Thrill Isn’t Gone After 15 Years : Boxing: Carlos Palomino, then a little-known challenger from Westminster, won WBC welterweight title in 1976.

TOPANGA CANYON —  Fifteen years seem to have sneaked right past Carlos Palomino.

“Oh, man,” he said, covering his face and laughing. “It’s been that long already? Don’t tell me that.”

Time not only flies, it breaks the sound barrier sometimes.

On June 22, 1976, Palomino shocked everyone but himself and his trainers by knocking out Britain’s John Stracey at Wembley Empire Pool in London to win the World Boxing Council welterweight title.

Not many people took Palomino, a 26-year-old, little-known challenger from Westminster, seriously in those days. Not the British press, which brashly predicted the round in which Stracey would finish off his opponent. Not British promoter Mickey Duff, who saw the bout as nothing more than a tuneup for the champion. And not Stracey, who apparently was still basking in the glory of winning the crown from Jose Napoles six months earlier.

But he soon found out that Palomino wasn’t there on a tourist visa, or to simply take his $10,000 cut and run.

“I was so confident going into that fight,” Palomino said recently. “I saw Stracey fight Napoles and (Hedgemon) Lewis, and I saw something in his style that I thought was perfect for my style. He was a very straight-up kind of fighter. A classic European-style fighter. He protected his head, but his body was always open. The plan was to go to the body until his hands dropped and then move up to the head.”

It worked. Palomino unleashed one combination after another, and by the 10th round of the 15-round bout, Stracey was beaten. He managed to hang on until the 12th, when a vicious left hook to the liver floored him. Stracey got up, but Palomino dropped him again. The end came at 1 minute 35 seconds of the round, when referee Sid Nathan stepped in.

Palomino said he sensed from the beginning that the championship would be his.

“I knew it was just a matter of time before I knocked him out,” Palomino said. “It was just blind confidence I could beat him. When I had a guy in front of me who was stationary, I knew I could beat them. That’s how Stracey fought. He didn’t move much.”

Said Jackie McCoy, Palomino’s manager: “Noe (Cruz, the trainer) and I felt very good about his chances also. Carlos had looked very good in the gym. . . . He kept hitting Stracey with body blows and kept breaking him. Carlos more or less walked through his punches.”

While Palomino’s three-man entourage--which was strapped for cash and had to rely on sparring partners provided by the promoter instead of taking their own--thought Palomino could win, Cruz added a touch of surrealism.

“The one thing that was very weird was that Noe told me after the fight that he had dreamed that I would knock him (Stracey) out in the later rounds,” Palomino said. “That was very odd. Almost scary.”

After the bout, Palomino retreated to his hotel and tried to call home. And tried. And tried again. He desperately wanted to share the euphoria with his family, but the line was always busy. Beating Stracey had been easier than making a phone connection.

“Every time I dialed, the line was busy,” Palomino said. “It turned out that all my friends and relatives were calling my parents. I was in my room alone with a bottle of champagne the hotel manager had sent up congratulating me. It was frustrating. I wanted to talk to someone at home so bad. I was ready to bust.”

Truly busted was Stracey, who openly cried in the ring that night.

It’s the middle of another sunny morning in this community in the Santa Monica Mountains between the San Fernando Valley and the Pacific, and Palomino is at home with his 6-year-old daughter, Chontel, one of his three children from two marriages.

They entertain a guest in the den of a Mediterranean-style house Palomino bought in 1983. A three-piece bookshelf holds numerous trophies, and the walls are covered with sports plaques and awards presented to Palomino for his athletic accomplishments and participation in civic affairs. There is a large photograph of one of the legendary Joe Louis-Billy Conn fights and a picture of Muhammad Ali, both bought at auction.

One spot is reserved for one of Palomino’s prized possessions, a drawing made by his 20-year-old son, Carlos Jr., as a Christmas gift last year. It depicts, in what could be an interpretation of the Luis Firpo-Jack Dempsey heavyweight fight in 1923, a boxer falling through the ropes while his opponent looks menacingly from the ring.

But the giveaway of what Palomino is about these days sits on a coffee table. It’s a script for a boxing film titled “Kwela Man,” one of several acting projects Palomino said he has in the works. He said there are also plans for co-starring roles in “Night of the Coyote,” a film about illegal aliens crossing the Mexico-United States border, and “Jo,” a movie starring Lauren Hutton as an undercover cop who hunts down the drug cartel kingpin who murdered her husband. Palomino is to be her partner.

Palomino also wants to adapt to the screen “The Mexican,” a short story by Jack London about a young revolutionary during the days of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata who uses his boxing skills to win money and buy arms for the cause.

But finding success in Hollywood hasn’t gone quite the way Palomino envisioned when he retired from boxing in 1979. Encouraged initially by a guest appearance on the television series “Taxi” while still world champion, Palomino decided to pursue a show business career. He landed TV parts on “The White Shadow,” “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” and “Hill Street Blues.” He thought a star was about to be born.

It turned out to be false labor.

“When I came into the business, I was very naive,” said Palomino, whose tanned and unscarred face is that of someone younger than 41 and whose disarming smile is that of a matinee idol. “I saw a lot of athletes getting work in acting. I thought that if I studied and prepared myself, the opportunities would be there. But over the years, I’ve found that there’s not a whole lot of work for Hispanic actors.

“I read that things are supposed to change, but I don’t see it. They are offering the same kind of roles to Hispanic actors they were offering in ‘79--drug addicts, drug lords, pushers. I don’t see any progress.”

In 1988, Palomino figured he had finally secured a substantial role when he got the lead in “Fist of Steel,” the story of a Vietnam veteran who loses his hands in the war, has them replaced with steel hands and is hired by the U.S. government to seek and destroy a drug ring. Not a potential masterpiece, but Lee Majors made a living playing a bionic guy, so why not?

Unfortunately for Palomino, the film never made the theaters. Palomino said the producers sued each other, and the movie was shelved. It was recently released as a video.

With no steady flow of acting jobs, Palomino took the next best option--commercials. He was featured in two Miller Lite ads, including the “don’t drink the water” spot. It was a sort of pseudo-show business, and it helped pay bills, but it wasn’t exactly stardom.

“They (commercials) were beneficial monetarily. I made really good money on them,” Palomino said. “I was one of the first Hispanics selling products on American television. It helped in some ways, but it didn’t do much as far as getting me a break in Hollywood.”

The attempts to land that big, knockout role have taken a toll. He was divorced in May from his second wife, stunt woman Cris Thomas-Palomino, after an eight-year marriage. Palomino said two failed marriages were hard to handle.

“This career (acting) has really humbled me,” Palomino said. “The problems in finding work had a lot to do with my second marriage falling apart. We had some financial pressures that were difficult to live with. It was depressing. She hung in there, but it just came at a time when things didn’t work out for us.

“It’s been difficult for myself not to be able to keep my marriages together. Those are real downers in my life. I believe in marriage as an institution.”

Palomino said he has remained friends with his former wives. He also spends time with his children--Carlos Jr., a former basketball standout at Los Amigos High who will transfer in the fall from Cerritos College to the College of Idaho on a basketball scholarship (he’ll major in architecture); 13-year-old Alina, Chontel and 10-year-old Kevin, Cris’ son from a previous marriage.

When he is not with the children, Palomino devotes his time to staying in shape--he runs daily and works out with a punching bag in his garage and on an exercise machine; motivational speeches at schools on the importance of an education and the evils of drugs, and with color commentary on boxing cards out of Hawaii and Santa Monica for the FNN Score cable network.

And he’s never too far away from a phone. The studios could be calling.

If Palomino hasn’t become an acting star, he still is a boxing celebrity.

Born in the village of San Luis in Sonora, Mexico, Palomino was 10 when he moved to Santa Ana with his parents and 10 brothers and sisters. His father, Pablo, found a job in a flower shop and later as a construction worker.

Palomino attended public schools and eventually went to Westminster High School, where he played baseball briefly before graduating in 1968. He planned to become a welder after graduating. But Cruz found him at the Stanton Athletic Club, where Palomino was working out to stay in shape, and got him into boxing.

Palomino was drafted into the Army in 1970, and because boxers received preferential treatment, he got into the sport full-bore, eventually becoming the Army welterweight champion.

After his discharge, Palomino enrolled at Orange Coast College and then went to Cal State Long Beach, where he graduated with a degree in recreation. He was the first member of his family to attend college.

While in school, he launched a pro boxing career. His first pro bout was on Sept. 14, 1972, at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles against Javier Martinez. He got the decision and $80 for his trouble, but the fight almost didn’t get off the ground.

“It was supposed to be a six-rounder,” Palomino said. “We got to the Olympic at seven, which was an hour before I was supposed to fight. I got on at 11. After the main event. I think there were 10 people left in the place. The referee and the judges wanted to leave, so they cut the fight to four rounds and the rounds from three minutes to two minutes. I thought, ‘Do I really want to pursue this?’ ”

He did, and four years later, he was ready to challenge for the title. After beating Stracey for the crown, Palomino made his first title defense against Armando Muniz in January, 1977, at the Olympic.

Although it was a guaranteed $60,000, the biggest payday of Palomino’s pro career to that point, his manager, McCoy, didn’t want any part of the veteran Muniz, a crowd favorite in Los Angeles. But Duff had options on Palomino’s next two fights, and he sold them to former Los Angeles promoters Aileen Eaton and Don Chargin. They picked Muniz.

“That was probably my toughest fight,” Palomino said. “I guess he had the same kind of confidence I had when I went to London. We used to spar in the same gym, and he used to beat me up. But he forgot that I had progressed.”

Palomino beat Muniz on a technical knockout in 15 rounds. He defended his title successfully six more times before losing the belt in January, 1979, to Puerto Rico’s Wilfredo Benitez in San Juan. Palomino said he should have won the controversial split decision.

Coincidentally, Palomino’s last pro fight also took place on June 22, the same day he won the title. On that date in 1979, he lost a 10-round decision to Roberto Duran in what he thought was going to be an elimination bout for a shot at Benitez’s title. But three days before the Palomino-Duran fight, Benitez signed to meet Sugar Ray Leonard instead. The news was devastating.

“I took the fight (against Duran) because I wanted to get my title back and retire,” Palomino said. “That (Benitez going against Leonard) took the wind out of me. I knew that was the end, and I fought that way. I was very uninspired. I just wanted to move on with the rest of my life.

“But I have no regrets. I accomplished a lot in boxing. I’m very pleased with my career. That night in London is one I’ll never forget. That was an unbelievable feeling.”