The Border Fence, Brownsville 
The Contender
But for one youthful mistake, Jesus Chavez could be the super featherweight champion of the world. Instead, he’s facing a heavyweight challenge: how to get back in the ring and redeem himself.
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Jesus got a break in August 1996 when promoters brought in Mexican featherweight champion Javier Jauregui, who was in line for a world-title shot. He punished the Mexican veteran with left hooks to the body—his best punch—and the unanimous decision established him as a world-class talent. In March 1997 Jesus made his TV debut as a main event against a smooth and gifted puncher, San Antonio’s Louie Leija. He mauled Leija in the first round, but in the third he walked into a hook and almost got knocked out: The Austin crowd gasped as he staggered and groped like an alley drunk. Yet he was dominant again by the bell. He knocked Leija down twice and the referee stopped it in the sixth. Fox commentators burbled about him throughout the fight, and replays aired for weeks. The performance won him his contract with Main Events.
Terri had moved to New York, where she worked for a prominent photographer. Jesus �ew up after his fights, and she took him to Broadway plays and SoHo art shows. Strangers hailed him on the street. He walked in Central Park and gaped at the skyscrapers and splendor of this country. He was a rising star. An American success story.
But not to immigration officials. His advocates could argue all day that he was a legal resident when he got in trouble; that his father, the man who brought him here as a child, was now a naturalized citizen; that he had paid for his crime; that he was deported without legal representation; and that he showed abundant signs of being a responsible adult of some value. None of the human nuance mattered. Under fire from Congress for letting too many aliens slip through the cracks, the INS had no legal authority to overlook that aggravated felony. Since the fall of 1996 the agency had increased its rate of deportations by 50 percent, and about 75 percent of those expelled were being sent to Mexico. This country was committed to a crackdown on illegal immigration, and it was just getting started.
In September 1996 the House of Representatives passed a massive revision of immigration law by a vote of 370—37. The Senate concurred 84—15, and President Clinton signed it. Two weeks after the Leija fight, the provisions went into effect. Under the new law, an alien who had been convicted of only a state misdemeanor could be defined and removed as an aggravated felon. Judicial review and political asylum were greatly restricted. Families were being separated, people who came here just to work and who never robbed anyone. One of the immigration lawyers who turned Jesus down asked him, “Where is your tragedy?” He had no answer.
THE BACKSIDE OF ATLANTIC CITY has a seedy appeal, the beach is pretty, and the Boardwalk is amazing—miles of meticulously laid and unwarped parquet �oor. But the casinos get old fast. The gaming �oors sound like an asylum of berserk musicians all playing the vibes. Jesus, Richard, and I walked through Caesars Atlantic City to a basement employees’ cafeteria, where the fighters had meal tickets. When we stood to leave, an employee addressed us gruf�y: “Hey, put up your own trays.”
Jesus lit up and grinned. “Cool, man,” he said, doing as he was told.
“Reminds him of prison,” said Richard. “Except the food’s better.”
It was the biggest fight of Jesus’ young career: Atlantic City, pay-per-view, and the undercard of the Lennox Lewis—Andrew Golota heavyweight title match. The October 1997 bout was something of a family affair. Doug Lord was there to help work the corner, as he had when his son was fighting, and his great champion, Curtis Cokes, now trained Jesus’ opponent, former kickboxing champion Troy Dorsey of Dallas. Once, years ago, Dorsey had pulled off an upset and won a world boxing title. Now, at 34, he looked like his pleasure was running headfirst into walls. Recently he had undergone surgery to file down his stony ridge of brow, an accumulation of calcium deposits and scar tissue that had caused him to lose several fights on cuts. His record had slipped to 15-9-4, but he was a far bigger name than Jesus. And he was supremely confident.
At the weigh-in—both came in at 129—they raised their fists and faced off in the ritual pose; Dorsey glared and played the moment for all the advantage it might be worth. Jesus’ mouth started working, his eyebrows shot up, and he broke into that innocent’s grin. Later he giggled at the thought of the macho staring match: “I try to do it, but I never can.”
On fight night, he walked into the dressing room and �ung out his arms like Gene Kelly. “Gonna be a great night, bro’s. I am pumped, and I just got here!” The arena filled up because of Jesus’ Main Events stablemate, Andrew Golota, a resident of Chicago. Britain’s Lennox Lewis was a narrow betting favorite in the heavyweight fight, but it was Polish Pride Night. In honor of Golota, who owed his fame and title shot to two brawls against Riddick Bowe in which he was disqualified for �agrant punches to the groin, the balconies were full of rowdies who waved red-and-white Polish �ags, wore red-and-white face paint, and brought the �oor crowd roaring to its feet as they brawled among themselves. “Low blow! Low blow!” they raised a merry cry.
In this air of bedlam—Lewis’ first-round knockout of the Pole would soon turn the revelers into unhappy drunks stumbling meekly in the night—Jesus stepped through the ropes wearing a new robe and trunks trimmed in Mexico’s red, green, and white. He embraced his father and moved around snapping warm-up punches. At the bell Dorsey charged forward, scarcely moving his head, punctuating his punches with karatelike grunts. Jesus skirted Dorsey’s rushes, working off his jab and throwing quick, �uid combinations. Light heavyweight champion Roy Jones, widely considered one of the two or three best fighters in the sport today, was in the broadcast crew. “Chavez does throw some pretty punches,” Jones said in the second round. “Textbook punches. Excellent form.”
Dorsey buckled Jesus’ knees with a booming right in the fourth, but Jesus was landing three punches to his foe’s one. From the third round on, a doctor stuck his head through the ropes to check on Dorsey. “Doing fine! Thank you!” the game fighter barked. The surgical reconstruction held up, but he suffered a small cut high on his cheek, and both eyes were closing. After the seventh, the doctor stopped it. As the victor hugged and kissed his girlfriend, his performance was greeted at ringside with an approving hum. Behind me, George Foreman’s brother, promoter Roy Foreman, sat beside Bert Sugar, the legendary former editor of Ring magazine. Sugar’s signature is an oversized fedora, an unlit cigar, and a sense of having seen it all, often to his regret.
Foreman asked him what he thought of this new one.
Four-word reply: “Too nice a kid.”
ELEVEN DAYS LATER, JESUS LEFT THE country, taking little but clothes, his bag of gear, and his dalmatian. Once again he went to Delicias. One day he returned to his birthplace, Parral; he met his 96-year-old great-grandmother and saw the Pancho Villa tourist attractions. He found a gym in Delicias and capable sparring partners. “I think I’ll be happy,” he had told me before he left the U.S. “Finally I get a chance to rest. Finally I get to kick back and, hell, enjoy a cold Corona.”
But Jesus went to Mexico with the necessary patience of someone doing time. His lifeline is the telephone. In Atlantic City I had met Steve Farhood, a former editor of Ring magazine who now provides boxing commentary for the CNN/SI network. “The contract with Main Events was a major breakthrough for him,” Farhood said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten the exposure. He’s an entertaining young offensive fighter, very exciting to watch. His big chance is going to come sometime in 1998.”
Only not in Mexico. Trying to maintain his world ranking and a chance at a title shot, Jesus accepted a fight in Mexico City this April against a journeyman opponent, but for less than 5 percent of the money he had made in Atlantic City. In the Mexican fight business, he’s an interloper, a foreigner. Jesus’ talent and appeal have made him a commodity in America, and it may be that, like a few athletes and show business professionals, he’ll get a special kind of visa and be allowed to pursue his opportunity in the United States. Among the criteria are the applicant’s economic value and international standing. After the Dorsey fight, the alphabet soup of boxing organizations had him ranked as high as first, second, and third in the world standings. But such a visa would be good only as long as he’s practicing his skill. What happens in a few years, when the prizefighter has taken all the punches he can?
“At the end of his career,” O’Shea mused about Jesus, “I wonder where he’ll be. Five percent of the boxers make eighty-five percent of the money. Those are lousy numbers, especially for the little guys. Boxing is experiencing its last gasp. All the grand heroes are gone. Ah, but Gabriel, my wife and I talk of him still. He had this joy—the joy of the warrior. I read about great generals and battles and see ones like him marching in the ranks. None of us will ever understand how he got mixed up in that robbery.”
The irony of Jesus’ exile is that he represents the wan hope of the American criminal justice system—a male youth who commits an act of violence, accepts his punishment, grows up, and rehabilitates himself. But the law says that only citizens rate a second chance. The old country, he finds, is no longer his country. So he bangs on the bags and waits, a contender in no-man’s-land.
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