Final, Not Complete
Loveland, Colo. –
The knuckles on his right hand were flat like someone had sanded them down. I don’t remember him saying he ever fought bare-knuckled, and I don’t remember if he ever told me how they got that way. Maybe it was in the war.
Cliff Bergman was about 53 years old when I met him in 2003. I visited his one-story home in Rifle, Colorado, where his large Husky dog liked to prance around in the front yard. The dog looked wild and mean, but he was sweet and liked to lean up against your leg and ask for a pet. Cliff lived alone and said he didn’t like any of his neighbors. You could tell he was one of those guys too locked inside himself. That internal television set was always on, the volume was too loud, and other people just distracted him from what he wanted to see.
Today I am in Loveland to see Cliff’s niece, Joan. She asked to meet me at a coffee shop downtown, after I emailed her last week. I haven’t been here in years. Like most of the Front Range, Loveland is different now.
Cliff Bergman died two years ago at the tail end of the first Covid 19 rush. I only learned this last month when I got curious about him and found a short obit from 2021 in some online boxing newsletter. Rocky Mountain fighter Cliff Bergman dead at 71. Known for Suarez fight let down and Five Points scandal. Other than his age, birthplace, weight class, and the sad history I already knew about him, the obit contained one piece of news. Covid was suspected but Bergman had been suffering from pugilistic dementia for several years.
I felt some sadness learning he died, although I probably hadn’t thought about him since I’d written that 2003 profile. He was a basic man, but also had a deep and convoluted path in life, and I felt he deserved a better written farewell. On my way to the Front Range, I stopped in Rifle and found his grave at a cemetery atop a hill. It had strong trees and panoramic views of the mountains. Cliff’s headstone was simple and flat against the ground. Clifford L. Bergman, Corporal U.S. Army, Vietnam, Light Heavyweight. The Star of David on his tombstone was the only one I saw in that cemetery. He probably liked it that way. “I’m the only Jew out in these mountains,” he told me during our interview. “Only one fighting. Makes me special, right?”
Back in the late summer of 2003, a Colorado State Patrol captain in Eagle County first told me about Cliff. I was covering wildfires, traffic wrecks, local education, and what the editors called “economic news” – rewriting press releases about businesses opening or the burgeoning western Colorado vineyard craze.
“He was a trooper for a little while after the war,” the captain told me. “Then he left to box full time. Didn’t go so well for him in the end. He’s been bouncing around jobs and life for a while. He wants to tell his story. Says he has a screenplay or something. The boys are worried about him. Maybe a story in the paper could help him.”
I liked boxing and boxers. They were always good copy. And I was sick of waiting for a fire or interviewing school board officials.
So I called him, and he was excited to talk, one of those guys who wants to vomit everything to you on the phone before you can even set a time for a real interview. A week later I drove to his crusty house in Rifle, and he was waiting for me outside.
“You’re about to get a real story,” he said. He poured me some coffee. He wanted to start with the Suarez fight, but I asked him to start at the beginning. He gave me this: born in Grand Junction just after World War II. His parents owned a café there, Jews who’d fled Los Angeles for Colorado’s Western Slope. He and his older brother, Gary, grew up playing in the Colorado River and helping at the café.
“My parents weren’t your typical Jews,” he told me. “But we’d do Shabbat dinner and celebrate all the holidays. There wasn’t a synagogue within 300 miles. They wanted us to be real western kids. My dad was a small guy who’d gotten beat up a lot as a boy in L.A. They wanted us different than them.”
Cliff said he read a lot as a kid. At the county library he found a book about Jack Dempsey, the legendary fighter who grew up in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Cliff found his hero. He would challenge bigger boys to fights and, as a 1966 arrest record stated, sometimes he would take it too far. One day Cliff antagonized an older, stronger boy, who ended up knocking him down. Cliff followed the kid to the local drugstore and cracked him with a right hand as the boy was exiting the store. He broke the kid’s jaw, and the cops took him away.
Cliff spent five months in a juvenile detention facility. He finished high school and then joined the Army so he could fight in Vietnam. He was barely 18 when he landed in Southeast Asia. “Didn’t see many Jews there, either. I always like to stand out.”
“I missed boxing, and wished I could go pro right then. Lots of guys got killed around me and lots were always scared about dying. But I knew I would make it out of there,” he said. “When I was in juvie, I read most of the Old Testament. I loved King David. How he told Goliath exactly what he was going to do to the giant – ‘I am going to knock you down and cut off your head.’ Then he did it. Between King David and Jack Dempsey, I knew the man I was going to be. Vietnam wasn’t going to stop that.”
Cliff’s older brother, Gary, remained in Colorado during the war. He got a scholarship to the University of Colorado in Boulder. His bad eyesight kept him from Vietnam. “Made no sense to me,” Cliff said. “I passed the Army tests. And our eyes both come from the same place.”
Gary studied accounting and finance, and became a C.P.A. He moved to Denver after school, married his college girlfriend, and worked for several clients, including some boxing promoters.
Cliff survived Vietnam. He returned home to help around the café. By then his meek father was even meeker because of lung cancer and kidney problems. The old man would be dead within 18 months. The café died with him. “We sold it and got mom some money. Wasn’t enough to spread around to me and Gary. He didn’t need money anyway. I did. I joined the state patrol.”
Back then, the highways of western Colorado were sparse and far more primitive than they are now, and Cliff liked to push the limits of his patrol car’s engine. “I’d pretend I was a test pilot, like Chuck Yeager. See how fast that baby could get. I always drove with the window down. A few times I missed calls on the radio because the wind was too loud.”
Patrolman Bergman received mediocre performance ratings, according to the captain. But they all liked Cliff. One time he punched a motorist during a traffic stop just east of Glenwood Canyon. He claimed the guy moved first. “We never knew the real answer,” the captain said.
He had his first fight at a smoker in Montrose in 1972 while he was still a highway patrolman. He liked the setting because Jack Dempsy used to fight in that town. “Just like my hero. I knocked the other guy out in round 2. I wrote Dempsey a letter about it and sent it to his restaurant in New York City.” Dempsey never responded.
In 1976, after a series of victories, Cliff decided to leave the patrol and just box. I couldn’t find many clippings about his bouts, other than a small item from the paper in Gunnison which covered a fight he had against a man named Frank Larson. Cliff said he also fought in Salt Lake City. He said they were underground fights and never recorded. He said he won them all.
In 1980, Gary asked to manage him. His older brother was good with money and knew the fight scene on the Front Range. “My mom was happy that Gary and I were working together. I am glad she didn’t last to see how things worked out.” Ruth Bergman died in 1984. Lung cancer like her husband.
There was some hagiography in everything Cliff told me, and there was something about the man I did not believe. But old newspaper clippings and locals in Rifle confirmed most everything he told me, whatever there was to confirm. I liked him, though he had an anxiousness that kept me at three feet distance the whole time. He had a little of that boxer twitch to his speech and face. He was in his 30s before he got his big shot, an old man in the sport. He told me he couldn’t remember how many fights he had before Gary took over his career. “It was a lot. Lots of smokers. All over – Denver, Gunnison, Montrose, Grand Junction, even down in Albuquerque. Just like Dempsey. I always fought.”
“Now you want to hear the real story?” He had me sit on the couch and he set up his VCR. This was the tape of the Suarez fight. Back then, a win against Suarez would set up a title shot.
The fight was televised on ABC’s Wide World of Sports in 1985. Hector Suarez was a 24-year-old fighter, who was 13-1. He entered the ring first and bounced around throwing punches. Then Cliff showed up on screen. Even at 36 years old he looked young and tough, in great shape. There was Gary Bergman, standing in his brother’s corner.
Round one showed the usual dancing and testing fighters do with one another. Some jabs and grappling. Suarez landed a few good right hands to Cliff’s head, but Cliff was good about taking the shots and getting inside of Suarez’s reach. He landed some hard body shots of his own.
In round two Suarez came out hard, throwing quick combinations to Cliff’s head. “He stung me a bit,” Cliff said. “But I was really just lulling him into fake confidence. I was going to bash him once he got cocky.” The round continued with more precise shots from Suarez. Cliff spent a lot of time ducking and grappling. He scored a few short punches to Suarez’s cheek.
And then round three. Cliff came out more aggressive this time and threw a wild combination. He landed one good left hook, and Suarez dropped back and danced around him. Cliff hopped on the balls of his feet and waived Suarez closer. Suarez stepped in and launched a double jab that pushed Cliff back. He did it again and Cliff blocked both punches, his hands covering his head. Then the faint – Suarez slammed his lead foot on the canvas and jerked his shoulders like he was going to throw a jab, but he didn’t. Cliff froze from confusion and lowered his hands. Then Suarez smashed him with a right cross. Cliff’s legs sunk and he threw a wild jab and moved back a few steps.
That’s when the towel flew into the ring from Cliff’s corner, and Gary Bergman followed it. The ref took a minute to see the towel, but when he saw Gary standing between Cliff and Suarez, he waived his arms and grabbed Suarez’s right wrist, raising it upward. The fight was over.
In the videotape Cliff Bergman pushed his brother away and raised his hands in confusion and disgust. In the living room, Cliff had his arms crossed with his hand under his chin like a detective assessing some clue.
“He shouldn’t have stopped the fight,” Cliff said. “I was fine. I knew how to beat Suarez. Gary stopped the fight and that was it. I’d never get another chance to get a title shot.”
I didn’t have to ask the next question because Cliff kept talking. He and Gary had a massive argument that night. Gary quit. Cliff said he suspected his brother had bet money against him. “When he saw I wasn’t going down for Suarez, he stopped it. Only way he could collect. Gary knew how tough I was. That I’d wear the kid down and beat him. This was on national television. Everyone thought I was a joke. It killed my chances at a real career.”
Two weeks after the fight, Cliff saw his brother outside one of the boxing clubs in Denver. He was in a new Cadillac. “How do you think he afforded that car? He bet against me. He ruined my title chances. He forgot I was an ex-cop. That I could figure things out.”
Cliff made me watch the fight a couple more times, and whenever it hit round three, he would get more visibly agitated. On our last viewing, he yelled some indecipherable sound when Gary’s towel came floating into the camera shot.
I diverted Cliff from the obsessive focus on the fight and asked him to show me his glory wall. All fighters have them, and he snapped from his daze and took me into a small room off the kitchen. Pictures covered the entire back wall – Cliff training; Cliff in uniform somewhere in Vietnam; Cliff standing astride a polished state patrol cruiser with flattop mountains in the background. I’d brought a camera with me and asked him to pose, so I could get a good shot of him and his brighter history. He smiled and raised his fist up and I got the shot.
He opened a desk drawer and waived a stack of papers in front of me. “This is it, my script,” he said. “I wrote it based on my life. Trying to sell it to Hollywood. It’s got everything. Fighting in the streets as a kid, Vietnam, my boxing. What my brother did. Everything. I’ll give you a copy to take home, but you have to promise to get it back to me. Do me a favor and mention it in your article. Maybe someone will see it and want to buy it.”
We talked a bit more, mostly inconsequential things. He walked me out to my car. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Don’t go too hard on my brother in the story. He really messed things up for me. All for a Cadillac. It hurt me, but I still love him. I hope he knows I forgive him. But it still hurts. And read that script. It’s got everything.”
It did. Except for the Five Points Scandal. After Gary stopped managing him, Cliff was on his own. In the late 1980s, it came out that he was one of four boxers from the Five Points Academy Club in Denver who’d thrown various fights. There was a low-level circuit from Pueblo up to Cheyenne, and Cliff and the other Five Points fighters would be the fall guys for fixed matches. Nothing happened to them, no criminal charges. But the Colorado Boxing Commission stripped their licenses, and the Rocky Mountain News published a few articles, and Cliff was done boxing. He was 39 years old. I learned all of this after my profile ran, when a sportswriter I knew in Denver called to chastise me. “You let that punchy dope sell you a bill of goods. He was a cheat.”
I let it go. I’d done what a newspaperman isn’t supposed to do, given Cliff sympathy. And so my story was about a local guy with an interesting life who was trying to sell his story to the movies. Cliff was happy with the piece. So was the state patrol captain.
I remember calling Gary Bergman in 2003 before we went to print. I explained I was a reporter and doing a light profile on his brother. He paused a while on the phone and then said, “No comment,” but he stayed on the line. After another long pause, he said. “Don’t do this.” Then he hung up.
Here in Loveland, I’m on my second cup of coffee before Joan Meyer (nee Bergman) arrives. She’s in her early fifties with glasses. She has a latte. I explain to her again that I was just curious about the last chapter of Cliff’s life. She was the only family member I could find.
“I was the only one who kept in touch with him. My mother hated him. After my dad died in 2014, I reached out. Cliff missed the funeral – actually mom never told him where it was. We had a decent relationship. He’d sometimes bring up that Suarez fight. I ended up telling him that if he kept talking about it, I wouldn’t help him. He was pretty feeble and needed lots of help. His house was in shambles. I would visit him every few weeks out in Rifle. Finally we had to put him in a home. The last couple years he was suffering from dementia. My mom is still alive and she criticized me for being there for Cliff. Because of all the awful things he said about dad. I know my father loved Cliff and wouldn’t have wanted him to be all alone when he was so sick. I’m glad I did it.”
I ask her about Cliff’s allegations, the brand-new Cadillac.
“This part makes me upset,” Joan tells me. “My father was honest. Cliff was envious and angry at him for making something of his life. My mom told me that dad was heartbroken over the lies Cliff told. Gary Bergman loved his family, especially his little brother.”
I tell her how I recently watched the Suarez fight again online. Gary did seem to throw in the towel too soon.
“He didn’t want to see his little brother get beaten to death. He knew how fragile Cliff was. He stopped the fight to save him. Cliff just couldn’t accept that. The whole reason dad took over Cliff’s management is because he was scared my uncle would die in the ring. He was too old to keep boxing like that. He’d taken so much abuse. Dad couldn’t say no to him. My mom told me that after some of Cliff’s fights she’d find dad crying in the basement. He felt guilty for enabling Cliff’s brain damage. He’d feel even more guilty for denying Cliff his silly dreams.”
Did Gary ever try to get Cliff to quit?
“A couple times,” she says. “But Cliff would start talking about King David and all this religious stuff. Dad wasn’t strong enough to put his foot down. And he was worried that if he left Cliff, some vulture would manage him. Either way, my uncle was in trouble.”
Why would Cliff lie so deeply and for so long, I ask. Slander his only brother like that?
“He was a storyteller. It started with my grandparents. ‘You’re not some schleppy Jew from West Hollywood, like us. You’re a tough mountain kid.’ He focused his whole life on filling that story. I think that’s why he used to beat up other kids. Why he went to Vietnam and why he became a boxer. But it stopped in 1985 when he lost that fight and got mixed up in everything. For the rest of his life, all he did was try to re-tell and re-package that story. Before he really lost his mind, he made me promise I would try to sell his story even after he died. He told me the money would pay for my kids’ college. So foolish. I was angry at him for all he said and did to my father. But I pitied him, too. The saddest part is that he didn’t understand how lonely he was.”
I know she’s right. Did I help Cliff or hurt him by writing that profile in 2003? The article was something he probably passed around at the local bars in Rifle and showed off to the old boys still with the state patrol. Telling the same hollow story over and over again. Putting air in a flat tire and hoping the car would still get him somewhere far away.
“All those years later, he was still using your profile to show people that he was newsworthy, that people wanted his story,” Joan says.
Some tears come into her eyes, and she snorts and coughs, then apologizes.
My final question, and it’s the most boring and useless one I could ask with a story like this: why didn’t Cliff ever get married, have kids, build a life?
She blows her nose into the napkin once more, then straightens up in her chair. She looks like a schoolkid who’s been saving up the answer to a question she thought the teacher might never ask. Now she can show how smart and prepared she is.
“Same reason for everything else. My uncle spent too much time trying to sell his life story and not enough time just living it.”