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Memories of Tyson-McNeeley Still Amaze
You had to have seen it to believe it. Maybe, if you were part of the insanely large, morbidly curious audience that bought into the unprecedented hype of the most fraudulent boxing match of all time, you actually did see it – and still can’t believe it.
By comparison, the recent mismatch that paired the vastly superior Danny Garcia against Rod Salka was almost a re-creation of Ali-Frazier I or III.
Aug. 19 marks the 19th anniversary of the circus-like atmosphere that hung thick in the desert air in the summer of 1995 when Mike Tyson, fighting for the first time in 50 months following his three-year conviction for rape, squared off against a totally fabricated “contender” named Peter McNeeley at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. It was the ultimate verification of the old P.T. Barnum dictum that there’s a sucker born every minute, that there really is a bull market for gullible sorts willing, even eager, to part with sizable sums of their money in exchange for bogus deeds to the Brooklyn Bridge or worthless swamp land in Florida.
Chew on these numbers for a while and you can’t help but shake your head in amazement:
*Because the most optimistic of Showtime Pay-Per-View projections were met, Tyson, who was guaranteed a minimum of $25 million, came away with a then-record $36 million for his night’s work, which lasted all of 89 seconds. That breaks down to a payout of $404,494.38 per second.
*McNeeley, on the other hand, received $540,000 for the privilege of offering himself up as a human sacrifice. Going into the Tyson bout, the 25-year-old known as the “Irish Hurricane” sported a spiffy 36-1 record with 30 wins inside the distance, which gained him a sheen of legitimacy in the form of a No. 7 ranking from the shameless WBA. But McNeeley’s opponents up to that point had lost a staggering 449 fights, and his previous ring appearance, on April 22, 1995, had resulted in a one-round stoppage of Frankie Hines in Hot Springs, Ark. McNeeley reportedly was paid $190 (no, that is not a misprint) for that fight, which came against a career fall-down guy who had lost 10 straight and 39 of 40 before taking on Tyson’s comeback partner, on the way to a final career mark of 17-120-5 with 78 defeats inside the distance.
*Only three of the 37 fighters McNeeley had mixed it up with on the road to Tyson – the immortal trio of Ron Drinkwater, Stanley Wright and J.B. Williamson — had so much as a winning record at the time they threw down with the Medford, Mass., resident.
*The $1,500 ringside seats were filled (among the celebrity attendees: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eddie Murphy, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Michael Jackson, Kevin Costner, Jim Carrey, Luke Perry, Axl Rose, Denzel Washington, Tim Allen, Shaquille O’Neal, Don Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) as part of a sellout crowd of 16,736, which did not include some 1,500 credentialed media members from around the world.
*The fight was televised to 90 countries on six continents. Somehow, Antarctica missed out on the big show.
*Following his final bout, a first-round TKO loss to Mike Bernardo on June 8, 2001, in Cape Town, South Africa, McNeeley retired with a still-impressive 47-7 record that included 36 wins by KO. But one of those defeats, on June 26, 1999, was a first-round blowout by boxing’s favorite fatty, 311-pound Eric “Butterbean” Esch (who would later fight as high as 426½), at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay, on the undercard of a show headlined by Paulie Ayala’s unanimous-decision dethronement of WBA bantamweight champion Johnny Tapia. It is a testament to how far McNeeley had fallen from semi-legitimacy that he went off as an 8-1 underdog to The Bean after having been just a 13-1 longshot against Tyson.
*So much of a running national joke had McNeeley become after the Tyson debacle that, shortly after Peter the Not So Great’s one-round disqualification (brought about when his Damon Runyonesque manager-trainer, Vinny Vecchione, entered the ring and wrapped his arms around his clearly buzzed and twice-floored fighter), he appeared in a commercial for Pizza Hut in which he again was sent crashing to the canvas – by a slice of pizza. As McNeeley lay on his back, his vision fuzzy in accordance with the script, Vecchione stands over him waving some of that stuffed-crust cheese and pepperoni pie in his face and asking, “Hey, McNeeley, how many slices am I holding?”
As long as there is a profit to be made from continued humiliation, why not offer up another piece of your dignity on the altar of financial expediency?
“My first reaction was, uh, kind of negative,” McNeeley at the time said of the endorsement deal that he at first was hesitant to accept. “You wonder how the public is going to perceive you. But then I thought about it a while and decided, what the heck. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?”
Actually, there is. The biggest headlines McNeeley, now 45, has generated in recent years stem from his occasional brushes with the law. His Tyson windfall vanished and by now a victim of the sort of alcohol-related problems that had taken a toll on his father, former heavyweight title challenger Tom McNeeley, Peter in November 1995 was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon (his fists) following an altercation with a Boston bar patron and, in June 2006, with serving as the driver of the getaway car in a drug-store stickup that gained his armed passenger, Robert Perry, $180 in cash and a shoplifted fanny pack.
All of which leads to a still-perplexing question. If McNeeley was indeed the hapless oaf that he was depicted as then and now, how could his matchup with Tyson possibly have commanded such widespread interest? In a sport where false prophets appear with some regularity, particularly in the heavyweight division – think Primo Carnera, Duane Bobick, Michael Grant and, for now at least, we’re keeping an eye on you, Deontay Wilder – McNeeley stands alone as the falsest of the false.
The answer, of course, is that McNeeley was merely there to be used and promptly disposed of, a prop necessary to again fan the flames of fixation attendant to Tyson’s return to the ring after an extended period. A presumably rusted Iron Mike needed somebody to beat up, and his handlers were justifiably hesitant to put him in with a truly dangerous rival. Thus was the door opened for McNeeley, with his artificially inflated record against crushed tomato cans and the good fortune of being the offspring of his kind-of-prominent dad, who was 23-0 when he squared off against heavyweight champ Floyd Patterson on Dec. 4, 1961, in Toronto. That the elder McNeeley, who was 74 when he passed away in 2011, had officially gone down 11 times in a four-round TKO loss only added to whatever mystique his son brought to the equation. Could Peter last longer against Tyson than Tom had against Patterson?
“The stories about the fight said I went down nine or 10 times,” Tom McNeeley said long after his courageous but hopeless bid to unseat Patterson. “The writers were being nice to me. I have the film. It was more like 12 or 13.”
Few writers were willing to give Peter McNeeley anywhere near as much benefit of the doubt as their predecessors had accorded his pop. This was to be a ritualistic execution inside the ropes. How could it be anything else? Everyone had to know how it would end, probably including Vecchione, who had turned down decent-paying bouts for McNeeley with, among others, Tommy Morrison, Andrew Golota, Joe Hipp and King Ipitan in the hope that a really big bonanza might be had by waiting. Then along came Don King, Tyson’s hyperbolic promoter, extending that golden lottery ticket.
The only one apparently not in on the scheme was McNeeley himself, who figured all those knockouts, even if they had come against nobodies, had to mean he had at least a chance to shock the world.
“I have good stats,” McNeeley reasoned when an army of media critics rose up to denounce him as unworthy. “I deserve this shot.”
His second-generation family status notwithstanding, McNeeley benefited greatly from the legerdemain of Vecchione, a cigar-chomping, old-school type who had packaged his fighter as better – very much better– than his actual accomplishments might have suggested. After the Tyson fight was scheduled, Vecchione regaled listeners with tales of McNeeley’s bottomless well of untapped potential.
“It took about 25 seconds for me to know that he had tremendous punching power and a killer instinct,” Vecchione said, rhapsodizing about his first glimpse at the then-20-year-old McNeeley. “This was a mean, vicious kid in the ring. He was the best heavyweight prospect I’d ever seen. Literally nobody believed me, but I knew from all the knowledge I had from Sam Silverman (who had been Vecchione’s boxing guru) I could do something with this kid.”
Whether Vecchione was spinning a tall tale or actually believed what he was dishing out, the media, many of whom have a fondness for cartoonish characters, ate it up. And when you added Vecchione to a promotional venture that also included that master of malaprops, King, there at least was a likelihood that the press conferences would be more entertaining than the fight.
In the frenzied lead-up to Tyson-McNeeley, King, Vecchione and the “Irish Hurricane” played their parts to perfection. Tyson said less than the other principals, in no small part because he wasn’t around much until fight night. But he did offer these chilling words to a small group of writers a few days before the opening bell, saying, with no hint of bemusement, that “I’m going to kill Peter McNeeley, God willing.”
King, at the final press conference two days before the bout, launched into another stream-of-consciousness delivery that touched on, among others, General George Armstrong Custer, John Quincy Adams and Robin Hood. Boxing’s Theater of the Absurd never seemed quite so ridiculous.
“A lot of people have fought opponents with lesser records, but few have fought lesser opponents with greater skill,” King harrumphed in referring to the D-list of pugs McNeeley had vanquished.
Of what paying customers could expect, King noted that “This is no longer a fight, it’s a happening. It’s so big, even I don’t know how big it is. But it’s huge. There hasn’t been anything like it in the history of mankind. You got 1.3 billion people in China who are going to be watching this fight. You got 900 million in India, and I don’t know how many in Russia. Everybody wants to see the great Mike Tyson back in action. They want to see if he’s as good as he ever was, or better.”
Vecchione chimed in with his opinion that “(McNeeley) has a hell of a chance against Tyson. Think about it: Within 30 seconds, somebody’s probably going to be down. If I were Mike Tyson, I wouldn’t have taken this fight the first time out – and who knows more about picking opponents than I do?”
Clearly enjoying his 15 minutes of fame, McNeeley uttered the words that would prove to be the most memorable of his career: “ I’m Peter McNeeley, from Medford, Mass, and I’m here to kick Mike Tyson’s ass.”
At least McNeeley wasn’t the only one who thought that he would do just that. A Las Vegas woman, a medium or spiritualist or some such delver into the occult, said she did not know anything about boxing, but the stars or the tea leaves had informed her that Tyson would go down in four rounds. The media dutifully took note, for amusement purposes only.
But hardly anyone else was buying into the premise that McNeeley would or could hang with a 29-year-old Tyson even if his skills had atrophied during his incarceration. Among the most vocal of skeptics was Rock Newman, manager of Riddick Bowe, who told the press corps he once had considered inviting McNeeley to serve as a sparring partner for his fighter after he had finished getting tuned up by Tyson.
“I was kicking around the idea a little bit,” Newman recalled. “I thought it might be kind of a fun thing, that it might create a stir. But I’m not even going to extend an invitation. McNeeley is so incredibly horrible. I mean, just awful. This guy is so bad, he even makes Frans Botha look good by comparison. There is no way he could give Bowe any kind of decent work in the gym.”
All that remains was for the inevitable ending to be recorded for historical purposes. To his credit, McNeeley did exactly what Vecchione had said he would do. He went right at Tyson, and somebody did go down within the first 30 seconds. It was, of course, McNeeley, who was decked by an overhand right after just seven elapsed seconds. But McNeeley beat the count, and momentarily succeeded in bull-rushing Tyson to the ropes, throwing wide, loaded-up haymakers in the hope of getting lucky.
Didn’t happen. A second knockdown quickly followed as Tyson connected with a pair of left hooks, neither of which landed flush, and a ripping overhand right, which did. Again, McNeeley arose, on spaghetti legs, causing referee Mills Lane to lean forward, ready to stop it as soon as Tyson nailed him again. But Vecchione removed that decision from Lane, entering the ring and offering himself as a human towel-toss. The joke of a fight went into the books as a disqualification, and thus was provided its expected punch line.
“It’s not an outrage,” King said of the unsatisfying conclusion. “The people might be disappointed that the manager jumped into the ring, but they can’t say they didn’t get their money’s worth. We had quite a spectacle this evening. No one can say Peter McNeeley didn’t come to fight. We saw a terrific altercation for the time that it lasted.”
In explaining his intervention, Vecchione said that “I remember Jimmy Garcia and Gerald McClellan,” a reference to one fighter who died as a result of injuries sustained in a bout (Garcia) and another who was rendered blind and brain-damaged (McClellan) in another scrap that went horribly wrong. “The important thing is that this kid’s 26 years old. He’s going to continue to fight. He gave you 100 percent effort. If I made a judgment and have to live with that judgment, so be it. As far as I’m concerned, I did the right thing by my fighter.”
McNeeley did continue to fight, against more of the soft touches he had gone against earlier. Only now, those touches weren’t quite so plump and cushiony. In his first post-Tyson bout, on Oct. 27, 1995, McNeeley took on Mike Sam for something called the U.S. Boxing Federation title, in Boston’s FleetCenter. And although he knocked out Sam in two rounds, he did so against a 37-year-old guy who had fought just once in the previous 10 years, that outing resulting in a second-round TKO loss. The beatdowns by that slice of pizza and Butterbean were to follow.
Vecchione fared better, at least temporarily, as he was voted Manager of the Year for 1995 by the Boxing Writers Association of America for his improbable feat of taking the limited likes of Peter McNeeley to a 36-1 record and a mid-six-figure jackpot against Tyson. But there would be no more pieces of pugilistic coal like McNeeley for Vecchione to transform into cubic zirconia; he was 64 when he died of a heart attack on July 2, 2009. Like McNeeley, ”Double-V” would prove to be something of a one-hit wonder.
Yet the true takeaway of Tyson-McNeely has little or nothing to do with McNeely and Vecchione. They were bit players on a stage dedicated to a larger purpose. In retrospect, the quickie destruction of McNeeley marked the beginning of the end of the Mike Tyson that fight fans once regarded with a sense of wonderment. Some will insist the swinging of the pendulum in the opposite direction actually began on Feb. 11, 1990, with his stunning, 10th-round knockout loss to Buster Douglas in Tokyo, and there is some validity to that. But the Douglas who fought Tyson, even if it was a diminished Tyson, would have beaten a lot of good heavyweights that day. Before or after, Buster was never nearly as sharp or well-conditioned as he was in turning in his career-best performance.
What the fight with McNeely demonstrated was that the public still had an insatiable curiosity about Tyson, who might have been described as an odd mixture of O.J. Simpson, Nelson Mandela, Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali. Depending on one’s viewpoint, he was a high-profile criminal defendant, a political prisoner, a subject of outlandish tabloid rumors or the world’s most recognizable boxer returning after a long and enforced exile. Love him or hate him, it was still impossible to ignore him. And yet …
The fact that Tyson’s handlers felt obliged to put him in with a gimme opponent like McNeeley in his much-anticipated comeback bout now stands as evidence that there were hints, which would become increasingly obvious, that the former “baddest man on the planet” was a fast-emptying vessel. What started with McNeeley would morph into defeats at the hands of Evander Holyfield (twice) and Lennox Lewis, which weren’t upsets, and then into shocking losses to Danny Williams and, finally, Kevin McBride, who at best rate as small sniffs ahead of McNeely on the smell-o-meter.
Then-WBO heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko, doing commentary for German television for Tyson-Julius Francis on Jan. 29, 2005, saw enough in those 89 seconds five-plus years earlier to convince him that the beast that Michael Gerard Tyson had been was no more and probably never could be again.
“He still has a lot of power,” Klitschko said in assessing what remained of Tyson. “But I saw a lot of his earlier fights, and he’s not at all as sharp as he once was. It’s pretty obvious Tyson is looking for easy money against easy opponents.”
For both Tyson and McNeely, the old saying did indeed hold true: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.
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With Olympic Boxing on the Ropes, Three Elite U.S. Amateurs Shine in Colorado
Three USA boxers won gold medals at the recently concluded World Boxing U19 tournament in Pueblo, Colorado. The tournament, restricted to boxers aged 17 and 18, attracted contestants from 30 nations and a contingent from French Polynesia.
The U.S. team, represented by eight male and six female boxers, secured 11 medals in all, an impressive haul.
The three U.S. gold medalists appear to have very bright futures if they choose to remain in the sport. They are:
Light heavyweight (80 kg) ELIJAH LUGO (Marrietta, GA)
Lugo has purportedly scored 42 stoppages in his amateur career, the most since USA Boxing began keeping track. The record was previously held by his older brother Nathan Lugo who is currently 2-0 (2 KOs) at the professional level. The Lugo brothers are represented by David McWater (Split-T Management). One of boxing’s most influential facilitators, McWater’s clients include Teofino Lopez.
Middleweight (75 kg) JOSEPH AWININGYA JR (Joliet, IL)
The son of a Ghanaian immigrant who had a brief career as a professional boxer, competing as a cruiserweight, the precocious Awiningya, mature for his age, is a college student majoring in marketing who once aspired to become a nurse like his mother.
Flyweight (50 kg) LORENZO PATRICIO (Waianae, Hawai)
One of eight children. Patricio (our poster boy for this story) comes from a boxing family. Two of his sisters are involved in the sport.
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In addition to the three gold medalists, the U.S. men’s team garnered two silver and three bronze. The U.S. women managed only three bronze, somewhat of a disappointment. Lightweight Shamiracle Hardaway (Lagrange, GA), considered one of the favorites, fell to England’s Ella Lonsdale in the semifinals. Ms. Lonsdale has a wonderful surname for a British boxer.
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The best showing was by fast-rising India which had 17 medal winners including four golds. Although boxer Mery Kom (aka Mary Kom) is one of the most popular sports personalities in India, the South Asian nation, the world’s most populous country, has never had a large presence in boxing, amateur or pro. Ten of the 17 Indian medalists, including three of the gold medal winners, were female.
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Tournament organizers noted that the Pueblo event was the first major tournament in the next Olympic cycle. Left unsaid was that boxing as an Olympic sport is on the ropes (pardon the pun). As it now stands, boxing, one of the original Olympic sports, is not on the docket for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
The International Olympic Committee de-frocked the International Boxing Association, the governing body of amateur boxing, in 2023. The decision was upheld in April by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, an agency headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland.
A new body, World Boxing, emerged from the fallout. The Pueblo tournament bore the imprint of the new organization.
The chairman of World Boxing’s “Olympic Commission” is Gennadiy Golovkin who is also the president of Kazakhstan’s National Olympic Committee. A former Olympic silver medalist whose primary residence is in the Los Angeles area, “GGG” is reportedly fluent in four languages. He is tasked with repairing the rent between boxing and the International Olympic Committee so that boxing can continue to be an Olympic sport. A decision is expected next year.
If successful, it is possible that things may revert to the days when professional boxers were ineligible to compete for Olympic medals.
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Floyd Schofield Wins a Banger and Gabriela Fundora Wins by KO
Floyd Schofield Wins a Banger and Gabriela Fundora Wins by KO
LAS VEGAS-Shades of Henry Armstrong and Baby Arizmendi. If you don’t know those names, look them up.
Floyd Schofield battled his way past Mexico’s super tough Rene Tellez Giron who walked through every blow the Texan could fire but lost by decision on Saturday.
It was a severe test and perfect matchmaking for Schofield who yearns for the big bouts against the lightweight giants roaming the world.
Schofield (18-0, 12 KOs) remains undefeated and won the war over thick-necked Mexican Tellez Giron (20-4, 13 KOs) who has never been knocked out and proved to be immune to big punches.
In the opening rounds, the Texas fighter came out firing rapid combinations from the southpaw and orthodox stances. Meanwhile the shorter Tellez Giron studied and fired back an occasional counter for two rounds.
Tellez Giron had seen enough and took his stand in the third stanza. Both unleashed blazing bombs with Schofield turning his back to the Mexican. At that moment referee Tom Taylor could have waved the fight over.
You never turn your back.
The fight resumed and Schofield was damaged. He tried to open up with even more deadly fire but was rebuked by the strong chin of Tellez Giron who fired back in the mad frenzy.
For the remainder of the fight Schofield tried every trick in his arsenal to inflict damage on the thick-necked Mexican. He could not be wobbled. In the 11th round both opened up with serious swing-from-the-heels combinations and suddenly Schofield was looking up. He beat the count easily and the two remained slugging it out.
“He hit me with a good shot,” Schofield said of the knockdown. “I just had to get up. I’m not going to quit.”
In the final round Schofield moved around looking for the proper moment to engage. The Mexican looked like a cat ready to pounce and the two fired furious blows. Neither was hit with the big bombs in the last seconds.
There was Tellez Giron standing defiantly like Baby Arizmendi must have stood in those five ferocious meetings against the incomparable Henry Armstrong. Three of their wars took place in Los Angeles, two at the Olympic Auditorium in the late 1930s as the U.S. was emerging from the Great Depression.
In this fight, Schofield took the win by unanimous decision by scores 118-109 twice and 116-111. It was well-deserved.
“I tried to bang it out,” said Schofield. “Today I learned you can’t always get the knockout.”
Fundora
IBF flyweight titlist Gabriela Fundora needed seven rounds to figure out the darting style of Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz before firing a laser left cross down the middle to end the battle and become the undisputed flyweight world champion.
Fundora now holds all four titles including the WBO, WBA and WBC titles that Alaniz brought in the ring.
Fundora knocked down Alaniz midway through the seventh round. She complained it was due to a tangle of the legs. Several seconds later Fundora blasted the Argentine to the floor again with a single left blast. This time there was no doubt. Her corner wisely waved a white towel to stop the fight at 1:40 of the seventh round.
No one argued the stoppage.
Other Bouts
Bektemir Melikuziev (15-1, 10 KOs) didn’t make weight in a title bout but managed to out-fight David Stevens (14-2, 10 KOs) in a super middleweight fight held at 12 rounds.
Melikuziev used his movement and southpaw stance to keep Pennsylvania’s Stevens from being able to connect with combinations. But Stevens did show he could handle “The Bully’s” punching power over the 12-round fight.
After 12 rounds one judge favored Stevens 116-112, while two others saw Melikuziev the winner by split decision 118-110 and 117-111.
Super middleweight WBA titlist Darius Fulghum (13-0, 11 KOs) pummeled his way to a technical knockout win over southpaw veteran Chris Pearson (17-5-1, 12 KOs) who attempted the rope-a-dope strategy to no avail.
Fulghum floored Pearson in the first round with a four-punch combination and after that just belted Pearson who covered up and fired an occasional blow. Referee Mike Perez stopped the fight at 1:02 of the third round when Pearson did not fire back after a blazing combination.
Young welterweight prospect Joel Iriarte (5-0, 5 KOs) blasted away at the three-inch shorter Xavier Madrid (5-6, 2 KOs) who hung tough for as long as possible. At 2:50 of the first round a one-two delivered Madrid to the floor and referee Thomas Taylor called off the beating.
Iriarte, from Bakersfield, Calif., could not miss with left uppercuts and short rights as New Mexico’s Madrid absorbed every blow but would not quit. It was just too much firepower from Iriarte that forced the stoppage.
Photos credit: Cris Esqueda / Golden Boy
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Results and Recaps from Turning Stone where O’Shaquie Foster Nipped Robson Conceicao
Top Rank was at the Turning Stone casino-resort in Verona, New York, tonight with an 8-bout card topped by a rematch between Robson Conceicao and O’Shaquie Foster with the victor retaining or recapturing his IBF world junior lightweight title. When the smoke cleared, the operative word was “recapturing” as Foster became a two-time title-holder, avenging his controversial setback to the Brazilian in Newark on July 6.
This was a somewhat better fight than their initial encounter and once again the verdict was split. Foster prevailed by 115-113 on two of the cards with the dissenting judge favoring Conceicao by the same margin. Conceicao seemingly had the edge after nine frames, but Foster, a 4/1 favorite, landed the harder shots in the championship rounds.
It was the thirteenth victory in the last 14 starts for Foster who fights out of Houston. A two-time Olympian and 2016 gold medalist, the 36-year-old Conceicao is 19-3-1 overall and 1-3-1 in world title fights.
Semi-wind-up
SoCal lightweight Raymond Muratalla (22-0, 17 KOs) made a big jump in public esteem and moved one step closer to a world title fight with a second-round blast-out of Jose Antonio Perez who was on the canvas twice but on his feet when the fight was stopped at the 1:24 mark of round two. Muratalla, a product of Robert Garcia’s boxing academy, is ranked #2 by the WBC and WBO. A Tijuana native, Perez (25-6) earned this assignment with an upset of former Olympian and former 130-pound world titlist Jojo Diaz,
Other Bouts
Syracuse junior welterweight Bryce Mills, a high-pressure fighter with a strong local following, stopped scrawny Mike O’Han Jr whose trainer Mark DeLuca pulled him out after five one-sided rounds. Mills improved to 17-1 (6 KOs). It was another rough day at the office for Massachusetts house painting contractor O’’Han (19-4) who had the misfortune of meeting Abdullah Mason in his previous bout.
In a junior lightweight fight that didn’t heat up until late in the final round, Albany’s Abraham Nova (23-3-1) and Tijuana native Humberto Galindo (14-3-3) fought to a 10-round draw. It was another close-but-no- cigar for the likeable Nova who at least stemmed a two-fight losing streak. The judges had it 97-93 (Galindo), 96-94 (Nova) and 95-95.
Twenty-one-year-old Long Island middleweight Jahi Tucker advanced to 13-1-1 (6 KOs) with an eighth-round stoppage of Stockton’s teak-tough but outclassed Quilisto Madera (14-6). Madera was on a short leash after five rounds, but almost took it to the final bell with the referee intervening with barely a minute remaining in the contest. Madera was on his feet when the match was halted. Earlier in the round, Tucker had a point deducted for hitting on the break.
Danbury, Connecticut heavyweight Ali Feliz, one of two fighting sons of journeyman heavyweight Fernely Feliz, improved to 4-0 (3) with a second-round stoppage of beefy Rashad Coulter (5-5). Feliz had Coulter pinned against the ropes and was flailing away when the bout was halted at the 1:34 mark. The 42-year-old Coulter, a competitor in all manner of combat sports, hadn’t previously been stopped when competing as a boxer.
Featherweight Yan Santana dominated and stopped Mexico’s Eduardo Baez who was rescued by referee Charlie Fitch at the 1:57 mark of round four. It was the 12th knockout in 13 starts for Santana, a 24-year-old Dominican father of three A former world title challenger, Mexicali’s Baez declines to 23-7-2 but has lost six of his last eight.
In his most impressive showing to date, Damian Knyba, a six-foot-seven Pole, knocked out paunchy Richard Lartey at the 2:10 mark of round three. A right-left combination knocked Lartey into dreamland, but it was the right did the damage and this was of the nature of a one-punch knockout. Referee Ricky Gonzalez waived the fight off without starting a count.
Knyba, 28, improved to 14-0 (8 KOs). A native of Ghana coming off his career-best win, a fourth-round stoppage of Polish veteran Andrzej Wawrzyk, Lartey declined to 16-7 with his sixth loss inside the distance.
Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank
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