One Punch Meant World of Difference to Pazienza, Rosenblatt

There are very few things on which Vinny Paz, who used to be known as Vinny Pazienza until he had his last name legally changed some years back

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Published

7 years ago

August 21, 2018

Bernard Fernandez

There are very few things on which Vinny Paz, who used to be known as Vinny Pazienza until he had his last name legally changed some years back, and Dana Rosenblatt are apt to agree. Perhaps the only common ground to which the polar-opposite former archrivals from New England are willing to admit is this: both of their lives irreversibly changed the night of Aug. 23, 1996, in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall, with the landing of a single punch in the fourth round of the first of their two bouts.

That punch, a looping overhand right launched by a bleeding, vision-impaired Paz (as he will be referred to for the remainder of this look-back story), landed flush on Rosenblatt’s jaw, drastically altering a crossroads fight that Rosenblatt was winning easily to that point. Although Rosenblatt, the younger (24 years of age to Pazienza’s 33), seemingly hotter growth property, lurched to his feet and beat referee Tony Orlando’s count, he clearly was in deep distress and the instantly revitalized “Pazmanian Devil” swarmed in to release as much of the pent-up aggression his ominous nickname suggested. So intent on his finishing purpose was Paz that, when Orlando jumped in moments later to end the battering and protect the out-on-his-feet Rosenblatt, he also was floored by a wild shot flung by the underdog victor. For that bit of overexuberance, a semi-penitent Paz was socked with a 90-day suspension and $5,000 fine by the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board.

“I called Tony’s room later that night,” Paz, now 55, recalled when contacted for his remembrances of a fight that is inarguably one of his career highlights. “I said, `Tony, I want to tell you I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.’ He said, `Vinny, don’t worry about it. But can I get a rematch?’”

There would be a rematch, but not one pitting Paz against Orlando. Rosenblatt would get revenge of sorts on Paz when they squared off a second time, on Nov. 5, 1999, in Mashantucket, Conn., coming away with a disputed, 12-round split decision (it was disputed at least by Paz, who insists he was screwed by the judging) for the fringe IBO super middleweight title. But that didn’t – couldn’t – even the score for Rosenblatt for the punch that changed the arc of both fighters’ lives and careers 1,069 days earlier.

Now, about that jolting right that pumped new vitality into what had been Paz’s seemingly sagging fortunes while simultaneously sucking the momentum out of what had been Rosenblatt’s predicted ascendance to superstardom. Was it a purely lucky punch, as Rosenblatt contended then and still does, or the anticipated product of intense preparation, as Paz believes?

Depends on whom you ask.

“If you watch a tape of that fight and see him land that punch, he’s not looking at me at all,” said Rosenblatt, now 46. “His face is down. His eyes are closed. If that’s not a lucky punch, I don’t know what is.”

Paz, of course, begs to differ. “I had worked on that punch all through 10 weeks of training camp,” he said. “After the third round, I went back to the corner and told Rooney (trainer Kevin Rooney), `Kevin, I’m going to knock this f—— kid out.’ He said, `So go do it!’ I know you can do it, so go do it!’ And I did it. After I knocked him down and went to the neutral corner, I was thinking, `Please, please, Tony, let me go.’ I wanted to murder the guy. I wanted to take his head right off his shoulders.’”

So whose version of The Punch is the more accurate? Ron Borges, then the boxing writer for the Boston Globe, qualifies as an objective observer, having extensively covered both Pazienza, the wrong-side-of-the-tracks kid from Cranston, R.I., and Rosenblatt, the erudite southpaw from Malden, Mass., whose promoter, Top Rank founder and CEO Bob Arum, already had begun to hype as an updated version of such legendary Jewish fighters as Benny Leonard and Barney Ross. On this one question, however, Borges sides squarely with Paz.

“Vinny knew Dana would be open to being hit with that punch,” Borges recalled. “Those first three rounds, Dana was just beating the crap out of Vinny, who was already pretty busted up. After the third round, Dana, who was always this serious, self-contained guy, did something that was pretty uncharacteristic for him. He put one hand up and kind of dismissively twisted his glove around. I remember thinking, `He’s in trouble, because he actually thinks this fight is over.’ I knew that was the time when Vinny was most dangerous. In the very next round Vinny knocked his ass out with that overhand right.

“A few hours after the fight I was walking through the casino and ran into Dana’s dad, who was a very nice man. I told him, `I’m sorry for what happened to Dana, but I got to tell you something. I have no inside information, but I’m pretty sure that right now up in Dana’s room, his trainer, Joe Lake, is telling him he got hit with a lucky punch. But Mr. Rosenblatt, let me tell you something. Vinny spent a lot of time getting himself ready to throw that punch because he’s a professional. And that’s what your boy needs to know.”

Opinions will vary, of course. Perhaps the more pertinent consideration is not whether The Punch was the result of blind luck or meticulous planning, but all the circumstances that both preceded and followed it.

For Paz, the Rosenblatt bout, for the mostly insignificant and vacant WBU super middleweight title, had the earmarks of a last, possibly futile chance for redemption. He had not fought in 14 months, his most recent ring appearance having been an absolute beatdown at the hands of the luminously talented Roy Jones Jr. on June 24, 1995, also in Boardwalk Hall and, coincidentally, also with Tony Orlando as the referee. More than a few knowledgeable observers were ready to write off Paz, a former IBF super lightweight and WBA super welterweight champion, as past his prime and possibly as damaged goods. Remember, five years earlier Paz had been involved in a serious automobile accident that left him with two broken vertebrae in his spine and another that was dislocated. Doctors told him he would never box again, but, if his rehabilitation went well enough, he might someday be able to walk “with limited movement.” Fourteen months later, and after having had a metal device called a halo attached to his skull by screws, miracle man Paz resumed his career.

Contrast the foreboding sense of pessimism about Paz’s long-term prospects with the most optimistic projections for stylish southpaw Rosenblatt. In the September 1995 issue of The Ring, Arum predicted that the day would come, a few years down the road, when fight fans would want nothing so much as a matchup of Oscar De La Hoya, by then filled out to a robust 160 pounds and well on his way to his stated goal of world championships in six weight divisions, and Rosenblatt. The two had appeared on the same card at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on May 6, 1995, with De La Hoya stopping Rafael Ruelas in two rounds of a lightweight unification showdown and Rosenblatt retaining his minor WBC Continental Americas middleweight title on a first-round knockout of Chad Parker.

“The dream fight for the biggest money of all time is Oscar and Rosenblatt,” Arum was quoted as saying. “That’s what I think of when I go to sleep at night.”

Arum’s master plan presumably still was on the drawing board with Paz penciled in as a big-name steppingstone for Rosenblatt in what was billed as “The Neighborhood War” for New England supremacy on the 3-to-1 favorite’s way to bigger and better things. But Paz had his own ideas of how matters would play out. To his way of thinking, it was he who had lured Rosenblatt into the trap he had set, not the other way around.

“I had watched him a couple of times before he fought me and I knew I was gonna knock the kid out,” Paz said. “I picked him out. He didn’t pick me. I picked an undefeated young kid because I wanted people to know that the way it went down with Jones wasn’t the end of my career.”

Not surprisingly, Paz – who’d be a charter inductee into the trash-talking hall of fame, were there such a thing – began a campaign of verbal disparagement that he insists wasn’t just to help sell the show. Nor was it just insulting words Paz hurled at Rosenblatt, but other forms of intended intimidation aimed at getting under the younger man’s skin like a progressively irritating rash.

“Vinny sent a dozen black roses to Rosenblatt’s mother before the fight,” Borges said. “That was pure Vinny. Then, on the night of the fight, Vinny stopped walking toward his dressing room and peeled off in a different direction. The security guard who was accompanying him said, `Hey, Vinny, that’s the wrong way.’ Vinny said, `Yeah, I know, I just got to do something first.’ Then he burst into Rosenblatt’s dressing room and told him, `Tonight’s going to be your worst f—— nightmare. I’m going to kick your f—— ass,’ at which point he got pushed out the door. But it was just a continuation of the mind games Vinny had been playing from the time the fight was announced.”

For his part, the polite Rosenblatt could not understand what he had done to incite Paz’s hatred of him. “I had no animosity toward him,” Rosenblatt said. “It was all on his end. His attitude was kind of like, `Yeah, I’m kind of a lowlife and this is my shtick. I’m going to make fun of this kid, then I’m going to beat him up.’ It was arrogance on his part, but I didn’t take it seriously.

“But before the second fight, maybe because I had beaten him up in the first one – up to the point he hit me with a punch I didn’t see, and praise to him for sticking around long enough to land that shot – it got even nastier on his end. A lot of the stuff he was saying was personal. I couldn’t believe some of the stupid s— he said.”

What Rosenblatt can’t dispute is the terrible toll The Punch took on him, in ways that likely would not have happened had he won as expected, very likely by stoppage had Paz’s badly swollen left eye and bleeding, busted nose worsened to the point where Orlando or the ring doctor would have had no choice but to call things off.

“My whole life would have been different,” Rosenblatt said of how his career, which went well for the most part but never reached the threshold of greatness, would now be regarded were it not for The Punch. “I’ll take boxing first. After Pazienza, I probably would have fought (Sugar Ray) Leonard, before Leonard fought (Hector) Camacho. Bob was promising Leonard. I would have made some money, maybe a million bucks, and, really, that wasn’t the Sugar Ray we all remember. Camacho proved that. I would have knocked out Leonard because he was done.

“After that, who knows? Now, all of a sudden, I’m a `name.’ Certainly my name would have resonated more than it does now. My life would be exponentially different, exponentially better.”

How so, he was asked.

“In my first fight after Pazienza (a 10-round unanimous decision over Glenwood Brown on Jan. 5, 1997, in Boston), I busted my (right) hand in the first round and I really mangled it by hitting him with it for nine more rounds. That was my power hand, since I’m naturally right-handed. Maybe I shouldn’t have kept going, but I knew if I lost twice in a row, I’d be done. But then I was out because of the hand injury for 15 months, and that really set me back.

“Why did I kind of fade away after the (first Paz) fight? It wasn’t just that I lost. It wasn’t the manner of how I lost. It was that I was off so long after I beat Glenwood Brown. Out of sight, out of mind, right? It was like I was yesterday’s news. And it wasn’t the same when I was able to fight again. I wasn’t with Bob anymore.

“I probably wouldn’t have fought Glenwood, where I busted my hand, were it not for that one punch from Pazienza. That was the beginning of the end for me, the start of a bunch of injuries to my hands and shoulders. That’s why I stopped fighting. But, hey, maybe I wouldn’t be doing mortgages now. So I don’t regret what happened then. Aw, that’s a lie. I do regret what happened.”

Rosenblatt retired from the ring after a three-round technical draw with Juan Carlos Viloria on June 28, 2002, a bout Rosenblatt almost certainly would have won were it not for the bad cut he sustained from what was ruled an unintentional head-butt. He finished with a 37-1-2 record with 23 victories inside the distance, but he never fought for a widely recognized world championship and the megafight with De La Hoya never became anything other than Arum’s temporary pipe dream.

But Rosenblatt hasn’t done badly in his post-boxing life. “I do residential mortgages,” he noted. “I was with a small bank up here, which is gone now, but I’m still in the business. I’ve been doing this since November 2001. I got in at a great time. Rates were going down, down, down, and I developed a lot of contacts.

“In my third month, I made $35,000. By the end of 10 months, I think I made about $1.5 million. I mean, do the math. I got, like, $15,000 for that final fight with Viloria. In 10 years after I stopped boxing and started doing mortgages, I made about $8 million and I invested it well.

“Over a five-year period I never made less than $800,000, and in my best year of 2005 I made $955,000. I was just killing it. But let me tell you, there were times when I would have given it all up to go back and finish my boxing career the right way.”

How good was Rosenblatt or, more to the point, how good might he have been? That, too, is a matter of conjecture. Teddy Atlas, who did color commentary for ESPN2’s telecast of Paz-Rosenblatt II, weighed in on the matter during his prefight analysis.

“He was never as good as his record before he got knocked out, and he never was as bad as they said after,” Atlas said. “He goes in and he’s fighting the right fight against Vinny (in their first matchup). He’s pot-shotting him when (Paz) rushed in and all of a sudden Rosenblatt gets caught with one of those looping punches, many of which missed before, and he’s out. After that night, the confidence left him like air from a punctured balloon. He’s a kid who never fully regained that confidence he once had in the ring. When he fights now, it’s like he’s waiting for something bad to happen.”

Paz, meanwhile, is still waiting for one more good thing to happen. He finished with a 50-10 record and 30 wins inside the distance, an accomplished enough career to get him inducted into the Atlantic City Boxing Hall of Fame on June 3 of this year and a life notable enough to have been the subject of a critically acclaimed 2016 movie, Bleed For This, with Miles Teller in the lead role. But there is a widespread belief that Paz bulked up through the use of performance-enhancing drugs, and even some of his more ardent admirers are hesitant to endorse him for induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame for that and other reasons.

“No doubt he was juicing,” said Borges. “His face took on the same sort of shape as Lyle Alzado’s. I’ve known Vinny since he was a skinny amateur. But, really, it’s partially the Duvas’ fault. He was much more of a boxer when he was an amateur and early into his pro career. He wasn’t looking to take two or three to land one. They kind of convinced him that if he was going to become popular and sell tickets, he had to be more than a boxer. He had to take people out. In that first fight against Rosenblatt it worked out. Other nights, not so much.

“And as far as the (IBHOF), I never say never because some of the guys who have gotten in there probably don’t deserve to be. I’m kind of a stickler. I think it should be a lot more exclusive than it is.”

Maybe more has been made of The Punch than needs to be, in terms of overall historical impact. But for two men so alike in some ways, so vastly different in others, the effects of it will forever stand as a touchstone for how a fleeting moment in time can have such a profound and lasting effect.

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Bernard Fernandez

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Rivera vs. Smith: Shame Under the Radar in the Bay State of Massachusetts

Notes and Nuggets from Thomas Hauser

Published

1 hour ago

May 18, 2025

Thomas Hauser

In recent years, there has been lavish praise and extensive criticism regarding Turki Alalshikh’s boxing initiative. Some of it has been warranted and some hasn’t. One issue deserves greater comment.

The judging has been pretty good.

Scoring a fight is subjective, which can open the door to bias, incompetence, and corruption.

Most people in boxing know who the good judges are. But some bad ones keep getting high-profile assignments. Why? Because they shade things toward the house fighter which is where the money lies.

When there’s a bad decision in boxing, almost always it favors the house fighter.

Overall, Turki Alalshikh’s fights have been marked by honest scoring.

Oleksandr Usyk went the distance four times against Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. Fury-Usyk I and Usyk-Joshua II could legitimately have been scored either way. It was in the Saudi’s financial interest (not to mention the interests of Frank Warren and Eddie Hearn) that Fury and Joshua win those fights. Yet Usyk won all four decisions.

Clearly, Turki Alalshikh wanted Hamzah Sheeraz to defeat Carlos Adames. Yet Adames retained his title when that bout was credibly scored a draw.

The list goes on.

Bad scoring trickles down from the top. Judges know that the monied interests behind a promotion want a certain fighter to win and that their receiving lucrative judging assignments in the future often depends on scoring the fight at hand a certain way.

The judging for Turki Alalshikh’s fights so far seems to have been based on the instruction, “Be fair. Get it right.”

Kudos for that.

****

Six years ago after unifying the four major cruiserweight titles, Oleksandr Usyk was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America as its “Fighter of the Year.” That designation was repeated in 2024 in recognition of his unifying the heavyweight crown.

While in New York to accept his most recent honor, Usyk sat with former NFL MVP Boomer Esiason for an interview that will air in early-June on the nationally syndicated television show Game Time.

Oleksandr came across as thoughtful and likeable during the conversation.

He shared memories of his father: “My father was a military guy. He teach me like a street fight, to work a knife, shooting. I use jujitsu, karate, wrestling, kickboxing. I say, ‘Poppa, what we do this for?’ . . . He says, ‘We prepare’ . . . ‘For what we prepare?’ . . . ‘For life.’”

Usyk won a gold medal in the 201-pound heavyweight division at the 2012 London Olympics. But his father died before Oleksandr could return home and show the medal to him. After Usyk beat Tyson Fury to unify the heavyweight crown, he cried as he proclaimed, “Hey, poppa, we did it.”

“A lot of people in Ukraine who hear that, they cry too,” Oleksandr told Esiason. “Is normal. [Some] people, ‘Hey man! Don’t cry.’ Why not cry? I like to cry.”

Speaking of the size differential between Fury and himself, Usyk noted, “For me, is like a story. David and Goliath. I not afraid because boxing is a sport. Yeah, it’s a guy a little bigger for me. No problem.”

Asked how he would describe his fighting style,” Oleksandr answered, “It’s a wonderful style.”

“Boxing for me is a gentleman’s sport,” he added. “Just respect for my opponents. A lot of people make a show. But if you make a good show and then bad boxing – [with a wave of his hand] PFFFTHF! First in boxing is class and skill; then the show.’

He explained how his training regimen includes holding his breath underwater: “I make like a fight time. Three minutes underwater, one minute rest, twelve rounds. Is hard.”

What’s the longest that Usyk has held his breath underwater?

“My record is 4 minutes 47 seconds.”

The interview closed with Oleksandr appealing directly to the American people to support his Ukrainian homeland in its defense against Russian aggression.

“I’m not political. I’m just [a] man who lives in Ukraine who’s worried for my people.”

And he talked of having brought some Ukrainian soldiers to his fights as guests: “They’re my power, my angels.”

****

Don King has been the subject of an endless stream of anecdotes. Jody Heaps (who spent three decades as a senior creative director and executive producer at Showtime) adds one more to the mix.

“Don had just brought Mike Tyson to Showtime,” Heaps recalls. “We were doing a shoot with Don sitting in a barber chair and he was in a great mood. Toward the end, someone came over to me and said, ‘If Don has the time, could you ask him about his favorite movie scene for a promotion we’re doing.’ So I asked Don what his favorite movie scene was. He told me movies weren’t his thing and said, ‘You tell me. What’s my favorite scene?’

“I talked it over with the crew,” Heaps continues. “Then I suggested the shower scene in Psycho. I figured Don had seen it. Everybody has seen it. But Don told me, ‘I don’t know anything about it. What happens in that scene?’ So I explained that you see Janet Leigh in shower. Then you see a silhouette on the shower curtain. The shower curtain is pulled aside. You see the knife plunging in again and again. And the last thing you see is blood circling down the drain.”

“Don says, ‘Okay; I’ve got it.’ He looks right at the camera and, with incredible drama, starts recreating the scene. Five seconds in, everyone is mesmerized. He takes us through Janet Leigh in the shower, the silhouette on the shower curtain, the knife plunging in again and again, the blood circling down the drain. And at the end, he laughed that loud booming laugh of his and proclaimed, ‘It was a clean kill!’

“There was stunned silence,” Heaps says in closing. “Don made it sound like it was real and he’d been there when it happened.”

****

Like most sports fans, I watched the first round of the NFL draft on April 24. I’ll do the same when the NBA draft is held on June 25. Allow me the following thoughts.

Adam Silver seems like a basketball fan.

Roger Goodell seems like a fan of making money.

Adam Silver looks sincere when he hugs a draftee.

Roger Goodell looks like he wants to take a shower.

Adam Silver comes across as though he has a sense of humor and can laugh at himself.

Roger Goodell comes across as though he doesn’t and can’t.

Adam Silver has James Dolan to deal with and keeps him in line.

Roger Goodell can’t put a lid on Jerry Jones.

Adam Silver is booed in good-natured fashion by fans at the draft.

Roger Goodell is booed with rabid enthusiasm

****

And last; a memory of Turki Alalshikh’s May 2 fight card in Times Square . . .

Security was tight. The police had been instructed to keep pedestrians on the sidewalk moving as they passed the ring enclosure which was blocked from view by a ten-foot-tall fence. Well before the event began, a young man with a video camera planted himself on the sidewalk across the street from the enclosure. A uniformed police officer approached and the following colloquy occurred.

Cop: I’m sorry, sir. You’ll have to move.

Young man: I’m with the media.

Cop: And I’m with the New York Police Department. You’ll have to move.

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His next book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – will be published this month and is available for preorder at: https://www.amazon.com/Most-Honest-Sport-Inside-Boxing/dp/1955836329

In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Hiruta, Bohachuk, and Trinidad Win at the Commerce Casino

Published

11 hours ago

May 18, 2025

David A. Avila

Hiruta, Bohachuk, and Trinidad Win at the Commerce Casino

A jam-packed fight card featuring a world champion, top contenders and knockout artists delivered the action but no knockouts on Saturday in the Los Angeles area.

You can’t have everything.

Mizuki “Mimi” Hiruta (8-0, 2 KOs), fresh with a multi-year 360 Boxing Promotion’s contract deal, once again fought and defended the WBO super fly world title and this time against Argentina’s Carla Merino (16-3, 5 KOs) at Commerce Casino.

It was expected to be her toughest test.

Hiruta, who is trained and managed by Manny Robles, showed added poise and a sharp jab that created and established an invisible barrier that Merino could never crack. It was as simple as that.

A sharp right jab from the southpaw Japanese world champion in the opening round gave Merino something to figure out. When the Argentine fighter tried to counter Hiruta was out of range. That distance was a problem that Merino could not solve.

The pink-flame-haired Hiruta looks like an anime figure incapable of violence. But whenever Merino dared unload a combination Hiruta would eagerly pounce on the opportunity. It was clear that the champion’s speed and power was a problem.

For more than a year Hiruta has been training in Southern California and has sparred with numerous styles and situations in the talent-crazy Southern California area. Each time she fights the poise and polish gained from working with a variety of talent and skill partners seems to add more layers to the Japanese fighter’s arsenal.

After six rounds of clear control by Hiruta, the Argentine fighter finally made an assertive move to change the momentum with combination punching. Both exchanged but Hiruta cornered Merino and opened up with a seven-punch barrage.

In the eighth round Merino tried again to force an exchange and again Hiruta opened up with a three-punch combo followed by a four-punch combo. Merino dived inside the attack by the Japanese champion and accidentally butted Hiruta’s head. No serious damage appeared.

Merino tried valiantly to exchange with Hiruta but the strength, speed and agility were too much to overcome in the last two rounds of the fight. Left hand blows by the champion connected solidly several times in the final round.

After 10 rounds all three judges saw Hiruta the winner by decision 98-92 twice and 99-91. The fighter from Tokyo retains the WBO super fly title for the fourth time.

Bohachuk Wins

Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk (26-2, 24 KOs) defeated Mykal Fox (24-5, 5 KOs) by unanimous decision but had problems corralling the much taller fighter after 10 rounds in a super welterweight match.

It was only the second time Bohachuk won by decision.

Fox used movement all 10 rounds that never allowed Bohachuk to plant his feet to deliver his vaunted power. But though Fox had moments, they were not enough to offset the power shots that did land. Two judges scored it 97-93 for the Ukrainian and another had it 98-92

“Good experience for me,” said Bohachuk of Fox’s movement.

King of LA

In a super featherweight match Omar “King of LA” Trinidad (19-0-1, 13 KOs) dominated Nicaragua’s Alexander Espinoza (23-7-3, 8 KOs) but never came close to knocking out the spirited fighter. But did come close to dropping him.

The fighter out of the Boyle Heights area in the boxing hotbed of East L.A. was able to exchange freely with savage uppercuts to the body and head, but Espinoza would not quit. For 10 rounds Trinidad battered away at Espinoza but a knockout win was not possible.

After 10 rounds all three judges favored Trinidad (100-90, 99-91, 98-92) who retains his regional WBC title and his place in the featherweight rankings.

“I’m living the dream,” said Trinidad.

Maywood Fighter Medina on Target

Lupe Medina (10-0, 2 KOs) proved ready for the elite in knocking down world title challenger Maria Santizo (12-6, 6 KOs) and winning by unanimous decision after eight rounds in a minimumweight match up.

Medina, a model-looking fighter out of Maywood, Calif, accepted a match against Santizo who had fought three times against world titlists including L.A. great Seniesa Estrada. She looked perfectly in her element.

Behind a ramrod jab and solid defense, Medina avoided the big swinging Santizo’s punches while countering accurately. For every home run swing by the Guatemalan fighter Medina would connect with a sharp right or left.

In the fifth round, Santizo opened up with a crisp three-punch combination and Medina opened up with her own four-punch blast that seemed to wobble the veteran fighter. Medina stepped on the gas and fired strategic blows but never left herself open for counters.

Medina didn’t waste time in the sixth round. A crisp one-two staggered Santizo who reeled backward. The referee ruled it a knockdown and Santizo was in trouble. Medina went into attack mode as Santizo pulled every trick she knew to keep from being overrun by the Maywood fighter.

In the last two rounds Medina seemed to look for the perfect shot to end the fight. Santizo kept busy with short shots and stayed away from meaningful exchanges. Medina also might have been gassed from expending so many punches in the prior round.

The two female fighters both seemed to want a knockout in the eighth round. Santizo was wary of Medina’s power and dived in close to smother Medina’s firing zone. Neither woman was able to connect with any significant shots.

After eight rounds all three judges scored in favor of Medina 77-74, 76-75 and 80-71.

It was proof Medina belongs among the top minimumweight fighters.

Other Bouts

In a super welterweight fight Michael Meyers (7-2) defeated Eduardo Diaz (9-4) by unanimous decision in a tough scrap. Mayers proved to be more accurate and was able to withstand a late rally by Diaz.

Abel Mejia (8-0) defeated Antonio Dunton El (6-4-2) by decision after six rounds in a super feather match.

Jocelyn Camarillo (4-0) won by split decision after four rounds versus Qianyue Zhao (0-2) in a light flyweight bout.

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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David Allen Bursts Johnny Fisher’s Bubble at the Copper Box

Published

19 hours ago

May 17, 2025

Arne K. Lang

David-Allen-Bursts-Johnny-Fisher's-Bubble-at-the-Copper-Box

The first meeting between Johnny Fisher, the Romford Bull, and David Allen, the White Rhino, was an inelegant affair that produced an unpopular decision. Allen put Fisher on the canvas in the fifth frame and dominated the second half of the fight, but two of the judges thought that Fisher nicked it, allowing the “Bull” to keep his undefeated record. That match was staged last December in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, underneath Usyk-Fury II.

The 26-year-old Fisher, who has a fervent following, was chalked a 13/5 favorite for the sequel today at London’s Copper Box Arena. At the weigh-in, Allen, who carried 265 pounds, looked as if he had been training at the neighborhood pub.

Through the first four rounds, Fisher fought cautiously, holding tight to his game plan. He worked his jab effectively and it appeared as if the match would go the full “10” with the Romford man winning a comfortable decision. However, in the waning moments of round five, he was a goner, left splattered on the canvas.

This was Fisher’s second trip to the mat. With 30 seconds remaining in the fifth, Allen put him on the deck with a clubbing right hand. Fisher got up swaying on unsteady legs, but referee Marcus McDonnell let the match continue. The coup-de-gras was a crunching left hook.

Fisher, who was 13-0 with 11 KOs heading in, went down face first with his arms extended. The towel flew in from his corner, but that was superfluous. He was out before he hit the canvas.

A high-class journeyman, the 33-year-old David Allen improved to 24-7-2 with his 16^th knockout. He promised fireworks – “going toe-to-toe, that’s just the way I’m wired” – and delivered the goods.

Other Bouts of Note

Northampton middleweight Kieron Conway added the BBBofC strap to his existing Commonwealth belt with a fourth-round stoppage of Welsh southpaw Gerome Warburton. It was the third win inside the distance in his last four outings for Conway who improved to 23-3-1 (7 KOs).

Conway trapped Warburton (15-2-2) in a corner, hurt him with a body punch, and followed up with a barrage that forced the referee to intervene as Warburton’s corner tossed in the white flag of surrender. The official time was 1:26 of round four. Warburton’s previous fight was a 6-rounder vs. an opponent who was 8-72-4.

In the penultimate fight on the card, George Liddard, the so-called “Billericay Bomber,” earned a date with Kieron Conway by dismantling Bristol’s Aaron Sutton who was on the canvas three times before his corner pulled him out in the final minute of the fifth frame.

The 22-year-old Liddard (12-0, 7 KOs) was a consensus 12/1 favorite over Sutton who brought a 19-1 record but against tepid opposition. His last three opponents were a combined 16-50-5 at the time that he fought them.

Also

In a bout that wasn’t part of the ESPN slate, Johnny Fisher stablemate John Hedges, a tall cruiserweight, won a comprehensive 10-round decision over Liverpool’s Nathan Quarless. The scores were 99-92, 98-92, and 97-93.

Purportedly 40-4 as an amateur, Hedges advanced his pro ledger to 11-0 (3). It was the second loss in 15 starts for the feather-fisted Quarless, a nephew of 1980s heavyweight gatekeeper Noel Quarless.

Photo credit: Mark Robinson / Matchroom

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