']

Howie Steindler

Manager of Danny 'Little Red' Lopez

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Great picture, Pepe

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Bobby Chacon goes down after a hit from Ruben Oliveras June 23,1975

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Meets- Boxers Lightweights Lauro Salas, left, and Cisco Andrade square off against actress Shirley Price, Miss Boxing 1958

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Art "Golden Boy" Aragon cries with joy after beating Jimmy Carter in a non-title match...8/28/1951

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Frankie Baltazar vs Juan Escobar...Frankie won a SD...1984

John Martinez in back of Frankie

[Senor Pepe']

David Sotello, California Featherweight and Cornerman Pat Ruggerio

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Originally Posted by Senor Pepe'

David Sotello, California Featherweight and Cornerman Pat Ruggerio

The little guy in the ring is Ralph Gambina

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California State Middleweight Champion, Willie Vaughn, and Hollywood Legion Stadium matchmaker, Hap Navarro....Circa 1953.....Hap is still alive, he is 93 or 94 years old.