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Terry McGovern: The Year of the Butcher – Part Three, The Vulnerable Spot

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Wine and nightlife stalked Terry McGovern through the middle years of the first decade of the 1900s and as its grip on him tightened so the torque departed from the most terrible punches of his generation. McGovern became just another good fighter.

The blown-out tornado of his brilliance left cracks in his soul. Into them crept uncertainty. He took solace in horses, his other great love, but this one was not so kind to him as boxing had been. Losing huge sums gambling, he sought instead to stay close to the track as an owner but here too he was deceived by his own judgement. As the cracks within him widened, McGovern began to see his horses winning when they were losing; when friends explained to him the truth of the matter he would stalk and scowl and brood. Money fell from him as opponents once had – what the newspapers gently referred to as “domestic troubles” beset him. What referee Billy Roche called McGovern’s “single vulnerable spot”, his temper, began to betray him – and on the third weekend of April 1905, McGovern awoke in Stamford Hall Sanatorium suffering from “nervous, mental and physical exhaustion.” It was not his first visit. He escaped, of course, pursued by police, a watch put on the railway stations that led back to his beloved Brooklyn, but Terry dodged them, and popped up once again at the racetrack.

“I’m fine now,” he assured well-wishers concerned at his gaunt appearance, concerned at rumours he was pursued. “I hardly think it will be necessary for me to return.”

He did return, many times, in 1907 for a “complete physical and mental breakdown” according to The Pittsburgh Press. In 1909 he was arrested for drunkenness and then taken before a board of psychiatrists before being sent once more to a facility. “He is a shadow,” lamented The Montreal Gazette, “of the splendidly developed, sinewy youth who thumped George Dixon into retirement.”

A shadow indeed, but where McGovern cast that shadow in 1900, mere mortals trembled, and great fighters fell. Dixon and Palmer lay broken behind him; McGovern, before the late nights and the booze caught up with him, before bankruptcy and evil purpose beset him, The Butcher of the new century had one last royal bloodline to cut.

The bantam and featherweight champion of the world threw his shadow across lightweight king Frank Erne.

Erne was a monster. He was barely older than McGovern was when he first met with Dixon down at featherweight, but he managed a ten-round draw against the great Canadian when Dixon was arguably in his prime. A year later in November of 1896 he became the first man ever to beat Dixon in a meaningful contest, besting him over twenty desperately close rounds but besting him nonetheless. Dixon took his revenge a matter of months later, by which point Erne had departed featherweight for what may remain the deepest lightweight division in history.

Erne dominated it.

His first effort against power-punching champion Kid Lavigne was a narrow draw but after out-pointing the superb contender George McFadden who had just become the first man to knock out the immortal Joe Gans, he got another crack at the champion and “battered the title out of him” according to one observer.

Then he stopped Joe Gans on a cut after just twelve, Gans quitting on his stool in half the time it took McFadden to turn the trick, and it was as he summited this awe-inspiring peak that Terry McGovern chose to step up and face him. This remains one of the boldest decisions in boxing history.

The seed of the fight germinated in a controversy that, according to boxing promoter and sometime manager of Frank Erne, “Big” Jim Kennedy, developed in the months preceding. Word reached McGovern’s ear that Erne had witnessed an unidentified McGovern contest and was unimpressed.  McGovern immediately invited Erne to meet him at 126lbs; Erne returned the favour at 133lbs – and the idea was quietly shelved.

But it wouldn’t go away.

Sometime around the beginning of June of 1900, it re-surfaced in earnest with Erne reportedly challenging McGovern to a meeting at 128lbs. Despite this, protracted negotiations followed between Erne himself and McGovern’s manager, Sam Harris. The sticking point seemed to be whether the fight should be made at 128lbs or 129, an argument which took a little less than twenty days to resolve (readers of parts one and two will be able to understand the necessity of McGovern sending his representative rather than attending himself).

What emerged was an agreement that neither man would weigh more than 128lbs at ringside, that the contest would be fought over ten rounds, that Erne could not win unless it was by a stoppage and that the lightweight title of the world would not be at stake for that reason.

The arrangement caught the imagination of the press immediately.

“This is one of the greatest matches ever made,” wrote boxing correspondent JB McCormick. “Erne will have the advantage in height, reach, and in skill, but he will have the disadvantage of being compelled to make the pace. McGovern is the most aggressive fighter in the ring to-day and there is very little likelihood of his fighting a merely defensive battle.”

Frank Erne

Frank Erne

John L. Sullivan, too, believed that McGovern wouldn’t seek to “last the distance” but rather that “Terry will knock Erne’s block off!”

Nevertheless, McCormick was right. Height, reach and skill is not a combination that many fighters moving up in weight can overcome, more expressly one that had rocketed, as McGovern had, from flyweight to bantamweight to featherweight in a little over three years, long before the advent of performance enhancing drugs designed to enable this process.  More than that, McGovern was seeking to do so against a world champion who had never been stopped who was at the absolute peak of his powers.

Still, there were signs that he should be at least competitive. While Erne had been in three desperately close fights with George Dixon, McGovern had devastated him in just eight rounds, then thrashed him once more for a six-round decision. Also, in the gap between his battles with the world featherweight champion and the world lightweight champion, McGovern had smashed the superb Oscar Gardner to pieces in just three rounds after an early scare. His form was every bit as impressive as Erne’s but was being displayed in the division below – could he move up successfully once more?

Erne established his training camp in the waterfront resort community of Fair Haven, New Jersey, several hours away from Madison Square Garden where he was to have his prime dashed like so much blood upon the canvas in just eighteen days. McGovern, as always, stayed close to home, setting up camp at a facility on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. As chief sparring partner he employed the superb lightweight contender George “Elbows” McFadden, the same man who had defeated Kid Lavigne and Joe Gans and fought Erne himself so hard the year before, as shifty and tough a fighter as lived.

“McGovern is doing all this work with the understanding that the fight with Erne will be one of the hardest he ever had,” wrote The St.Louis Republic who had a reporter in New York from July the first.  “Erne is doing faithful work at Fair Haven…with the help of his sparring partners [he] is gradually reducing his weight to 128lbs.”

Making weight may have become a struggle for the lightweight champion. On the ninth, one week before combat he threatened to “saw off” his left leg to drop the necessary pounds. On the tenth, weighing 134lbs, he went further.

“In truth I am compelled to admit I will have a hard time to make the weight,” he told the Washington Evening Star. “I would have no trouble in making 130 pounds but this 128 pounds is going to kill me.”

Erne could buy his way free of the contractual obligation but at the cost of $1,000, around $30,000 in today’s money. When it was suggested he might do so, he again threatened to saw off his leg rather than pay such an amount.

The Star itself was not convinced, noting that Erne was “one of the cleverest fighters in the world… and it is hardly probable he would have made such a match unless he knew he would not have the worse end.”

Sure enough, betting on Erne began to heat significantly on the fourteenth when it was reported that he had made it below 128lbs with two days to spare and had stopped training. When the New York Sun reported that he had made weight “without imperilling his vitality” the lightweight champion became the betting favourite. Then Erne announced that he was still weighing 129lbs and intended to continue to train until 1pm on the day of the fight. The Brooklyn Eagle confused matters further by reporting that Erne weighed no more than 126lbs, and given the fact that he eventually weighed in at 126.5 in the dressing room, this is likely the accurate report. Whether Erne’s harping on the weight and then beating the mark with apparent ease was a psychological ploy, a distant ancestor of Bernard Hopkins and his weigh-in for the fight with Oscar De La Hoya, or whether he over-trained in the hot New York summer will now never be known.

McGovern paid no mind except to place $1,000 upon himself to win by knockout.

He would collect that bet. Standing in a ring awash with another champion’s blood at the end of the bout, legendary referee Charlie White, who had refereed over the last eighteen months almost every top man of the era including Joe Walcott, Joe Gans and James Corbett, looked from his left cuff, soaked with Erne’s blood, and then to the pressmen at ringside and said:

“I’ll tell you boys it’ll be a long time before you see anything like that again. McGovern could lick two heavyweights in one ring. I never saw a faster fight.”

Hours before the fight, what the New York Sun described as “a mob” collected outside the Garden; the police had to be called in order that they might be kept under control. When the two-dollar cheap seats went on sale, there was a “stampede” as a thicket of working-class New Yorkers wrestled each other out of the way in the hopes of seeing the fight. The floor of the venue baked in a sea of humanity despite the removal of the glass roof, an electric chandelier hanging above the ring an absurd genteel detail in contrast to both the heated mob of fight fans and the violence about to break out below.

Ringside sat a thicket of fistic royalty. John L. Sullivan bellowed still in favour of McGovern and was joined by a more reserved Bob Fitzsimmons. James J Corbett took a seat next to him, flanked by Joe Gans and Australian middleweight Dan Creedon. As Kid McCoy, strongly in favour of Erne, Peter Maher, George Dixon, George McFadden, Tommy West, Jack Blackburn, Joe Walcott, Jack McAuliffe and a host of other champions and contenders took their seats tension began to build as those yet to lay money waited for the news on Erne’s weight – when it arrived, McGovern became a slender favourite in betting. A friendly argument developed between McCoy and Corbett as to who would take the laurels resulting in a sizeable bet made by Corbett that the fight would go the distance and that McGovern would get the better of it.

Erne entered first wearing black trunks and was greeted rapturously, seeming “nervous” and “trained down very fine but…strong.” McGovern followed shortly behind, wearing pink trunks with a green belt, possibly fashioned from an Irish flag. At 10:40pm the bell for the first round sounded and the superfight was underway.

Erne looked far the bigger in the ring with some newspapermen erroneously reporting for him a height advantage of four inches as McGovern crouched and battered his way inside. Probably Corbett tore up his betting slip in that very first second; McGovern could no more seek to box the distance than he could fly. Erne, who was contractually obliged to stop the smaller man, was a lion to McGovern’s pitbull and he stood his ground, lashing out with the terrible left that had prevented Kid Lavigne from swarming him. Next day reports are clear upon the matter of McGovern’s reaction to Erne first ripping this punch to the top of his head: he laughed.

But Erne was an experienced, perhaps a great champion, and when he was rushed next he stepped back and timed a right-hand and McGovern was down, whereupon Erne landed a second punch, a left.  Erne stepped back, nodded as the referee warned him for landing a punch while his opponent was on the canvas and then circled the referee who was counting “two” and there was McGovern – laughing still. He was set back on his haunches, laughing, shaking his head, like he had made some embarrassing but harmless mistake. He lifted his head, winked at someone in Erne’s corner, smiling. He took the nine, his head clear, and then according to the wire report “sprang up and mixed it madly.”

“McGovern’s rushes have been called blind rushes,” wrote The Brooklyn Eagle. “But no greater mistake was ever made. He is keenly aware for an opening at all times and his blows are never wild swings at anywhere, but carefully attempted knockouts.” Within the first ninety seconds Erne was bleeding from the nose, rallying for space. Speed was the difference as much as power, but more than that, McGovern was tough enough that the bigger man’s punches just weren’t hurting him.  “Erne used his left hand with the best results,” reported the New York Sun. “But though he landed it flush upon the jaw and upon the stomach on several occasions it had little or no effect upon McGovern.”

So. in the second, Erne broke ground and began to back up, jabbing as he went. McGovern nodded, and hurled himself after the lightweight champion, this, his meat and bread. Such was his fury that Erne’s attempt to smother the pace backfired and after forty or fifty seconds of feeling the jab out, the fire burned more brightly. “It was a fight, pure and simple,” according to the New York Tribune, “one of the most brutal and ghastly ever seen in the city.” A straight-right to the heart at the end of the round sent Erne back to his corner pale-faced, and although one newspaper reported that McGovern, too, finished the round in some discomfort, it was McGovern who threw himself at Erne at the beginning of the third.

The Tribune: “The ring looked like a butcher shop in the [third] round. McGovern fought Erne all over the ring. Erne’s nose was split from the top to the bridge and the blood flowed so freely that both men were covered from head to foot…it was Erne who shed it all.”

“Erne was game as a bulldog,” continued the Eagle, “but the blood hurt his breathing and a terrible left to the wind hurt him more. He began to clinch to try to save himself and only got beaten away again…McGovern swung his left flush on the cheek bone and Erne went down.”

Erne rose. McGovern dropped him again after just seconds, landing two-handed to his blood-sodden face. Propped up on one hand, his face a mass of gore, heaving for breath, he was a “terrible sight indeed.” There is nothing in the sport sadder than a deluxe boxer taken apart by a ring-savage but Erne had nothing left to give. He raised himself again and again McGovern, merciless, closed and rained blows down upon him. Erne toppled. Before he hit the canvas the sponge was tossed up by his corner. The Year of the Butcher was over. McGovern dangled from his waist the scalps of the bantam, feather and lightweight champions of the world.

Erne tried to give McGovern the title belt and McGovern cheerily refused him. Then he went to the racetrack. At first Erne offered “no excuses” and said he was “beaten fairly” but soon he was claiming, perhaps truthfully, that making 128lbs had hurt him. He had been hurt in a different way in the ring.  Erne, like Dixon, like Palmer, would never be the same again. He went 3-3-1 in his next seven fights and never won another championship fight.

McGovern seemed relaxed, cheerful, content. It is a disturbing contradiction of the human condition that he could appear so strong when beset by powerful hitters and brilliant opposition in the ring and reign down destruction upon them with a smile on his face, and all but fall apart mentally in the following years.

He made it all the way to 1918, once again demonstrating that innate toughness that served him so well in his savage pursuit of glory and money in the prize-ring, before presenting himself at Brooklyn’s Kings County Hospital late in February and applying for medical aid. Despite having earned close to $100,000 before his twenty-first birthday, he was penniless.

His mother was by his side that night when he slipped into unconsciousness, his wife, who had a difficult life with Terry, perhaps hesitated, but in the end set out to be with him. She arrived minutes before he passed away, most probably from pneumonia. He was thirty-seven years old.

How best to remember him? He is known now, if he is known at all, for his victory over Joe Gans, a meeting that took place shortly after his destruction of Erne. This fight was most likely fixed and as a defining memory it taints his legacy. Had it been the Palmer film that had survived and the Gans film that had been lost, I believe he would be regarded as highly as the likes of Stanley Ketchel or Barbados Joe Walcott whereas McGovern seems often a footnote compared to those two men. I’ll go on record here and say that I consider him greater than both of these, a more terrible monument to the sports brutal and wonderful savagery than either, closer in distinction to George Dixon and Gans. His prime, though short, was breath-taking, and for sheer enormity of achievement it may represent the single most astonishing year in the history of the sport, though Henry Armstrong, and perhaps Harry Greb, would have plenty to say about that.

Although perhaps not. Three true champions from bantamweight to lightweight crushed in the space of ten short months by a former flyweight is an incredible achievement. Terry McGovern did it all with a smile on his face, and a roar in his heart.

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Thomas Hauser’s Literary Notes: Johnny Greaves Tells a Sad Tale

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Johnny Greaves was a professional loser. He had one hundred professional fights between 2007 and 2013, lost 96 of them, scored one knockout, and was stopped short of the distance twelve times. There was no subtlety in how his role was explained to him: “Look, Johnny; professional boxing works two ways. You’re either a ticket-seller and make money for the promoter, in which case you get to win fights. If you don’t sell tickets but can look after yourself a bit, you become an opponent and you fight to lose.”

By losing, he could make upwards of one thousand pounds for a night‘s work.

Greaves grew up with an alcoholic father who beat his children and wife. Johnny learned how to survive the beatings, which is what his career as a fighter would become. He was a scared, angry, often violent child who was expelled from school and found solace in alcohol and drugs.

The fighters Greaves lost to in the pros ran the gamut from inept local favorites to future champions Liam Walsh, Anthony Crolla, Lee Selby, Gavin Rees, and Jack Catterall. Alcohol and drugs remained constants in his life. He fought after drinking, smoking weed, and snorting cocaine on the night before – and sometimes on the day of – a fight. On multiple occasions, he came close to committing suicide. His goal in boxing ultimately became to have one hundred professional fights.

On rare occasions, two professional losers – “journeymen,” they’re called in The UK – are matched against each other. That was how Greaves got three of the four wins on his ledger. On September 29, 2013, he fought the one hundredth and final fight of his career against Dan Carr in London’s famed York Hall. Carr had a 2-42-2 ring record and would finish his career with three wins in ninety outings. Greaves-Carr was a fight that Johnny could win. He emerged triumphant on a four-round decision.

The Johnny Greaves Story, told by Greaves with the help of Adam Darke (Pitch Publishing) tells the whole sordid tale. Some of Greaves’s thoughts follow:

*        “We all knew why we were there, and it wasn’t to win. The home fighters were the guys who had sold all the tickets and were deemed to have some talent. We were the scum. We knew our role. Give some young prospect a bit of a workout, keep out of the way of any big shots, lose on points but take home a wedge of cash, and fight again next week.”

*        “If you fought too hard and won, then you wouldn’t get booked for any more shows. If you swung for the trees and got cut or knocked out, then you couldn’t fight for another 28 days. So what were you supposed to do? The answer was to LOOK like you were trying to win but be clever in the process. Slip and move, feint, throw little shots that were rangefinders, hold on, waste time. There was an art to this game, and I was quickly learning what a cynical business it was.”

*        “The unknown for the journeyman was always how good your opponent might be. He could be a future world champion. Or he might be some hyped-up nightclub bouncer with a big following who was making lots of money for the promoter.”

*        “No matter how well I fought, I wasn’t going to be getting any decisions. These fights weren’t scored fairly. The referees and judges understood who the paymasters were and they played the game. What was the point of having a go and being the best version of you if nobody was going to recognize or reward it?”

*        “When I first stepped into the professional arena, I believed I was tough. believed that nobody could stop me. But fight by fight, those ideas were being challenged and broken down. Once you know that you can be hurt, dropped and knocked out, you’re never quite the same fighter.”

*        “I had started off with a dream, an idea of what boxing was and what it would do for me. It was going to be a place where I could prove my toughness. A place that I could escape to and be someone else for a while. For a while, boxing was that place. But it wore me down to the point that I stopped caring. I’d grown sick and tired of it all. I wished that I could feel pride at what I’d achieved. But most of the time, I just felt like a loser.”

*        “The fights were getting much more difficult, the damage to my body and my psyche taking longer and longer to repair after each defeat. I was putting myself in more and more danger with each passing fight. I was getting hurt more often and stopped more regularly. Even with the 28-day [suspensions], I didn’t have time to heal. I was staggering from one fight to the next and picking up more injuries along the way.”

*        “I was losing my toughness and resilience. When that’s all you’ve ever had, it’s a hard thing to accept. Drink and drugs had always been present in my life. But now they became a regular part of my pre-fight preparation. It helped to shut out the fear and quieted the thoughts and worries that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”

*        “My body was broken. My hands were constantly sore with blisters and cuts. I had early arthritis in my hip and my teeth were a mess. I looked an absolute state and inside I felt worse. But I couldn’t stop fighting yet. Not before the 100.”

*        “I had abused myself time after time and stood in front of better men, taking a beating when I could have been sensible and covered up. At the start, I was rarely dropped or stopped. Now it was becoming a regular part of the game. Most of the guys I was facing were a lot better than me. This was mainly about survival.”

*        “Was my brain f***ed from taking too many punches? I knew it was, to be honest. I could feel my speech changing and memory going. I was mentally unwell and shouldn’t have been fighting but the promoters didn’t care. Johnny Greaves was still a good booking. Maybe an even better one now that he might get knocked out.”

*        “Nobody gave a f*** about me and whether I lived or died. I didn’t care about that much either. But the thought of being humiliated, knocked out in front of all those people; that was worse than the thought of dying. The idea of being exposed for what I was – a nobody.”

*        “I was a miserable bastard in real life. A depressive downbeat mouthy little f***er. Everything I’ve done has been to mask the feeling that I’m worthless. That I have no value. The drinks and the drugs just helped me to forget that for a while. I still frighten myself a lot. My thoughts scare me. Do I really want to be here for the next thirty or forty years? I don’t know. If suicide wasn’t so impactful on people around you, I would have taken that leap. I don’t enjoy life and never have.”

So . . . Any questions?

****

Steve Albert was Showtime’s blow-by-blow commentator for two decades. But his reach extended far beyond boxing.

Albert’s sojourn through professional sports began in high school when he was a ball boy for the New York Knicks. Over the years, he was behind the microphone for more than a dozen teams in eleven leagues including four NBA franchises.

Putting the length of that trajectory in perspective . . . As a ballboy, Steve handed bottles of water and towels to a Knicks back-up forward named Phil Jackson. Later, they worked together as commentators for the New Jersey Nets. Then Steve provided the soundtrack for some of Jackson’s triumphs when he won eleven NBA championships as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.

It’s also a matter of record that Steve’s oldest brother, Marv, was arguably the greatest play-by-play announcer in NBA history. And brother Al enjoyed a successful career behind the microphone after playing professional hockey.

Now Steve has written a memoir titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Broadcast Booth. Those who know him know that Steve doesn’t like to say bad things about people. And he doesn’t here. Nor does he delve into the inner workings of sports media or the sports dream machine. The book is largely a collection of lighthearted personal recollections, although there are times when the gravity of boxing forces reflection.

“Fighters were unlike any other professional athletes I had ever encountered,” Albert writes. “Many were products of incomprehensible backgrounds, fiercely tough neighborhoods, ghettos and, in some cases, jungles. Some got into the sport because they were bullied as children. For others, boxing was a means of survival. In many cases, it was an escape from a way of life that most people couldn’t even fathom.”

At one point, Steve recounts a ringside ritual that he followed when he was behind the microphone for Showtime Boxing: “I would precisely line up my trio of beverages – coffee, water, soda – on the far edge of the table closest to the ring apron. Perhaps the best advice I ever received from Ferdie [broadcast partner Ferdie Pacheco] was early on in my blow-by-blow career – ‘Always cover your coffee at ringside with an index card unless you like your coffee with cream, sugar, and blood.’”

Writing about the prelude to the infamous Holyfield-Tyson “bite fight,” Albert recalls, “I remember thinking that Tyson was going to do something unusual that night. I had this sinking feeling in my gut that he was going to pull something exceedingly out of the ordinary. His grousing about Holyfield’s head butts in the first fight added to my concern. [But] nobody could have foreseen what actually happened. Had I opened that broadcast with, ‘Folks, tonight I predict that Mike Tyson will bite off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear,’ some fellas in white coats might have approached me and said, ‘Uh, Steve, could you come with us.'”

And then there’s my favorite line in the book: “I once asked a fighter if he was happily married,” Albert recounts. “He said, ‘Yes, but my wife’s not.'”

“All I ever wanted was to be a sportscaster,” Albert says in closing. “I didn’t always get it right, but I tried to do my job with honesty and integrity. For forty-five years, calling games was my life. I think it all worked out.”

 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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Argentina’s Fernando Martinez Wins His Rematch with Kazuto Ioka

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In an excellent fight climaxed by a furious 12th round, Argentina’s Fernando Daniel Martinez came off the deck to win his rematch with Kazuto Ioka and retain his piece of the world 115-pound title. The match was staged at Ioka’s familiar stomping grounds, the Ota-City General Gymnasium in Tokyo.

In their first meeting on July 7 of last year in Tokyo, Martinez was returned the winner on scores of 117-111, 116-112, and a bizarre 120-108. The rematch was slated for late December, but Martinez took ill a few hours before the weigh-in and the bout was postponed.

The 33-year-old Martinez, who came in sporting a 17-0 (9) record, was a 7-2 favorite to win the sequel, but there were plenty of reasons to favor Ioka, 36, aside from his home field advantage. The first Japanese male fighter to win world titles in four weight classes, Ioka was 3-0 in rematches and his long-time trainer Ismael Salas was on a nice roll. Salas was 2-0 last weekend in Times Square, having handled upset-maker Rolly Romero and Reito Tsutsumi who was making his pro debut.

But the fourth time was not a charm for Ioka (31-4-1) who seemingly pulled the fight out of the fire in round 10 when he pitched the Argentine to the canvas with a pair of left hooks, but then wasn’t able to capitalize on the momentum swing.

Martinez set a fast pace and had Ioka fighting off his back foot for much of the fight. Beginning in round seven, Martinez looked fatigued, but the Argentine was conserving his energy for the championship rounds. In the end, he won the bout on all three cards: 114-113, 116-112, 117-110.

Up next for Fernando Martinez may be a date with fellow unbeaten Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, the lineal champion at 115. San Antonio’s Rodriguez is a huge favorite to keep his title when he defends against South Africa’s obscure Phumelela Cafu on July 19 in Frisco, Texas.

As for Ioka, had he won today’s rematch, that may have gotten him over the hump in so far as making it into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. True, winning titles in four weight classes is no great shakes when the bookends are only 10 pounds apart, but Ioka is still a worthy candidate.

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Emanuel Navarrete Survives a Bloody Battle with Charly Suarez in San Diego

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In a torrid battle Mexico’s Emanuel “Vaquero” Navarrete and his staccato attack staved off the herky-jerky non-stop assaults of Philippine’s Charly Suarez to win by technical decision and retain the WBO super feather world title on Saturday.

What do they feed these guys?

Navarrete (40-2-1, 32 KOs) and his elongated arms managed to connect enough to compensate against the surprising Suarez (18-1, 10 KOs) who wowed the crowd at Pechanga Arena in San Diego.

An accidental clash of heads opened a cut on the side of Navarrete’s left eye and forced a stoppage midway through the fight.

From the opening round Navarrete used his windmill style of attack with punches from different angles that caught Suarez multiple times early. It did not matter. Suarez fired back with impunity and was just as hungry to punch it out with the Mexican fighter.

It was savage.

Every time Navarrete connected solidly, he seemed to pause and check out the damage. Bad idea. Suarez would immediately counter with bombs of his own and surprise the champion with his resilience and tenacity.

Wherever they found Suarez they should look for more, because the Filipino fighter from Manila was ferocious and never out of his depth.

Around the sixth round the Mexican fighter seemed a little drained and puzzled at the tireless attacks coming from Suarez. During an exchange of blows a cut opened up on Navarrete and it was ruled an accidental clash of heads by the referee. Blood streamed down the side of Navarrete’s face and it was cleared by the ringside physician.

But at the opening of the eighth round, the fight was stopped and the ringside physician ruled the cut was too bad to continue. The California State Athletic Commission looked at tape of the round when the cut opened to decipher if it was an accidental butt or a punch that caused the cut. It was unclear so the referee’s call of accidental clash of heads stood as the final ruling.

Score cards from the judges saw Navarrete the winner by scores of 78-75, 77-76 twice. He retains the WBO title.

Interim IBF Lightweight Title

The sharp-shooting Raymond “Danger” Muratalla (23-0, 17 KOs) maneuvered past Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-2, 12 KOs) by unanimous decision to win the interim IBF lightweight title after 12 rounds.

Both fighters were strategic in their approach with Muratalla switching from orthodox to southpaw at various times of the fight. Neither fighter was ever able to dominant any round.

Defense proved the difference between the two lightweights. Muratalla was able to slip more blows than Abdullaev and that proved the difference. The fighter from Fontana, California was able to pierce Abdullaev’s guard more often than not, especially with counter punches.

Abdullaev was never out of the fight. The Russian fighter was able to change tactics and counter the counters midway through the fight. It proved effective especially to the body. But it was not enough to offset Muratalla’s accuracy.

There were no knockdowns and after 12 rounds the judges scored it 118-110, 119-109 twice for Muratalla who now becomes the mandatory for the IBF lightweight title should Vasyl Lomachenko return to defend it.

Muratalla was brief.

“He was a tough fighter,” said Muratalla. “My defense is something I work on a lot.”

Perla Wins

Super flyweight Perla Bazaldua (2-0) eased past Mona Ward (0-2) with a polished display of fighting at length and inside.

Combination punching and defense allowed Bazaldua to punch in-between Ward’s attacks and force the St. Louis fighter to clinch repeatedly. But Ward hung in there despite taking a lot of blows. After four rounds the Los Angeles-based Bazaldua was scored the winner 40-36 on all three cards. Bazaldua signed a long term contract with Top Rank in March.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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