The Little One

The Little One Ignacio V. (for nothing) Teran was undersized from the day he was born in 1933. As he grew up in the slums of Los Angeles, where his mother supported the family as a railroad car worker, he was always too little and too good-looking to get along with the rest of the boys. So he learned to fight.

He learned other things. Accused of stabbing a boy in a brawl, he spent time in the Preston School of Industry (a reform school), where "I learned everything dirty there is to know about life." At Preston, he also learned about heroin. At the age of 16, soon after getting out of Preston, he took his first "pop" of heroin as casually as another youngster might take a bottle of soda. He did it because the bigger boys wouldn't take him to the beach with them unless he did.

But "Keeny" (a corruption of the Spanish for "little one") Teran, was also and up & coming bantamweight (118 lbs.) boxer. As an amateur, he was beaten only once. As a professional, Keeny was hailed as a coming champion (16 wins, one draw) ; last year he won the boxing writers' "Fighter of the Year" award. Then, one night, his heroin-ravaged body failed to respond. Keeny took a savage beating from Hawaii's Tommy Umeda, a man he had beaten twice before.

The beating put Keeny on heroin more heavily than ever. Soon he was pawning his possessions to buy the stuff. Although he was devoted to his wife Sally and daughter Celia, Keeny could not quit the habit. He decided to commit suicide. Then Los Angeles Mirror Reporter Lou Larkin, tipped off to the story, caught up with 19-year-old Keeny Teran.

Keeny had tried the wrenching, agonizing struggle to shake the habit once before, and had fled from a Texas cure center after two weeks. This time, with Reporter Larkin's encouragement, the little round-faced Mexican-American boy went to a boxers' training camp and fought himself back into shape. Last week, on the eve of his first comeback fight, the Mirror broke the story all over Page One.

Keeny was so ashamed and so frightened by the publicity that he threatened to punch Reporter Larkin. The afternoon before the fight, one of Keeny's cynical compatriots sneered: "Going to take some junk into the ring with ya?"

But that night, with 6,500 fans rooting for him, Keeny, his nose smashed, his left hand sprained, came off the canvas after a sixth-round, eight-count knockdown and won a unanimous decision over his old tormentor, Tommy Umeda. By week's end Keeny was swamped with offers from Chicago, Honolulu. Mexico and the Philippines. But Keeny, hoping he has the habit licked at last, is setting his sights on the top. Says Keeny: "I'd really like to fight in the Garden. That's it -- the big apple. I'd die if I got to fight there."

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