[8.7] JOHNNY TAPIA 66-59(30)-5-2 [Lightweight & Featherweight & Bantamweight & Super-Flyweight]: Boxing Monthly online - Tapia 2012
Johnny Tapia’s tragic private life is so hard to separate from his boxing career that his in-ring achievements sometimes get clouded.
Not surprising when his chosen ring moniker – ‘Mi Vida Loca’ – directly references his crazy life, and his personal problems outside the ring saw him lose three of his prime years due to a positive drug test.
But what of Johnny Tapia the fighter? Or more importantly, Johnny Tapia the super flyweight?
With the looks of a brawler, to those that have only heard the story and not watched the fights it may be a surprise when Tapia is revealed as a boxer. A top-class amateur who once won the National Golden Gloves championship, Tapia was blessed with lightning fast hands and a cultured style that belied his battered nose and scar-tissue-covered face.
This is because that life, those experiences, that personality, did directly influence his boxing.
A blistering combination puncher with the ability to box at length as well as fight on the inside, Tapia often let his emotions choose the game plan rather than his brain, taking the fight to his opponents like they were his worst enemy, treating any bending of the rules from his opposite as an invitation to start a street fight.
Early on in his pro career Tapia picked up an impressive victory – with the benefit of hindsight at least – over John Michael Johnson, future bantamweight champ and spoiler of Junior Jones’ perfect record.
Continuing in similarly impressive form, Tapia won the USBA super flyweight title, defending against some not insignificant fighters including future European champ and world title challenger Luigi Camputaro and former Mexican super fly champ Jose Montiel.
Natural progression to world level was put on hold due to the aforementioned suspension (for cocaine use) and after a hiatus of over three years anyone would have been forgiven for assuming Tapia’s days of top level boxing were over.
But he hadn’t even gotten started.
From March 1994 to October of the same year, Tapia fought six times, raising his level of opposition with each fight, winning back the USBA title he’d been stripped of years before, and punishing Salvadorian Olympian Henry Martinez to win the vacant WBO super flyweight title in an excellent performance, capping off an extraordinary run that took him from a rusty former hot prospect to world titlist in seven months.
Eleven title defences in the next two years (not including several over the weight non-title bouts) saw Tapia improve his record to 40-0-2, but the fact is that the best you could describe these challengers as is ‘varying in quality’, with some bearing the hallmarks of many poor WBO challengers. The talented Arthur Johnson was the best Tapia faced in this period and he arguably beat him, matching his long range boxing skills and holding his own on the inside.
But Tapia transcended the WBO title, and it was in the rare local derby that took place at the highest level of the sport that Tapia proved himself as a fighter worthy of a placing as high as this.
Tapia’s tragic childhood is well documented; with no father figure around, his mother murdered when he was still in single digits and a sometimes abusive family that forced him to fight for their own gain. Tapia turned to boxing to channel this pain into something, and found he had a gift for sending that pain back twofold.
Danny Romero’s upbringing was the opposite, from a stable home with a boxing mad father who forced the gloves on his kid aged five. Romero took to the ring like a duck to water. Handsome and unmarked, Romero looked like a stylist, but he fought in an aggressive ‘kill or be killed’ fashion.
Albuquerque’s favourite sons were not necessarily always on a collision course. As a young boy, Tapia had even been trained at times by Danny Romero senior, his future rival’s father. On the undercard of Tapia’s first world title bout with Henry Martinez, Romero won the USBA 115 lbs title Tapia had relinquished, though Romero dropped the same belt to move down to flyweight, winning the IBF strap and making a bout with Tapia unlikely.
Losing the belt in his second defence due to a freak injury sent Romero back to the drawing board. Meanwhile Tapia cleaned up his conqueror – Mexican journeyman Willy Salazar – and looked leagues ahead of the young puncher he once shared the gym with.
Romero however, was undaunted. Back up in Tapia’s domain, he obliterated the talented Harold Grey in two rounds to win the IBF super flyweight belt, thrusting himself back into the limelight. Two defences (and two stoppages) followed, and the stage was set for a cross town unification with such fervent support that the fight was staged in Las Vegas lest the locals cause carnage.
Heavy handed Romero predicted a third-round knockout, but Tapia was impossible to intimidate.
He told HBO, ‘He can’t knock me out. I’ve been through too many things already.’
Tapia, quick to embrace the emotional against strangers, picked the fight with the most emotion involved to paint his masterpiece. Disciplined but not rigid, defensively flawless but not shy, a showman but not showy, Tapia was a clear winner at the end of 12 rounds, and added the IBF title to his mantelpiece.
Tapia would go on to win titles in two more weight classes, and is perhaps best known to fans for his bout with modern great Marco Antonio Barrera, if not the numerous articles and documentaries about his troubled life, which ended far too soon at the age of 45.
What’s most remarkable about Tapia’s story is what he did in the ring though. And he was never better than he was in his prime at super flyweight. Boxing Monthly online article Kyle McLachlan 23rd February 2018, ‘The Top Ten Super Flyweights of All Time’
For all the darkness that surrounded Johnny Tapia as a young boy, the beginning of his life was defined more by what wasn’t there than what was. Tapia, 2012
‘No 1 [amateur] in the world for six years in a row.’ ibid. Johnny
His first pro fight would end in a draw. But after that there was no stopping Johnny Tapia. ibid.
Johnny Tapia was 23 years old, undefeated and poised to break out as one of boxing’s new stars. But outside the ring he was still living in a dark, dangerous world. He was a member of Albuquerque’s Wells Park Locos gang and began using cocaine. ibid.
He was broke and frequently homeless. ibid.
He was now undeniably a star … His drug abuse between bouts had never really stopped. ibid.
His joy, fearlessness and passion were always easy to see inside the ring. ibid.
In and out of prison for three and a half years. ibid.