by David P. Greisman

It was long known how the story of Johnny Tapia would likely end.

So many fighters turn to the boxing gym to get away from trouble. So many of them subsequently stay out of trouble thanks to the level of discipline it takes to succeed in the ring.

Not Tapia. He was among those whose demons were never wholly driven away. The benefits of self-discipline were all too often broken up by bouts of self-sabotage. His struggles with cocaine addiction were particularly worrisome. He would rehab and then relapse. He spent time in jail. And throughout it all, he looked toward the two things that had saved him — the sport and the woman he loved.

Tapia’s story ended in May 2012 at the age of 45, not from an overdose but rather from heart disease and high blood pressure. Some who read the autopsy report said the life Tapia lived contributed to the manner in which he died.

His story was told in “Tapia,” a documentary that aired last week on HBO. It’s been known for more than two years now how any such film would end. That doesn’t diminish the final product. “Tapia” stands as a final salute to a flawed figure, a man we loved because of the talent and passion he brought to the ring, love that made our heartbreak and disappointment even more painful. With his lifelong fight, as with his 66 boxing matches, there were many who wished for Johnny Lee Tapia to prevail.

The hope had once been that his 2006 autobiography, “Mi Vida Loca: The Crazy Life of Johnny Tapia,” would close the book on those worst chapters of his life. But because of what unfortunately followed, and because of the medium of the documentary itself, “Tapia” carries a captivating narrative.

Tapia had worked with the filmmakers prior to his passing. We watch the interviews, see his weathered face and a heavy and heavily tattooed body no longer fit for fighting, hear the sadness and regret in his voice. We are able to look back with him at his life rather than be left to review it without him through archival footage and conversations with those who once knew him. We get his perspective for this retrospective.

The film opens with Tapia walking alone in a desert, a man who has brought himself to a place where little has a chance to blossom.

“The end shadows every beginning,” the narrator begins. “Ignore the truth of that fact as long as you can. It’s simpler to live that way.”

It only makes sense, then, that we transition into the sound of a cheering crowd and an announcer introducing the champion from Albuquerque, New Mexico. We see trophies and ring ropes. A man climbs into the ring, his taped hands throwing punches into the air just in front of him. He is old. And then he is young again, as we flash back to a youthful Johnny Tapia with his hands being lifted into the air. We see glimpses of the better days, and then we return to the older man for whom those days have long since passed.

He grew up surrounded by crime and violence, he tells us. That is the first thing we must know. We are soon filled in on what that included. Being told that his father was dead, murdered when Tapia was still in his mother’s womb. Being dropped off at his grandmother’s house while his mother went out dancing. He begged his mother not to leave. She was raped and then stabbed 22 times, dead days later, the killer unknown. He was 8.

“I remember waiting at that door for my mom to come and pick me up,” Tapia says. “Let’s just say I still wait at the front door for her, and that’s never going to come back. She’s never going to come back.”

He was raised by his grandparents, surrounded by relatives, a kid who went from fighting on the street to donning the gloves in the gym, a place that could’ve been that respite from trouble. There was amateur success and dreams of what that could mean.

“I wanted to be somebody,” Tapia says, and suddenly it becomes difficult not to recall Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in “On the Waterfront,” lamenting the bad decision that changed his life.

“I coulda been a contender,” Terry says. “I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

But Tapia did indeed become somebody. It just took longer than it could’ve, the benefits of his self-discipline washed away by bouts of self-sabotage. He fought 22 times between March 1988 and October 1990, going 21-0-1, the first match a draw and the rest ending in victory. He was in a gang, though, and he also was at the beginning of a long affair with cocaine. Failed drug tests landed him in trouble with the athletic commission. Allegedly threatening to kill a witness who was to testify in Tapia’s cousin’s murder trial landed the fighter in police custody. He was 23. He didn’t fight again for three years and five months.

“He was broke and frequently homeless,” the narrator says. “One of his only routes of income came at an Albuquerque bar, where he’d collect $300 cash and a case of beer for taking on all challengers inside its giant cooler.”

He was addicted, Tapia recalls, and he couldn’t cry out to his mother for help. He’d at one point been declared dead, something that would happen again and again. And then he found life, marrying Teresa Tapia. She soon learned of her new husband’s struggles and sought to save him from himself.

She forced him to quit cocaine, locked him in their home as he went through withdrawal, cleaning him out until he was ready to return to the gym, ready to again attempt having something better to live for. He was in the ring four times in three months in 1994, and soon he was in a world title fight against fellow 115-pounder Henry Martinez. Tapia battled until he scored a technical knockout late in the fight. He was a winner. He was somebody.

The success continued, a title reign that lasted more than three years, including a unification win over Danny Romero. That was followed by a move to the 118-pound weight class. He won another belt but didn’t hold it long. Tapia lost for the first time in 1999, dropping a decision to Paulie Ayala, a loss that was followed by mental breakdowns.

By the beginning of the following year he’d defeated another bantamweight for a different world title. Again, he didn’t keep it long, soon leaving the division behind for more relief at the scales and a rematch with Ayala. The second bout ended as the first one did, with Ayala’s hands in the air and Tapia feeling as if he’d been wronged.

The success didn’t come in lieu of cocaine use, however, but rather in spite of it.

The troubled past was never truly left behind. Even when investigators looked into the murder of Tapia’s mother, they learned that the man who’d done it had died himself years ago. This closure reopened old wounds.

“I wanted him first,” the modern version of Tapia says. He wanted to kill the man himself.

“I want my mom,” he says. “I want my mom. I can’t have her today.”

The Ayala rematch came in 2000. In 2002, Tapia won a close decision over featherweight Manuel Medina, picking up a world title in a third division. Six months later, he was in with a future Hall of Famer named Marco Antonio Barrera, who like Tapia went by the nickname of  “The Babyfaced Assassin.” Barrera was seven years younger and on the better side of his career than Tapia, who was fighting in heavier divisions than in his prime and whose lifestyle only aged him and wore his body down further. Barrera won. It was Tapia’s last brush with the highest echelons of the sport. He was 35. His life would be over within a decade.

The news archives chronicle the chapters in his extended struggle, the brushes with the law and his troubles with drugs, often times the former happening because of the latter.

He kept fighting in-between, beating men who never would’ve belonged in the ring with him and losing to a couple who never could’ve beaten him before.

So many fighters turn to the boxing gym to get away from trouble. Tapia never rid himself of his demons. One overdose left him comatose, and two relatives racing to the hospital died when their vehicle crashed. Tapia awoke, learned of their tragedy, felt more pain and took the blame.

He was out of the ring for three years from 2007 into 2010, returning at 43 years old against an opponent with more losses than wins. Tapia dispatched that foe in four, then tried to will his flabbier frame through his traditional victory backflip. Tapia barely made it halfway around, hitting his head and falling onto his face. That bad turn was soon followed by a good one: learning that his father was actually alive.

Tapia fought twice more, retiring in June 2011, opening a gym and working with younger boxers. Perhaps this would be how he’d find peace. His greatest moments had come because he wanted to be somebody, while his lowest moments came from only living for himself, from not stopping himself out of recognition that the consequences of his actions would hurt people. If his new goal was to help others transform their lives through boxing, then maybe he could live through them — and for them. His life would be over within a year.

We watch one of Tapia’s fighters scores a win and Tapia subsequently lifts him in the air, then we transition to a shot of a younger Tapia picking up and being picked up by one of his vanquished foes.

We return to the desert. The narrator reminds us: “Always remember, the end shadows every beginning.”

“Boxing has saved my life,” we hear the modern version of Tapia say. We montage through moments in this vida loca, this crazy life. We know how the story ends. We see the words: “One month after his last interview for this film, Johnny Tapia was found dead at his home in Albuquerque.”

Those can’t be the last words. We see Tapia’s face in frame again.

“I’m a winner,” Johnny Tapia says.

So, too, is the film.

The 10 Count will return next year.

“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide . Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com