Leach Cross vs. Mexican Joe: A Great Boxing Rivalry Buried in the Sands of Time

Published

2 years ago

June 14, 2023

Leach-Cross-vs-Mexican-Joe-A-Great-Boxing-Rivalry-Buried-in-the-Sands-of-Time

The Jan. 14, 1913 fight between Leach Cross and Mexican Joe Rivers was a humdinger, but for some fight-goers it was a night to forget. The event was oversold. The aisles were jammed with standees and ticket-holders arriving late were left out in the cold when the fire marshal ordered the doors to be shut. Some of those that made it inside discovered that their wallet was missing. In the lobby of the arena and outside on the street, pickpockets worked the crowd to great effect. Such were the hazards of attending a major boxing show in New York during the early years of the twentieth century.

Cross vs. Rivers – the first salvo of a great rivalry – was staged at the Manhattan Casino which was situated on the corner of 155^th Street and Eighth Avenue in the upper reach of Harlem. This warrants a clarification.

The word “casino” has come to be associated with gambling. Back in those days, it carried no such inference. The most salient image was that of a place where couples came to dance to a live orchestra. Harlem hadn’t yet become a signpost of Black America. In 1913, it had a burgeoning population of upwardly mobile Jews who had escaped the tenements of the Lower East Side. And Leach Cross, born Louis Wallach to immigrants from Austria, was one of them, a landsmen.

Cross (pictured) and Mexican Joe were lightweights. No title was at stake when they locked horns that night in Harlem or in any of their subsequent meetings. Indeed, both were considered a notch below the topmost fighters in their weight class. However, it was a very sexy division which owed to two factors. The heavyweight class was bereft of charismatic fighters other than Jack Johnson whose career was in limbo because of legal problems. And in no other division was the talent pool as deep. “In those days,” reminisced the colorful fight manager Dumb Dan Morgan, “there was a good lightweight on every streetcorner.”

The principals: Leach Cross and Mexican Joe Rivers

Leach Cross didn’t look like a fighter. “He had the lean, cadaverous appearance of the professional distance runner who has overtrained,” wrote one reporter. But his appearance was deceiving. Prior to meeting Rivers, he had knocked out Young Otto and One Round Hogan, reputable opponents, and had feathered his cap with a clear 10-round decision over Battling Nelson. True, the Durable Dane was then past his prime, but in his heyday the former two-time lightweight champion was the most talked-about non-heavyweight on the planet.

By and large, young Jewish men were avid fight fans and from a ticket-selling standpoint it mattered greatly that “Leachie” was a member of the tribe. He had another distinction that made him stand out. He was a dentist with a flourishing practice in the Bowery.

Unlike Leach Cross, Mexican Joe Rivers, who turned pro in 1908 at age 16, looked very much like a boxer. Three inches shorter than Cross at five-foot-four, he had a well-defined physique. “Physically,” said a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, “Joe is one of the grandest pieces of furniture ever seen in a ring. His body is the body of a sculptor’s dream.”

Mexican

Mexican Joe had far less experience than Leach Cross but had fought stiffer competition. He had split two fights with future Hall of Famer Johnny Kilbane and with Joe Mandot, the Pride of New Orleans, and had TKOed Frankie Conley, an outstanding fighter from Wisconsin, after their first encounter ended in a draw. His most famous fight had come the previous year against world lightweight champion Ad Wolgast. In the thirteenth round of a 20-round fight, Rivers and Wolgast landed simultaneous knockout punches. Rivers hit the canvas first, Wolgast landing on top of him, whereupon referee Jack Welsh helped the semi-conscious Wolgast to his feet and named him the winner. The queer ending provoked a long-running debate.

Prior to meeting up with Leach Cross, Mexican Joe had fought exclusively in California. The West Coast vs. East Coast angle imbued their fights with a bit more cachet in a day when the country wasn’t as homogenized.

Cross-Rivers I (Jan. 14, 1913)

Those that navigated their way to their assigned seat without incident were treated to a riveting fight. “The bout never lagged,” said a reporter. “Action was rife from start to finish.”

Cross put Rivers on the canvas in the second round, but Rivers — “the hot tamale from out West” in the words of a Connecticut scribe — was never deterred from pressing the action and at the final bell of the 10-rounder, Cross returned to his stool “very distressed.”

This was the no-decision era of boxing in New York. Prizefights were ostensibly sparring exhibitions (wink, wink) and referees were prohibited from naming a winner. Bets were decided based on the verdict of a designated ringside reporter or by the consensus of a panel of reporters whose judgments were culled from the next day’s newspapers. Chalk this one up to Joe Rivers, but softly, as few would have complained if the verdict was returned as a draw.

Cross-Rivers II (April 8, 1913)

Not quite 11 weeks later, Leach Cross and Mexican Joe Rivers had a do-over. The venue was St. Nicholas Arena on 66^th Street, a former indoor ice skating rink. There was no repetition of the hooliganism that had scarred the first meeting. The promoters, the McMahon brothers, Eddie and Jess (the latter was the grandfather of WWE impresario Vince McMahon) were on a short leash and extra security was hired to keep order outside the arena and turn away would-be gate crashers.

Cross and Rivers delivered another crowd-pleaser. The 10-rounder was a “whirlwind battle” wrote the stringer for the Chicago Inter-Ocean.

Many of the rounds were undoubtedly tough to score as one finds a great deal of variation in round-by-round reports. What everyone seemed to agree on, however, is that Cross showed more stamina than in the first meeting, dominating the ninth round and having a shade the best of it in the final stanza. But, in the eyes of New York’s foremost boxing writer Robert Edgren, his rally came too late.

“Rivers won easily” wrote Edgren, the sports editor of the New York Evening World. Rube Goldberg, who would achieve fame as a cartoonist but was then covering fights for the New York Evening Mail, thought otherwise: “It would be unjust to either man to call the fight anything but a draw,” he wrote.

A survey of 11 ringside reporters by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle found that six favored the Mexican, two gave it to Cross and the others had it a draw.

“It seems that only a longer battle will satisfy to determine which is the better man,” said a correspondent for a Buffalo paper. And before the year was out, he got his wish. The Cross-Rivers rivalry went west to Vernon, California, an industrial suburb of Los Angeles, where fights were allowed up to 20 rounds.

Cross-Rivers III (Nov. 27, 1913)

The third meeting between Rivers and Cross created a lot of buzz in the City of Angels. Three days before the Thanksgiving Day battle, on Nov. 24, a joint workout in Vernon attracted a reported crowd of 4,000.

Vernon was Mexico Joe’s turf. He was the “house fighter” at promoter Tom McCarey’s wooden pavilion. Ten of his previous 13 fights took place in this very ring.

Cross-Rivers III started at 3:30 in the afternoon and concluded after sundown with the ring illuminated by lights that were turned on as the fight was in progress.

Rivers knocked Cross to the canvas with a right-left combination in round four and again in round 12, but on each occasion Cross fought back feverishly. In round 19, with Rivers plainly ahead, there was high drama as the match turned sharply in favor of the New Yorker; Cross battered Rivers from pillar to post. But Rivers weathered the storm and, as it turned out, Cross had exhausted all of his bullets. He had no argument when the referee awarded the fight to Mexican Joe.

“It was the greatest battle ever fought in a southern [California] ring,” gushed Harry A. Williams of the LA Times.

Rivers-Wolgast IV (Aug. 11, 1914)

Prizefighters invariably have an alibi to explain why they lost, and Leach Cross had a good one. Seventeen days before the bout, he had fought lightweight champion Willie Ritchie in a non-title 10-rounder at Madison Square Garden and he was still feeling the effects of that hard tussle. “With proper rest,” said Cross, “I would have beaten this guy.”

That was sufficient inducement for promoter McCarey to summon up yet another sequel.

The fourth and final installment of the rivalry was redemption for Leach Cross who was deemed the winner in a bout so absorbing that one of the spectators passed out from all the excitement.

Mexican Joe piled up points in the early rounds, but he lost some of the steam on his punches after suffering a bad cut on his lower lip in round five. Rivers landed the best punch of the fight in round 18, a left hook to the jaw, but he got discouraged when Cross stayed upright and failed to press his advantage. Had he done so, he would have likely pulled the fight out of the fire as the match very close.

How close was it? “Cross won by a shade as fine as that cast by a single strand of a spider’s web on a foggish day,” said the ringside reporter for the Los Angeles Evening Express.

And that was that; 60 rounds of boxing spread across 20 months with interruptions for a slew of intervening fights and when it was all over, one couldn’t say that one man was plainly superior. As rivalries go, Cross vs. Rivers will never rank with boxing’s most storied multi-fight rivalries, but it was chock full of pregnant moments.

Postscripts

Leach Cross was a wealthy man when he retired from boxing in 1916. With his ring earnings he purchased an 80-unit apartment building in Hollywood. He disposed of his California real estate holdings following the stock market crash of 1929, resumed his dental practice in New York, and kept his hand in the fight game as a referee and a judge. He was well-off financially when he passed away in 1957.

Mexican Joe Rivers had his last fight in 1924 in the Los Angeles County community of San Fernando. It was a 4-rounder which was all that the law allowed after voters in the Golden State had approved a constitutional amendment to abolish prizefighting in the November elections of 1914. When things were going good, Joe lived high. He owned a big touring car, expensive jewelry, and dozens of custom-made suits. In 1955, when he was 63 years old, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times found him living alone in a windowless room in a flophouse hotel, his only possession a 200-year-old violin passed down from his father. The reporter discovered that Mexican Joe wasn’t actually a Mexican. A fourth-generation Californian, born Jose Ybarra, Joe was of Spanish and Mission Indian stock.

Arne K. Lang’s third boxing book, titled “George Dixon, Terry McGovern and the Culture of Boxing in America, 1890-1910,” rolled off the press in September of last year. Published by McFarland, the book can be ordered directly from the publisher or via Amazon.

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 648

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Arne K. Lang

Up Next

Avila Perspective, Chap. 240: Welterweights Crawford and Spence, plus Regis Prograis

Don't Miss

The Sweet Science Rankings: Week of June 11th, 2023

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

Published

20 hours ago

April 2, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 614

Share The Sweet Science experience!

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

Published

5 days ago

March 30, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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

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

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

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

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

Co-Feature

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

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

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

Other Bouts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos credit: Al Applerose

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 1,954

Share The Sweet Science experience!

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

Published

5 days ago

March 29, 2025

David A. Avila

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

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

There were no knockdowns in this rematch.

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

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

Nothing changed in their second meeting.

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

The blows came in bunches.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zepeda shrugged at the similar outcome as their first encounter.

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

Female Flyweight Battle

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

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

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

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

Neither fighter could take over the fight.

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

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

Valle currently holds the WBC minimumweight world title.

Puerto Rico vs Mexico

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

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

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE

Post Views: 1,603

Share The Sweet Science experience!