Scary night at the Forum, where a riot broke out after a fight.

Lionel Rose defeated Chucho Castillo in a split decision to retain
the world’s bantamweight boxing title, then fans started throwing what
The Times’ Frank Finch called "a barrage of bottles and debris."

"Fires were set high in the arena’s cheap seats," Finch wrote. "At
one time 11 separate blazes were counted. The Inglewood Fire Department
was called to save the building."

The next fight on the card was stopped in the third round and the final fight of the night was canceled.

In a stories the following day in The Times, the promoter claimed
that troublemakers had been hired to ruin the fight. But Dial Torgerson
reported that "more than 5,000 Mexican nationals crossed the border in
cars and buses" to see the fight. "The cheapest seat in the Forum was
$7.50 and many Mexicans paid $35 for main-floor seats–a large sum in
Mexico.

"Receivers were ripped from pay telephones outside and the phone
books burned. Numerous cars were damaged. Two remained in the
debris-filled parking lot Saturday: a Mustang with four slashed tires
and a 1967 Cadillac which had been set afire."

No arrests were made, police said in part because of the number of
people involved. "By the time we got enough reinforcements there those
people just got back in their buses and disappeared," an unnamed
Inglewood police official told Torgerson. "How could we say which ones
threw which rocks?"

Torgerson’s story included a tacky comment from Jack Kent Cooke,
whose Lakers and Kings teams played in the Forum. Repairs were made in
time for the Kings to play the next night. "Cooke, outwardly
unperturbed amid the drifting smoke and breaking bottles of the Friday
night fight aftermath told an associate: "I’m glad Mexicans don’t like
hockey."

Stupid thing to say, no matter the situation.

–Keith Thursby

Postscript: Dial Torgerson died in 1983 covering the war in Nicaragua. He and photographer Richard Cross were leaving the small town of Las Trojes on the Nicaraguan border when their car was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and machine gun fire. –lrh