Tiger: Simons Boxing Coach

By kiki

The Pico Palace was on Whittier Blvd (north side) just west of where the 605 Freeway is now, somewhere close to where the steakhouse is now. It was a dance hall, like Betty's Barn in Irwindale. Besides dances, the palace also held amateur boxing about once a month. In later years, the palace became a furniture store. At some point, it was razed down. I am not sure when that happened, though.

Circa 1948, some friends from the Simons Brickyard and I did some boxing under our coach, Tiger. Tiger was one of many guys from the post-WWII era with a boxing gym in his backyard. I don't believe I ever knew Tiger's real name. All I knew of Tiger was that he was my friend Frank Madrid's uncle.

Frank, better known as Yate or Cheespas (Sparks: because of his short, spiky hair), asked me and others if we wanted to learn how to box; he knew I loved boxing. He told us about Tiger and his gym; he said that Tiger would train us and that after a few weeks of training, he would take us to the Pico Palace in Pico and the Johnnie Flores's C.Y.O. Gym in downtown Los Angeles for some sparring. Of course, we all said that we would give it a try.

                                                          Tiger

So with a pair of old Sears boxing gloves, a WWII army duffle bag full of rags hanging from an old tree, and a dirt floor boxing ring, we kids embarked on what we hoped was the start of a boxing career. Tiger, who had done some amateur fighting, started by teaching us balance and how to throw a jab. "Step in when you jab and turn your wrist on impact," he would tell us; we asked him why we needed to turn our fists on impact. "You can open a cut on your opponent's eyes by doing that," he would answer. For days, which seemed like weeks, all we did was a jab, jab, and more jabs until it seemed like my left arm would fall off. Cheespas was the more advanced; he had been training with Tiger for about a year when the rest of us joined Tiger's "stable," but he had had very little sparring at that point. Finally, after a few weeks, Tiger thought some of us were ready to enter the ring. The first was Gibby, who got to go a few rounds with Cheespas. After that, I got to spar with Gibby's brother Johnny, this time with gloves; I say that because Johnny and I had numerous fistfights in the past; just like in the fistfights, I got the best of Johnny in our sparring, I think I had his number. Some other boys were Chuy and Chano; there might have been one or two more; I just don't remember them. After about three months of training, Tiger told us we were going to the Pico Palace, a small arena/dance hall on Whittier Blvd. in Pico, the Palace as it was called, was used as a dance hall and also as a small pro and amateur boxing arena/gym…The boys from Pico and Jimtown, when they were not duking it out on the streets, would train together at the Palace.

I vividly remember our first time sparring at the Palace; because I got my ass kicked. I sparred with a kid from Jimtown who kept hitting me with his right hand every time the borrowed headgear I was using would slightly down my forehead and cover my eyes; it was my first time wearing a headgear. Unfortunately, Tiger had no headgear for us to use in our sparring sessions in Simons. The other boys, except for Chespas, didn't fare any better than I, but we all felt great, and we even had the faintest hint of a "we are fighters" swagger as we made our way to Tiger's 1930s jalopy...About two weeks later, Tiger told us we would go to the C.Y.O. Gym downtown L.A. For some sparring on the coming weekend. We had heard how good the C.Y.O. boys were, and sure enough, they were, as we got our asses kicked again. We returned to the Palace two weeks later for sparring; Tiger had picked up a couple of used headgear. Not feeling intimidated anymore by our surroundings of the Palace, we all did better and thought we were ready for a fight... "Not so fast," said Tiger, so for the next few months, we trained really hard at Tiger's home gym to be ready to kick some ass ourselves on our next venture out into the real world of boxing. We did so on our next outing to the Pico Palace. That night, it was not sparring sessions but real fights; I remember that Johnny, Chespas, Chuy, and I won; four out of seven wasn't bad for a young, inexperienced boxing team.

Just when we kids thought we were on our way to world titles, Tiger disappeared. Nobody but his nephew Cheespas knew what had happened to Tiger, and he wasn't squawking. Some kids all thought that Tiger was in jail, and why would we believe that? And why shouldn't we think that? Since most of the young men in Simons would be spending time in the county jail,I never did find out what had happened to Tiger, nor did I ever see him again, and without Tiger, none of the guys except me stayed with boxing...Around 1949, to keep my love affair with boxing alive, I started to train at the Teamsters Gym in downtown L.A...And so it was!!