By Zak Mucha
This is the main event in the Ramada Rumble, a fight card put together by boxing promoter Bobby Hitz, who’s sitting at a ringside table just outside the spotlight.
“Look at you under that umbrella,” says Rick Larson, harassing his childhood friend. “Legs crossed, drinking your coffee…” The two men are seated on the open patio of Nana’s, Bobby Hitz’s restaurant at the corner of State and Kinzie. After the midday rush the restaurant has emptied and Hitz is taking a break, enjoying some unseasonably decent weather. “The godfather,” Larson continues. “What we need now is the music.” Grinning, he yells to a busboy with a black eye resembling an ink spill and asks if he has the sound track to The Godfather on a CD somewhere in back.
Since 1991 Hitz has been fanning the embers of Chicago boxing by promoting fights four or five times a year at the Bismarck Hotel and at the Ramada and Hyatt hotels out by O’Hare. His regular fighters are all Chicago guys and Hitz has taken them under his wing. He can rattle off their names in machine-gun fashion: Mike “the Fly” Garcia, Mike Jankovich, Eddie White, Tony LaRosa, Ed Krusnecki. Hitz refers to himself as a “fighter-friendly promoter.” Garcia, a 21-0 featherweight, calls him “fair” and “down-to-earth.” He’s also been called “a lamb surviving in a lion’s den.”
“I need a cigar,” Hitz announces, as Larson and Ponti riff on dialogue from Raging Bull. Ponti takes a humidor from its plastic bag and sets it on the table next to his chicken and soup.
“I’m hungry.”
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After they check out their upstairs suites, Hitz and Larson find some of the regulars sitting on a bank of sofas in the lobby. Jim Holly is bringing two fighters in from Ohio; Laury Meyer is a cornerman for the Galaxy Gym in Detroit; J.C. Gutierrez helps Hitz match fighters; and George Hernandez from Chicago’s Garfield Park manages three of the fighters on tonight’s card.
