The Ghost of Johnny Tapia. Paul Zanon

      Understandably, Johnny was left emotionally scarred. Irreparably, to be more accurate. In the coming years he refused to go to her grave and on one of the rare occasions he did muster the strength to see her resting site, he tried to take his life. He threw himself on top of a large knife, but somehow only the tip penetrated. Johnny took that as a sign that it was not his time.

      This would not be his only tango with death.

      Chapter 2

      Meeting His Match

      “If someone had said to me at the age of nineteen, ‘Hey Teresa. What interest do you have in the 115-pound division?’ I probably would have thought they were joking and said, ‘Do people even fight at that kind of a weight?’”

      —Teresa Tapia

      Turning to boxing at the age of nine, Johnny had a very impressive amateur career, becoming a two-weight national Golden Gloves champion. Happy with what he'd achieved, he threw his hat into the professional boxing ring on March 28, 1988.

      With his relentless come-forward style and often lighthearted presence, he quickly became recognized by the media as a crowd pleaser, an entertainer. Having won the USBA super-flyweight title on May 10, 1990, against Roland Gomez, which he went on to defend four times in the next five months, Johnny boasted an unbeaten record of twenty-one victories and one draw and was being lined up for a world-title shot and a million-dollar Pepsi commercial.

      Unfortunately, his passion and desire in the ring played second fiddle to a destructive lifestyle, one that a twenty-year-old Teresa Chavez, now Tapia, witnessed in horror hours after being married.

Johnny hadn't divulged much of himself to Teresa prior to getting hitched. He had gang connections, had been in and out of jail, and was facing prison time for intimidating a witness in a murder trial. That last action was the reason his professional boxing license had been suspended. Without the strict discipline of professional prizefighting, Johnny was a lost soul, drinking and drugging himself into oblivion.

      He was pronounced DOA on five occasions. “Five times that I know of—or, should I say, that I was aware of when he was with me,” says Teresa. The first time was on the day of their wedding and the second was in the fall of 1993, when he'd been found in the streets of Albuquerque with a stab wound in his head, having also overdosed on narcotics.

      Brushing off his second encounter with death, on December 23, 1993, fresh out of a three-month jail stint for breaking his probation conditions for driving under the influence of alcohol, Johnny came home, promising Teresa he was a changed man. They had recently lost a baby, four months into pregnancy, and he knew she was fed up with his antics. So he was on his best behavior, for a number of hours at least. On Christmas Eve, Johnny decided to visit his grandparents and promised he'd be back soon.