On February 20th, 1993, Greg “Mutt” Haugen fought an at his peak Julio Cesar Chavez inside an absolute bearpit that was masquerading as a boxing arena. The Chavez-Haugen fight broke all attendance records, with over 130,000 fans, almost all of them passionate Mexicans, on hand inside The Azteca Stadium to witness the action. And what totally one-sided action it turned out to be.
Haugen, as crazy as he was fearless, had insulted the Mexican idol by stating that the reigning 140 pound king with the 84-0 record had mostly fought “Tijuana taxi drivers.” Haugen, a former IBF champ at 135 and a former WBO champ at 140 who was now 32-4, had crossed the line. Practically all of Mexico hated him.
Here, now aged 63 and sadly having been diagnosed with colon cancer some months back, Haugen recalls the Chavez fight and all that lead up to it:
Q: The Chavez fight is 30 years old. You really did have some nerve saying what you said going into that fight, as tough as you were!
Greg Haugen: “Well, time does go. Yeah, I fought a few tough guys, good guys, and I beat some of ’em. Chavez, that fight, I didn’t really train a lot. I was going through a messy divorce, and it’s hard separating from your childhood sweetheart. My mind wasn’t there in Mexico and I didn’t want to be there. But I showed up ‘cos I’m a man of my word. Also, the altitude over there was tough and I didn’t get ready for that. I was in Mexico maybe two weeks before [the fight]. Matter of fact, that fight, that loss, is the biggest regret of my life. I still think about it now. If I had been in top condition, like I should have been, I’d have beaten him. I would have been able to shake those punches off. Still today, I kick myself is the ass for that fight. ”
Q: Talk about the hostile crowd and your great line that Chavez had fought Tijuana taxi drivers!
G.H: “Yeah, it was a hostile crowd. They all thought I was scared to fight him [Chavez]. But going into the other guy’s backyard and getting no support, with nobody cheering for me – I was used to that. My whole career I had that. But Mexico, the conditions were hostile. Don King, he said that I’d said things about the Mexican people, me calling them spics, and I never said that. That guy just wanted to build the fight. On the walk to the ring, they threw cups of piss at us. My trainer said, ‘no, they were cups of beer.’ I said, ‘when have you ever seen a Mexican throw beer away!’ It was piss, no doubt. And they threw bags of shit as us, and they threw coins at us. Prior to the fight, the federales were there when we wanted to go get something to eat, when we wanted to go any place. Even when I went running there in Mexico, I had people harassing me. But at the same time, some of the people there, they didn’t like Chavez. Some of ’em were actually rooting for me.”
Q: What went wrong in the fight and how hard were his body shots? Going in, you really thought you could win?
G.H: “I’m pretty sure that if I’d been in shape like I was for Ray Mancini or for Hector [Camacho], I’d have had a real good chance of winning that fight. But in the first round, he countered my jab, my lazy jab that I threw, and he hit me with a hard right hand. That was the first punch he hit me with. That took my legs away and that was it, I was just trying to get my legs back. Finally, in the fourth round, I did get my legs back and I started going after him a little bit, and I got caught again. I was a pretty good defensive fighter, or so I thought. But even when I did get hit with those kind of shots, most of the time I could weather the storm because I was in good shape. But against Chavez, I wasn’t in good shape. But as far as his body punches, they didn’t hurt me that much – I had a pretty strong stomach. I did a lot of sit-ups. But saying that, if you get hit with a good liver shot, I don’t care if it’s Elmer Fudd that hits you, you’re gonna go down.”
Q: Did you dislike Chavez, as you did Vinny Paz and Hector Camacho?
G.H: “Well, Vinny, he was a pretty white boy and he thought he was a lot better than me. He said he was gonna knock me out, do this and do that. But after the [first] fight (a 15 round decision win for Paz), he spent three days in the hospital and he still wanted to fight [me] again! So I beat him up again [Haugen getting the decision in the return), as he was still running his mouth. Hector, I had sparred before, up in Alaska, and he thought I was some hill-billy white boy. We sparred and he started dropping f*****g bombs on me. I thought, okay, you wanna throw f*****g bombs, and I dropped bombs on him. Then he left. Hector’s trainer said Hector had to leave. I saw him later that night, in a strip club! He didn’t have to leave, he just didn’t want to spar me no more.
“Chavez, I knew he was a great fighter, of course. But I didn’t think he was as great as the press, particularly the Mexican press, were making him out to be. A lot of fights can come down to mind games, you know? That’s why I said the cab driver thing. But dislike? Nah, not really with Chavez. But I don’t think he liked me. I see him sometimes now, and he still doesn’t really like me. He respects me, because we got into The Guinness Book of World Records, for the biggest crowd. But he never had time for me after I said those things about him to his face, in his country. And also, I think he knows he fought me when I wasn’t in great shape and that maybe that fight was a lot easier [for him] than it should’ve been.
“But he was a great fighter, one of the greatest ever, and me knowing that I had that fight when I was not in the best of shape, that’s something I have to live with. I made my bed and I have to lie in it. But I really do feel it would have been a totally different fight had I not been going through that messy divorce at the time and if I had been in great shape like I was for my other big fights.”
Q: You fought so many greats, like Chavez, Pernell Whitaker, Paz, Camacho. You have some career to look back on.
G.H: “Yeah, I do. And some of those guys have passed now; Hector, and Frankie Randall, who beat Chavez. I’ve just found out that I have colon cancer and I have to go for more tests, to see how bad it is. Hopefully I beat that, live a few more years and get to see my grandkids grow up. If not, if they can’t fix it, well, I guess we’re only here for a short while anyway. And there’s nothing you can do about it. You know, shit happens.”
