The Beast of Stillman's Gym, Part 5…TOLEDO

Published

13 years ago

January 26, 2012

Springs Toledo

beast 6 Holyoke Valley Arena, 1940s

PART 5: IN THE MADHOUSE

The uneven borders of Holyoke, Massachusetts appear on a map as a near-perfect fist with the middle finger sticking up.

Abandoned factories and textile mills looming over man-made canals remind locals that their city was once an industrial giant. Their city now has nearly three times as much violent crime as the national average and its median household income is only about half the state average. Irish Catholics built Holyoke though only 17% of their descendents are left. Over 44% of the folks today are Hispanic; still Catholic, still tough. Old mill towns seem to insist on both.

The Great Depression sent the mills spiraling into bankruptcy. That left working men with idle hands and a lot of testosterone looking for something to do. Boxing was big in Holyoke, even during the lean years -–especially during the lean years. On Monday nights, roughneck fathers would take roughneck sons over to the Valley Arena on South Bridge Street. It was an education. Monday night was fight night.

The arena was originally a gas house until Homer Rainault converted it in 1926. It was rebuilt after two fires in ’43 and ’52 and lasted until 1960 when it went up in flames so high they licked the sky. The Rainaults put on boxing shows popular enough –-and at 40 cents a ticket, cheap enough to warm 2,000 seats on the floor and two balconies. Golden era fighters would come in by way of New York and take a room over Kelly’s Lobster House, which was only a five-minute walk from the arena.

THE SMOKE

Holyoke knew Cocoa Kid well. He had made a career storming around the continental United States and stopped off at the Valley Arena nineteen times. His first appearance was on September 19^th 1932. He “made a hit,” according to the Holyoke Transcript-Telegram and “proved himself a superior boxer with a stinging left and nasty right hook.” His last appearance was on March 25^th 1946. It was Bert Lytell who made a hit that night. Cocoa Kid made a target.

Bert hammered the sentimental favorite, knocking him down twice; a left hook in the third sat him down in the middle of the ring for a nine-count and then a right in the fourth sent him flying for another nine-count. Fans were “amazed,” said the Transcript-Telegram, “as Lytell weaved in front of him, protruded his chin and dared him to swing.” It was “the worst shellacking” of his long career though his pride never let him flinch from it. Bert knew that this reeling figure, his former mentor at Stillman’s Gym, was once as fast as he was and mercifully slowed down. Spectators closest to the action said that he seemed to be pulling his punches at the end.

Four months later Bert flew down to Puerto Rico with Tiny Patterson and defeated him again on his native soil. In July 1947, the pair met for the third time in New Orleans. Battered into semi-consciousness, Cocoa Kid was saved from himself by his corner before round seven. It was an act of mercy cheered by the thousands in attendance.

THE MECHANIC

By the summer of 1945 it had been almost a decade since Holman Williams and Cocoa Kid first swapped leather. Williams was outmaneuvered over thirteen engagements, but had just defeated the aging phenomenon in May. Charley Burley was Williams’ other great rival. Those two fought for the seventh and last time in July, and Williams won. A long-termer in the madhouse that was Murderers’ Row, Williams would eventually meet every member a total of 36 times. He was also one of history’s great road warriors: Between August 1944 and August 1945 he fought 17 times in seven states and chalked up a travel estimate of 22,196 miles.

Williams may have wondered about this fighter that old-timers were calling the second coming of Tiger Flowers. As he measured him from across the Coliseum ring he may have noted a stronger resemblance to Battling Siki. The young man’s arms extended well past his robe’s sleeves and his jaw looked like something salvaged from a scrap heap and attached with a dog bone wrench.

Oddsmakers in “The Big Easy” made Williams a slight favorite over Bert Lytell despite the reports that he had big problems with southpaws. This one proved to be the toughest he ever met. The affair was described as torrid, with Bert burning up the ring and maximizing confusion by boxing at long range. Williams stopped digging in his own toolbox and reached for Jake LaMotta’s: “Equalize the fight by keeping on top [of him] because then you don’t know the difference between a southpaw and a right-handed fighter,” LaMotta said, “that’s how you make it even.” And that is precisely what happened. Williams took over on the inside and fought him to a draw.

Bert said he was nursing a fever. A twelve-round rematch was set for two weeks later and he was feeling mean. “Williams is such a local favorite that he is allowed to get away with unfair tricks. The surest way is to knock him out, or at least down several times. That’s what I am going to do Friday night,” he snarled to the Times-Picayune, “I’m going after him and unless I beat him decisively or knock him out I don’t want the decision.”

For seven rounds, he got mean all right. Holman was “almost hopelessly beaten” as Bert crowded him and concentrated his attack on the body. Pete Baird was ringside and saw strategy forming even then –-Holman, he surmised, “figured that sooner or later Lytell would weaken from the fast pace he was setting.” The eighth round was the turning point. As Bert started to sputter, Williams had a light bulb moment and starting throwing left hooks to his ribs. These allowed him to slip under Bert’s right hands and debilitate what was left of him at the same time. With William’s cheering section ringing in his ears, Bert barely survived the last two rounds and lost the referee’s decision.

The beast fled north to lick his wounds. He returned to Holyoke to outclass a triple champion from Cuba before heading to Baltimore to face another member of Murderers’ Row. Aaron “Tiger” Wade was treated to both faces of Bert Lytell –-one “constantly on the move” and the other tattooed to his chest. This time the referee voted in Bert’s favor, though the two judges at ringside gave the duke to Wade. The Baltimore Sun reported that Wade “failed to live up to his nickname” and “won by the barest whisker.”

Madison Square Garden sponsored Williams-Lytell III in Valley Arena. Williams was guaranteed $2,000 for the fight. Modest though it was for a professional of his caliber, the matchmaker claimed that it was “the biggest pay-off to any single fighter by the arena in 12, yes, 15 or even more years.” Williams had earned a decent purse. Since their last battle, he had rallied and climbed to the number-two spot in the rankings. The local press souped things up by referring to him as “the uncrowned king of the middleweights” and charging that Sugar Ray Robinson, LaMotta, and middleweight champion Tony Zale were avoiding him.

The truth was he had over 150 professional fights by then and his body was breaking down.

He entered the ring a 2½ to 1 favorite with a weight advantage of six pounds. But Bert was on a rampage. Williams was assailed from three ranges, outboxed as well as outpunched. He could do nothing to fend off the southpaw; even the lug wrench that used to be his right hand was in pieces. Before the bell to begin the eighth round Bert was seen bounding up and down in his corner. This victory would launch him up the middleweight ladder. “He beat me in New Orleans,” he said in the dressing room afterwards, “yes he beat me fairly and squarely, but I wanted to win that one tonight.”

Williams was practically wheezing when the time came to declare the winner of the 1-1-1 series in 1947. It was a main event at Pelican Stadium in New Orleans, “an all-Negro July 4 ring show” with seats reserved for white fans and a brass band playing at intermission. Bert intended to retire his rival. “Those who saw what he did to Cocoa Kid,” said the Times-Picayune “realize Holman is in for it.” They weren’t wrong. At the end of the fourth, Williams misjudged a hook whistling in from the wrong angle and crashed to the canvas. As the referee reached the count of “nine” the bell rang. Williams was still lying there “out cold, flat on his back” when his seconds came rushing out to help him to his corner and revive him. Only a second-to-none skill set pulled him through the next eight rounds.

Before the verdict was announced, Williams walked over to Bert and lifted his glove.

“THE KING OF ‘EM ALL”

Charley Burley was at the peak of his powers in August 1946. He was the second-ranked middleweight in the world and probably could have thrashed the sitting champion and the first contender. When he met Bert in Millvale, Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette quipped that Burley would not only have to take on a “formidable foe,” he would also “be forced to come up with a defense for a woman’s wiles.” Tiny Patterson was there and heads were turning when that short and shapely frame swiveled by.

Bert forced the action while Burley seemed distracted, content to counterpunch and peck at a cut that opened under the southpaw’s right eye. When Bert surged in the fourth and tenth rounds, Burley slowed him down with a debilitating hook to the stomach. The fight was anything but dramatic. One newspaper began its coverage with a cry of “Ho-hum!”

Bobby Lippi, a friend of Burley, claimed that there was plenty of drama before and after the bout. He said that they were playing cards the night before and every half hour the phone would ring. When Burley picked up the receiver, he was abused by whoever was on the other end. They suspected these calls came from someone in the Lytell camp. Lippi also claimed that Bert absorbed a beating that the press somehow missed, that he showered after the bout, got dressed, and sat shell-shocked on a bench with “no idea where he was.”

After the loss to Burley, Bert would have six more fights before the year was out, four of them against light heavyweights who outweighed him by ten pounds. His first bout in 1947 was against a light heavyweight who outweighed him by eleven pounds. That was easy –-The Ring Record Book missed his last bout in 1946 where Sammy Aaronson said he took on half the police precinct in Brooklyn. The Holyoke Transcript-Telegram corroborated Aaronson’s story when it mentioned “some fine embroidery on his scalp” and described it as a “criss-cross” scar that Bert suffered after “a dance hall melee.”

A middleweight who requires a riot squad to subdue him and beats up light heavyweights for fun was tough enough for Willie Schulkin of The Boxing News to dare Burley to fight him again. Burley, the so-called “king of ‘em all,” accepted the challenge.

Lytell-Burley II was held the same night Curtis “Hatchet Man” Sheppard met Jimmy Bivins at Philadelphia. Both bouts were important ones: Sheppard was being considered to challenge for Joe Louis’s crown while Burley was penciled in for a shot at Gus Lesnevich’s light heavyweight crown. Several weeks earlier, Burley contracted pleurisy and the original date of the rematch was rescheduled so that he could recover; whether or not that was a factor in the rematch is anyone’s guess. Either way, Bert staggered Burley twice in the early rounds and was “pushing him all over the Coliseum ring” while the crowd sat in stunned silence.

After getting even with the most dangerous member of Murderers’ Row, Bert returned to the garage on King’s Highway in Brooklyn where he used to work –-and bought it.

____________________________

The Row was willing, but champions weren’t and Bert Lytell was beginning to feel like the ugly girl at the dance. More idols totter as our man is forced to find larger prey in PART 6 OF “THE BEAST OF STILLMAN’S GYM.”

The graphic of the Holyoke Valley Arena appears with courtesy of imagemuseum.smugmug.com.

Information regarding Holyoke and the Valley Arena found in city-data.com, creatingholyoke.org, and Boxrec Boxing Encyclopedia. “The Smoke”: Reading Eagle 2/11/46, Holyoke Transcript-Telegram, 9/20/32, 3/21,25,26,27/46 and 4/9/46, Times-Picayune 5/19/47; Passenger manifest, Pan American Airways, inc, 8/1/46 San Juan to NYC; “The Mechanic”: Miami News 4/27/46, Times-Picayune 8/16, 17, 18/45; 7/4,5/47, Holyoke Transcript-Telegram 4/13,16/45; “Tiger Wade”: Baltimore Sun 10/1,2,3/45. “The King of ‘Em All”: Daily Times 8/3/46, contracts pleurisy, AP 7/17/46, The Sun 2/17,18/47, Boxrec encyclopedia, and Harry Otty’s Charley Burley and the Black Murderers’ Row, p. 275, 277-8. Lytell’s purchase of King’s Highway Garage is mentioned in The Berkshire Evening Eagle, 9/4/1947.

Springs Toledo can be contacted at scalinatella@hotmail.com“>scalinatella@hotmail.com.

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Springs Toledo

History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era

Published

13 hours ago

April 2, 2025

Arne K. Lang

History has Shortchanged Freddie Dawson, One of the Best Boxers of his Era

This reporter was rummaging around the internet last week when he stumbled on a story in the May 1950 issue of Ebony under the byline of Mike Jacobs. Boxing was then in the doldrums (isn’t it always?) and Jacobs, the most powerful promoter in boxing during the era of Joe Louis, was lassoed by the editors of the magazine to address the question of whether the over-representation of black boxers was killing the sport at the box office.

This hoary premise had been kicking around even before the heyday of Jack Johnson, bubbling forth whenever an important black-on-black fight played to a sea of empty seats as had happened the previous year when Chicago’s Comiskey Park hosted the world heavyweight title fight between Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott.

Jacobs ridiculed the hypothesis – as one could have expected considering the publication in which the story ran – and singled out three “colored” boxers as the best of the current crop of active pugilists: Sugar Ray Robinson, Ike Williams, and Freddie Dawson.

Sugar Ray Robinson? A no-brainer. Skill-wise the greatest of the great. Even those that didn’t follow boxing, would have recognized his name. Ike Williams? Nowhere near as well-known as Robinson, but he was then the reigning lightweight champion, a man destined to go into the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the inaugural class of 1990.

And Freddie Dawson? If the name doesn’t ring a bell, dear reader, you are not alone. I confess that I too drew a blank. And that triggered a search to learn more about him.

Freddie Dawson had four fights with Ike Williams. All four were staged on Ike’s turf in Philadelphia. Were this not the case, the history books would likely show the series knotted 2-2. Late in his career, Dawson became greatly admired in Australia. But we are jumping ahead of ourselves.

Dawson was born in 1924 in Thomasville, Arkansas, an unincorporated town in the Arkansas Delta. Likely a descendent of slaves who worked in the cotton plantations, he grew up in the so-called Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, the heart of Chicago’s Black Belt.

The first mention of him in the newspapers came in 1941 when he won Chicago’s Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) featherweight title. In those days, amateur boxing was big in the Windy City, the birthplace of the Golden Gloves. The Catholic Archdiocese, which ran gyms in every parish, and the Chicago Parks Department, were the major incubators.

In his amateur days, he was known as simply Fred Dawson. As a pro, his name often appeared as Freddy Dawson, although Freddie gradually became the more common spelling.

Dawson, who stood five-foot-six and was often described as stocky, made his pro debut on Feb. 1, 1943, at Marigold Gardens. Before the year was out, he had 16 fights under his belt, all in Chicago and all but two at Marigold. (Currently the site of an interdenominational Christian church, Marigold Gardens, on the city’s north side, was Chicago’s most active boxing and wrestling arena from the mid-1930s through the early-1950s. Joe Louis had three of his early fights there and Tony Zale was a fixture there as he climbed the ladder to the world middleweight title.)

The last of these 16 fights was fatal for Dawson’s opponent who collapsed heading back to his corner after the fight was stopped in the 10^th round and died that night at a local hospital from the effects of a brain injury.

Dawson left town after this incident and spent most of the next year in New Orleans where energetic promoter Louis Messina ran twice-weekly shows (Mondays for whites and Fridays for blacks) at the Coliseum, a major stop on boxing’s so-called Chitlin’ Circuit.

That same year, on Sept. 19, 1944, Dawson had his first encounter with Ike Williams. He was winning the fight when Ike knocked him out with a body punch in the fourth round.

The first and last meetings between Dawson and Ike Williams were spaced five years apart. In the interim, Freddie scored his two best wins, stopping Vic Patrick in the twelfth round at Sydney, NSW, and Bernard Docusen in the sixth round in Chicago.

The long-reigning lightweight champion of Australia, Patrick (49-3, 43 KOs) gave the crowd a thrill when he knocked Dawson down for a count of “six” in the penultimate 11^th round, but Dawson returned the favor twice in the final stanza, ending the contest with a punch so harsh that the poor Aussie needed five minutes before he was fit to leave the ring and would spend the night in the hospital as a precaution.

Dawson fought Bernard Docusen before 10,000-plus at Chicago Stadium on Feb. 4, 1949. An 8/5 favorite, Docusen lacked a hard punch, but the New Orleans cutie had suffered only three losses in 66 fights, had never been stopped, and had extended Sugar Ray Robinson the 15-round distance the previous year.

Dawson dismantled him. Docusen managed to get back on his feet after Dawson knocked him down in the sixth, but he was in no condition to continue and the referee waived the fight off. Dawson was then vacillating between the lightweight and welterweight divisions and reporters wondered whether it would be Robinson or Ike Williams when Dawson finally got his well-earned title shot.

Sugar Ray wasn’t in his future. Here are the results of his other matches with Ike Williams:

Dawson-Williams II (Jan. 28, 1946) – The consensus on press row was 7-2-1 or 7-3 for Dawson, but the match was ruled a draw. “[The judges and referee] evidently saw [Williams] land punches that nobody else did,” said the ringside reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dawson-Williams III (Jan. 26, 1948) – Dawson lost a majority decision. The scores were 6-4, 5-4-1, and 4-4-2. The decision was booed. Ike Williams then held the lightweight title, but this was a non-title fight. (It was tough for an outsider to get a fair shake in Philadelphia, home to Ike Williams’ co-manager Frank “Blinky” Palermo who would go to prison for his duplicitous dealings as a fight facilitator.)

Dawson-Williams IV (Dec. 5, 1949) – This would be Freddie Dawson’s only crack at a world title and he came up short. Ike Williams retained the belt, winning a unanimous decision. The fight was close – 8-7, 8-7, 9-6 – but there was no controversy.

Dawson made three more trips to Australia before his career was finished. On the first of these trips, he knocked out Jack Hassen, successor to Vic Patrick as the lightweight champion of Australia. A 1953 article in the Sydney Sunday Herald bore witness to the esteem in which Dawson was held by boxing fans in Australia: “None of our boxers could withstand his devastating attacks which not only knocked them out but also knocked years off their careers,” said the author. “It is doubtful whether any Australian boxer in any division could have beaten Dawson.”

Dawson had his final fights in the Land Down Under, finishing his career with a record of 103-14-4 while answering the bell for 962 rounds. Following what became his final fight, he had an eye operation in Sydney that was reportedly so intricate that it required a two-week hospital stay. He injured the eye again in Manila while sparring in preparation for a match with the welterweight champion of the Philippines, a match that had to be aborted because of the injury. Dawson then disappeared, by which we mean that he disappeared from the pages of the newspaper archives that allow us to construct these kinds of stories.

What about Freddie Dawson the man? A 1944 story about him said he was an outstanding all-around athlete, “a champion in all athletic undertakings – basketball, baseball, track and even jitterbugging.” A story in a Sydney paper as he was preparing to meet Vic Patrick informs us that he had two young children, ages 2 and 1, owned his own home in Chicago, and drove a two-year-old Cadillac. But beyond these flimsy snippets, Dawson the man remains elusive.

What we learned, however, is that he was one of the most underrated boxers to come down the pike in any era, a borderline Hall of Famer who ought not have fallen through the cracks. Inside the ring, this guy was one tough hombre.

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Ringside at the Fontainebleau where Mikaela Mayer Won her Rematch with Sandy Ryan

Published

4 days ago

March 30, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Ringside-at-the-Fontainebleau-where-Mikaela-Mayer-won-her-Rematch-with-Sandy-Ryan

LAS VEGAS, NV — The first meeting between Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan last September at Madison Square Garden was punctuated with drama before the first punch was thrown. When the smoke cleared, Mayer had become a world-title-holder in a second weight class, taking away Ryan’s WBO welterweight belt via a majority decision in a fan-friendly fight.

The rematch tonight at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas was another fan-friendly fight. There were furious exchanges in several rounds and the crowd awarded both gladiators a standing ovation at the finish.

Mayer dominated the first half of the fight and held on to win by a unanimous decision. But Sandy Ryan came on strong beginning in round seven, and although Mayer was the deserving winner, the scores favoring her (98-92 and 97-93 twice) fail to reflect the competitiveness of the match-up. This is the best rivalry in women’s boxing aside from Taylor-Serrano.

Mayer, 34, improved to 21-2 (5). Up next, she hopes, in a unification fight with Lauren Price who outclassed Natasha Jonas earlier this month and currently holds the other meaningful pieces of the 147-pound puzzle. Sandy Ryan, 31, the pride of Derby, England, falls to 7-3-1.

Co-Feature

In his first defense of his WBO world welterweight title (acquired with a brutal knockout of Giovani Santillan after the title was vacated by Terence Crawford), Atlanta’s Brian Norman Jr knocked out Puerto Rico’s Derrieck Cuevas in the third round. A three-punch combination climaxed by a short left hook sent Cuevas staggering into a corner post. He got to his feet before referee Thomas Taylor started the count, but Taylor looked in Cuevas’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw and brought the bout to a halt.

The stoppage, which struck some as premature, came with one second remaining in the third stanza.

A second-generation prizefighter (his father was a fringe contender at super middleweight), the 24-year-old Norman (27-0, 21 KOs) is currently boxing’s youngest male title-holder. It was only the second pro loss for Cuevas (27-2-1) whose lone previous defeat had come early in his career in a 6-rounder he lost by split decision.

Other Bouts

In a career-best performance, 27-year-old Brooklyn featherweight Bruce “Shu Shu” Carrington (15-0, 9 KOs) blasted out Jose Enrique Vivas (23-4) in the third round.

Carrington, who was named the Most Outstanding Boxer at the 2019 U.S. Olympic Trials despite being the lowest-seeded boxer in his weight class, decked Vivas with a right-left combination near the end of the second round. Vivas barely survived the round and was on a short leash when the third stanza began. After 53 seconds of round three, referee Raul Caiz Jr had seen enough and waived it off. Vivas hadn’t previously been stopped.

Cleveland welterweight Tiger Johnson, a Tokyo Olympian, scored a fifth-round stoppage over San Antonio’s Kendo Castaneda. Johnson assumed control in the fourth round and sent Castaneda to his knees twice with body punches in the next frame. The second knockdown terminated the match. The official time was 2:00 of round five.

Johnson advanced to 15-0 (7 KOs). Castenada declined to 21-9.

Las Vegas junior welterweight Emiliano Vargas (13-0, 11 KOs) blasted out Stockton, California’s Giovanni Gonzalez in the second round. Vargas brought the bout to a sudden conclusion with a sweeping left hook that knocked Gonzalez out cold. The end came at the 2:00 minute mark of round two.

Gonzalez brought a 20-7-2 record which was misleading as 18 of his fights were in Tijuana where fights are frequently prearranged. However, he wasn’t afraid to trade with Vargas and paid the price.

Emiliano Vargas, with his matinee idol good looks and his boxing pedigree – he is the son of former U.S. Olympian and two-weight world title-holder “Ferocious” Fernando Vargas – is highly marketable and has the potential to be a cross-over star.

Eighteen-year-old Newark bantamweight Emmanuel “Manny” Chance, one of Top Rank’s newest signees, won his pro debut with a four-round decision over So Cal’s Miguel Guzman. Chance won all four rounds on all three cards, but this was no runaway. He left a lot of room for improvement.

There was a long intermission before the co-main and again before the main event, but the tedium was assuaged by a moving video tribute to George Foreman.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0

Published

4 days ago

March 29, 2025

David A. Avila

William Zepeda Edges Past Tevin Farmer in Cancun; Improves to 34-0

No surprise, once again William Zepeda eked out a win over the clever and resilient Tevin Farmer to remain undefeated and retain a regional lightweight title on Saturday.

There were no knockdowns in this rematch.

The Mexican punching machine Zepeda (33-0, 17 KOs) once more sought to overwhelm Farmer (33-8-1, 9 KOs) with a deluge of blows. This rematch by Golden Boy Promotions took place in the famous beach resort area of Cancun, Mexico.

It was a mere four months ago that both first clashed in Saudi Arabia with their vastly difference styles. This time the tropical setting served as the background which suited Zepeda and his lawnmower assaults. The Mexican fans were pleased.

Nothing changed in their second meeting.

Zepeda revved up the body assault and Farmer moved around casually to his right while fending off the Mexican fighter’s attacks. By the fourth round Zepeda was able to cut off Farmer’s escape routes and targeted the body with punishing shots.

The blows came in bunches.

In the fifth round Zepeda blasted away at Farmer who looked frantic for an escape. The body assault continued with the Mexican fighter pouring it on and Farmer seeming to look ready to quit. When the round ended, he waved off his corner’s appeals to stop.

Zepeda continued to dominate the next few rounds and then Farmer began rallying. At first, he cleverly smothered Zepeda’s body attacks and then began moving and hitting sporadically. It forced the Mexican fighter to pause and figure out the strategy.

Farmer, a Philadelphia fighter, showed resiliency especially when it was revealed he had suffered a hand injury.

During the last three rounds Farmer dug down deep and found ways to score and not get hit. It was Boxing 101 and the Philly fighter made it work.

But too many rounds had been put in the bank by Zepeda. Despite the late rally by Farmer one judge saw it 114-114, but two others scored it 116-112 and 115-113 for Zepeda who retains his interim lightweight title and place at the top of the WBC rankings.

“I knew he was a difficult fighter. This time he was even more difficult,” said Zepeda.

Farmer was downtrodden about another loss but realistic about the outcome and starting slow.

“But I dominated the last rounds,” said Farmer.

Zepeda shrugged at the similar outcome as their first encounter.

“I’m glad we both put on a great show,” said Zepeda.

Female Flyweight Battle

Costa Rica’s Yokasta Valle edged past Texas fighter Marlen Esparza to win their showdown at flyweight by split decision after 10 rounds.

Valle moved up two weight divisions to meet Esparza who was slightly above the weight limit. Both showed off their contrasting styles and world class talent.

Esparza, a former unified flyweight world titlist, stayed in the pocket and was largely successful with well-placed jabs and left hooks. She repeatedly caught Valle in-between her flurries.

The current minimumweight world titlist changed tactics and found more success in the second half of the fight. She forced Esparza to make the first moves and that forced changes that benefited her style.

Neither fighter could take over the fight.

After 10 rounds one judge saw Esparza the winner 96-94, but two others saw Valle the winner 97-93 twice.

Will Valle move up and challenge the current undisputed flyweight world champion Gabriela Fundora? That’s the question.

Valle currently holds the WBC minimumweight world title.

Puerto Rico vs Mexico

Oscar Collazo (12-0, 9 KOs), the WBO, WBA minimumweight titlist, knocked out Mexico’s Edwin Cano (13-3-1, 4 KOs) with a flurry of body shots at 1:12 of the fifth round.

Collazo dominated with a relentless body attack the Mexican fighter could not defend. It was the Puerto Rican fighter’s fifth consecutive title defense.

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