This is the second of a seven-part series on Olympic participants with ties to greater Port Arthur. Wednesday: High jumper Buddy Davis

Had the torch for the 12th Summer Olympiad ever been lit, Morris Carona and Richard Menchaca would have had a chance to make a case for Port Arthur as the boxing capital of the South.

Between the two fighters are four national Golden Gloves championships, although Carona had not yet won one when the 1940 Summer Games were scheduled. (He did win two of his five straight Texas Golden Gloves titles at the time.) The only thing that stood in their way of Olympic gold wasn’t any opponent, though.

It was war.

Tokyo won the bid for the Games four years earlier, but the national government was more interested in military matters. The second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, and a Japanese leader requested the Games be forfeited. Japan’s IOC delegates, however, believed the conflict would soon be over.

In that conflict, Japan invaded a weakened China and took the capital city of Nanking. Approximately 300,000 civilian deaths happened as a result.
The controversy over the operation caught the attention of the U.S., the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries that threatened to boycott the Tokyo Games. As some in Japan viewed the Games as “a Western intrusion,” the country’s government canceled the Olympiad in July 1938, two years before its scheduled launch, citing the need to conserve wartime resources.

Meanwhile, Menchaca, known to many as “Dick,” was building a championship boxing career.

Born in Mexico as a New Year’s baby in 1922, he became a Port Arthur resident at age 10, began boxing at 13 and was the first Texan to win the national Golden Gloves championship at age 18. He repeated as champion the next year, continuing to dominate the 118-pound (bantamweight) class.
Carona was born and raised in Port Arthur in 1918 (exact date unknown). By age 23, he was employed as a laborer in the grease plant of an oil refinery.

Although he had yet to win America’s biggest amateur boxing prize in 1940, he was voted captain of the Olympic team. He was in the midst of a stellar pre-professional career that saw him post a 72-12-3 record with 43 knockouts.

There was still hope for the Games to be held.

Detroit had placed a bid to host — the U.S. didn’t enter World War II until after the bombing on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 — but lost the bid to Helsinki, Finland. That country, which was considered neutral, was invaded by the Soviet Union and, as a result, was forced to cancel the Games in April 1940.

Menchaca’s and Carona’s Olympic hopes were iced forever, but not their boxing careers.

Carona won the 11th Naval District title in 1944 and prevailed in 15 of 25 professional fights between May 1945 and October 1947. He died on April 18, 1997.

Menchaca’s boxing adventures took him all the way to England, where as an Army service member he won the American Red Cross championship at the Rainbow Corner arena in London.

He returned to PA after World War II and organized a boxing academy while working for Texaco, where he was employed for 35 years. He died on July 28, 2005.

As for the Games, London was picked as the host for the 1944 Games (Detroit again was beaten out), but the war was still raging. The English city finally welcomed the Olympics in 1948.

But the world’s biggest athletic stage missed out on Port Arthur’s finest boxers.

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Sources: National WWII Museum; Chicago Tribune, National Golden Gloves Official Website; Wikipedia.

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I.C. Murrell: 721-2435. Twitter: @ICMurrellPANews