Climb

This chapter details Gaspar's first televised Monday Night Fight. His opponent was a man named Hardy “Bazooka” Smallwood. Like Gaspar, Smallwood was familiar with long, hard roads. He had been born in the historically Native American community of Indian Woods, North Carolina, in 1933. He grew up poor. Hardy's rural world allowed him to learn to hunt as a child, and he still recalls tracking down rabbits with a cord on frosty winter mornings. Gaspar Ortega was fight number twenty-four for Bazooka. He beat Gaspar soundly for ten rounds, easily getting the unanimous decision. But Gaspar soon proved himself a dynamic TV presence with a unique, unpredictable style and a definite willingness to get in there and brawl.