His ring return has kept Tapia out of trouble since — boxing was a condition of his release from prison — but now he wants to retire. His disproportionately large knuckles bulge through the skin as he twists his palm skywards. Teresa reaches over and squeezes the hands that won four world titles in three divisions — super-flyweight, bantamweight, and featherweight. She has mixed emotions about him quitting the sport; it has been a rare constant in their perilous journey together.
Johnny clearly still adores boxing. He is easily distracted as we all sit together deep inside the mysterious green labyrinth that is the MGM Grand.
He leaps up, like a puppy dog, and gallops towards the fighters. Johnny chuckles excitedly and hangs off their shoulders as someone takes a photograph of the three of them together. His laughter is curly and instantly infectious. Teresa loves it when her husband chuckles like that; it means he is in a good place. But happiness is a daily grind for Tapia. The lines on his face that greedily sink into his ageing skin provide clues of his misery.
His story is well documented but remains as horrifically shocking today as it ever was. His father was murdered before he was born.
Seven years later Johnny was on a bus that crashed, killing the pregnant woman who sat alongside him. At the age of eight, he looked out of his bedroom window and saw his mother chained up in the back of a pick up truck, being driven away by her lover.
She was subsequently stabbed 22 times with a screwdriver, and left for dead. She was 32 years old, and from that unthinkable day, Johnny pledged that he would not live beyond that age. The torment threatens to break his voice but he manages to resist. Dealing with setbacks came with warning signs for Tapia and those around him.
He could go missing for days and had overdosed on coke many times before. By , and at the age of 35, Tapia fought his most high-profile bout to date.
Once again, it meant more hurt as Marco Antonio Barrera dominated their encounter. Fights became infrequent as Johnny went off the rails more and more. Those missing days sometimes turned into AWOL weeks. Retiring in before coming back yet again in , it was that finalization which led to further tragedy. Just one month after what was billed as his retirement victory transpired, Tapia was rushed to hospital with yet another overdose of cocaine.
After recovering, Tapia never fully forgave himself for the death of Robert, who was 39 years old. He was just A man already constantly struggling was forever being tested.
Pushed to the edge and not only inside the ring. In , on the back of another period of darkness, Tapia made a three-fight comeback. All victories, Johnny finally closed his fighting chapter in June The much-loved multi-weight champion was now an ex-boxer. He turned to the coaching of up and coming youngsters in order to plug the gap.
He reached 45 before his tormented life finally came to an end at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Unfortunately he was taking prescription medication at the time, but it was because everything in his body was broken. His induction comes five years almost to the day that he was found dead in his home. It will be a bittersweet moment for Teresa. She will give the acceptance speech her late husband is not around to make, and their three sons will be there to add support.
There will be cheers, which Tapia loved. And there will be plenty of people, which he loved, too. His whole life was about people. It was a life that started without the most important person, his father, who was killed before he was born.
It was a homecoming for a man who had never before been to the place, an ovation from boxing fans in celebration of a man they all adored. It's a big story to process in just an hour, but director Eddie Alcazar makes expert use of haunting interviews with Tapia.
The result is a special piece that really captures the essence of who Johnny was. Inside the ring he had peace. Outside the ring? He had almost no peace. It was full of a lot of dark moments, but also moments of light.
And hope. It's an extremely disturbing story in many ways—but an uplifting story in some ways too. There was something about Tapia that made you want to root for him to make it.
In the end, he did. When he passed away in , fans waited impatiently for the autopsy report. It was assumed his demons, in the end, had gotten to Johnny one last time.
Instead, it turns out his heart could only stand being Johnny Tapia for 45 years. Some people float through life. But Johnny Tapia? He lived. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were compiled firsthand.
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