Here is an article I wrote for my uni newspaper (I'm a journalism student) about former Australian middleweight and Commonwealth super middleweight champ Lou Cafaro.
A packed Challenge Stadium. At stake, the Australian middleweight boxing title. After 11 rounds of punishment at the hands of Victorian Craig Trotter, Perth’s Lou Cafaro trudges wearily back to his stool. Throughout the fight Trotter has outboxed Cafaro and opened up a big points lead. The 11th round is a nightmare for Lou, and the referee is on the verge of stopping the fight as Trotter batters Cafaro from one side of the ring to the other. As Lou sits down his trainer, Laurie Flanders, is disgusted. “You’re getting hit with everything, I’m chucking the towel in.” Cafaro pleads with him for one more round. He gets it, and half way through round 12, the last round of the fight, Cafaro lands a huge right hand to Trotter’s jaw. He remains upright but Lou jumps on him and his follow up barrage forces Trotter’s corner to throw in the towel. The fight’s ending is pure Hollywood. It is April 20, 1990 and Lou Cafaro has regained the title that was stripped from him four years earlier when he was sentenced to three years jail for burglary.
Imprisonment is a recurring theme in the Lou Cafaro story. He has served numerous sentences for theft and, most recently, served nine years for his part in a West Perth bank robbery. In spite of this, nobody contacted in the writing of this story had a bad word to say about the man. Craig Trotter called him a “gentleman, in and out of the ring” and expressed concern at Cafaro’s legal troubles. Laurie Flanders said Lou was “always welcome in my house.” For his part, Lou was relaxed as he entertained me in his Bassendean home. Only a badly mangled left hand, boxer’s nose and scar tissue around the eyes hint at his former profession. Ironically, if it were not for jail, Cafaro would perhaps never have found his talent for boxing. It was while serving time for theft in Fremantle Prison as a teenager that Lou was first introduced to the sport that would change his life.
“A boxer got locked up and he just happened to be the prized pupil of Joe Fazio at the Balga Boxing Club,” Cafaro said. “He organized it so he could come into the prison to train him but they had to invite everyone along. I thought ‘great, I want to see this’.”
Cafaro took to the training like a duck to water and it wasn’t long before Fazio asked him to spar with one his gym’s best young boxers. Lou responded well and held his own against the state Golden Gloves champion. Upon his release, Cafaro began looking for work but with his record it was a difficult search. He showed up at the Balga Boxing Club to sound out Joe Fazio about the possibility of fighting for a living.
“I asked him ‘does it pay?’ He said ‘no, you should have a few amateur fights first.’ I told him I wasn’t interested,” Cafaro said. “He told me going professional was too hard but I needed money. Eventually he said come back on Monday and we’ll do some training.”
Cafaro must have impressed because by Thursday Fazio had booked his first professional fight and had signed Lou to a managerial contract. The bout was scheduled for the following weekend, July 10 1984, at the old Function Centre in Perth against David Corbett. Cafaro won on points over four rounds. He was paid $160 and his professional boxing career was off and running.
In the ring, Lou’s style was simple and brutally effective: he walked up and didn’t stop throwing power punches until somebody yielded. He banked on his power, stamina and toughness being too much for his opponents and, more often than not, he was right.
Over the next year Cafaro compiled a record of seven wins and two losses before earning a shot at the Australian middleweight title against the tough Queenslander Emmanuel Otti. Lou outpointed Otti over 12 hard rounds and was crowned Australian champion.
But while his star was rising in the boxing world, Lou was finding it hard to make ends meet. Because of his growing reputation, it was proving hard to find opponents willing to face him. In order to secure fights, he had to give up more and more of his end of the purse. Because of his training commitments, holding a job was impossible. With most of his purse money going on training expenses, old temptations began to resurface.
“Somebody whispered something in my ear. It was a break on a house,” Lou said.
In June 1986, at the age of 24, Cafaro was convicted of breaking and entering a Mount Lawley home and was sentenced to three years jail. He was immediately stripped of his Australian title and, at a time when he was being groomed for a shot at a world title, had to spend a large chunk of his prime behind bars. His relationship with Fazio soured and, when the managerial contract expired, Lou elected not to re-sign.
When released in 1988, Lou returned to the ring determined to win back his crown and push for a world title. To guide him he chose respected Perth trainer Laurie Flanders, who had refereed a couple of his earlier contests and was also training world-ranked junior welterweight Tony Jones.
“Training Lou was outstandingly easy,” Flanders said. “He gave his best all the time and he never knocked around his sparring partners. He preferred to take rather than give.”
Under Flanders tutelage, Cafaro reeled off four straight wins by knockout before being matched against Graeme Looker for the vacant Australian middleweight crown. Lou stopped Looker in three rounds and was once again champion of his country.
In his first defence Cafaro was matched against the highly skilled Victorian Craig Trotter who put on a boxing clinic and knocked Lou out in the 11th round in Sydney. The pain of that defeat burned in Cafaro and after a tune-up fight in Perth he challenged Trotter to a rematch in an attempt to regain the title.
“It was a very hard fight,” said Trotter of the rematch.
“Lou was probably the most durable fighter I ever fought. I’ve fought a lot of very good fighters, world champions, and none of them had his intensity.”
The second Trotter fight and the amazing come from behind victory marked the peak of Cafaro’s career. After moving up in weight to beat Rod Carr and become the Commonwealth super-middleweight champion, Lou’s life and career seemed to go into freefall.
By the time 1991 had arrived Lou had a two year old son, Jason, to support and he decided to defend his Commonwealth title in England against the tough Brit Kid Milo.
Laurie Flanders, who had never wanted Cafaro to move up in weight, had reservations about the fight from the outset.
“I said ‘what the hell are you doing traipsing around the world fighting big blokes?’ It’s hard enough beating little blokes,” Flanders said.
“But he wanted the fight and he had him (Milo) done as a dinner then bang, tenth round, he knocks Lou out.”
Three more knockout losses followed and that was enough to convince Lou that his best days were behind him.
“I lost my last four by knockout, that put me on the critical list, but I knew my time was up. I wasn’t interested anymore,” Lou said.
On Monday December 9, 1991 Lou Cafaro announced his retirement from boxing. Three days later he was asked by a friend to accompany him on a visit to a Bayswater spraypainting shop. Lou’s mate was owed money and thought that the presence of a professional boxer would encourage the debtor to pay up. The business owner produced a pistol and shot Cafaro twice. His arm was damaged badly enough to ensure that a comeback was out of the question.
In 1993 Lou and his partner celebrated the arrival of a baby girl, Jasmyn. But times were tough and for an ex-convict work was hard to find. In 1996 he was awarded $13,000 compensation for the injury to his arm but the money didn’t last long. Lou moved to Beverly to try and escape the temptations offered by his criminal contacts, but the pull was ever present.
At 11am on Friday May 22, 1998 Cafaro and an accomplice entered a Commonwealth Bank branch in Hay St, West Perth armed with a semi automatic pistol and a sawn-off shotgun. They took $23,000 but were intercepted by police as they attempted to change cars in an underground car park on Kings Park Road.
The next day Lou pleaded guilty to armed robbery and spent the next nine years in prison.
After a year of freedom, Cafaro seems to have found the peace that has eluded him for much of his life. He seems intent on working hard and being a positive influence on his children.
“In some ways I’ve walked right into the benefit of the boom,” he said.
“There is more work than what can be done and nobody asks any questions.”
“I’m just trying to stay out of jail. My kids are my priority now and I want to do right by them.”
Lou beams with pride as he tells me of his son’s first kickboxing bout, which resulted in a points victory. He seems hopeful for a brighter future and is working towards achieving it. It is this hope that means that while Lou Cafaro may have gone down, he is far from out.
