R.I.P. Eric Griffin, One of the Greatest Amateur Boxers of All Time

Published

1 year ago

October 16, 2023

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Eric Griffin passed away a week ago Saturday (Oct. 7) at age 55 at a hospital in Lafayette, Louisiana. Griffin was no great shakes as a pro, but the longtime resident of Broussard, Louisiana, was quite simply one of the greatest amateur boxers of all time.

That’s not one man’s opinion.

In 2000, a USA Boxing publication came out with a list of the top ten U.S. amateur boxers of the twentieth century. (USA Boxing, headquartered at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is the governing body of amateur boxing in the United States.)

All of the boxers on the list were former Olympians. No attempt was made to rank-order them. Listed alphabetically, here they are:

Mark Breland (1984, Los Angeles)

Cassius Clay (1960, Rome)

Oscar De La Hoya (1992, Barcelona)

Eddie Eagan (1920, Antwerp)

George Foreman (1968, Mexico City)

Joe Frazier (1964, Tokyo)

Eric Griffin (1992, Barcelona)

Roy Jones Jr. (1988, Seoul)

Sugar Ray Leonard (1976, Montreal)

Floyd Patterson (1952, Helsinki)

All but three of the boxers on this list are enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. The outsiders are Eddie Eagan, Breland, and Griffin. (FYI, Eddie Eagan never turned pro. The U.S. representative in the light heavyweight class at the 1920 Games in Belgium, he went on to earn a law degree from Yale, attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, won a second gold medal at the 1932 Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York, as a member of the U.S. four-man bobsled team, and was the chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission from 1945 to 1951.)

All but two of the top-ten won Olympic titles. Eric Griffin’s name pops up again. Roy Jones Jr. is the other who returned home without a gold medal.

Eric Griffin, who grew to be five-foot-three, won his first amateur tournament at the age of 13. He weighed 80 pounds. In 1988, he suffered one of his rare losses when he was out-pointed by Michael Carbajal in the Olympic Trials. Regardless, Griffin was headed to the Olympic Summer Games in Seoul, Korea, either as the U.S. entrant in the light flyweight (106-pound) class or as an alternate in the event that Carbajal defeated him again in the Olympic Box Offs.

The Box Offs were held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The Griffin-Carbajal rematch never materialized. On the eve of the match, Eric was sent home when the results of his drug test were made known. He had tested positive for marijuana, one of three boxers ousted from the Box Offs without throwing a punch. The others were Lavelle Finger and William Guthrie, both from St. Louis, who tested positive for cocaine.

Griffin protested his innocence but fessed up when his coach and sponsor Bob Jordan, an executive with a Houston company that manufactured computers, threatened to sue the UCLA lab that performed the test. Griffin wouldn’t let Jordan, a surrogate father to him – Eric never knew his biological father – go off on a wild goose chase.

Eric Griffin was then 20 years old. In addition to being kicked off the team, he was slapped with a six-month suspension. His next move, logically, was to turn pro, but he was more interested in repairing his image. Money would not wipe away the damage. So, he elected to stay the course in hopes of competing in the next Olympics, the 1992 games in Barcelona.

His relationship with Jordan was ruptured when he confessed to having smoked marijuana. As Sports Illustrated writer William Nack noted, Bob Jordan had grown up in a small town in the 1950s in a place and time where it was thought that anyone who tried marijuana was destined to become a dope fiend. Without Jordan’s financial assistance, Eric took a job washing dishes at a Houston restaurant to make ends meet. The two eventually reconciled and Griffin followed Jordan when Jordan returned to his hometown of Jasper, Tennessee, where Eric lived in a trailer with his wife and their young son.

During the years between the 1988 and 1992 Summer Games, Eric Griffin just kept winning and winning. He won four world titles and was twice a finalist for the Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. (No boxer has ever won this prestigious annual award which was first issued in 1930.)

Griffin not only made the 1992 U.S. Olympic boxing team but was named a co-captain along with Fort Worth bantamweight Sergio Reyes. The team’s head coach, Joe Byrd, said of Griffin, “he’s our heart, our backbone.”

Heading into Barcelona, the U.S. boxers accorded the best chance of winning a gold medal were Griffin and 19-year-old Los Angeles lightweight Oscar De La Hoya. Griffin was accorded far less ink in the U.S. press than De La Hoya who was more photogenic and had a better back story.

Barcelona 1992

This was the first Olympiad in which a computerized scoring system was used to determine the winner of each boxing match. The impetus was Roy Jones Jr, or rather the judges that ruled against Jones in the gold medal round four years earlier in Seoul, awarding the contest to his South Korean opponent. There have been controversial decisions in every Olympiad, but none aroused more indignation.

In Barcelona, there were five judges plus five alternates in the event of an electronic malfunction. Each of the judges had a metal box with two buttons, one for each fighter. When a punch landed, they pressed the appropriate button. For a punch to count on the master sheet, at least three judges had to hit the button within one second of each other. The boxer that landed the most punches was deemed the winner.

Griffin won his opening match comfortably. In his second bout, he was pit against a local man, Rafael Lozano, against whom he would be credited with landing 31 more punches. But not all of them registered on the official master sheet; only those that satisfied the one-second criterion. In round two, one of Griffin’s punches so buzzed Lozano that the referee issued a standing 8-count, but this punch did not register. At the end, the fight was awarded to the Spaniard by the ludicrous score of 6 to 5. “My stomach sank to the floor [when Lozano had his hand raised],” Griffin told a reporter at the press conference the next day, adding that it felt as if he had swallowed a bowling ball.

Griffin didn’t whine or curse the officials, but U.S. reporters were not so magnanimous. Griffin “traveled thousands of miles expecting to reconcile his sins, only to find that four years of sacrifice and commitment can be swept away in 9 minutes of incompetence,” fulminated George Diaz of the Orlando Sentinel. The judges, noted Bill Varner, a syndicated writer for the Gannett chain of papers, were all middle aged (the youngest was 42), but “were expected to have the reflexes needed to master children’s video games.”

Had Eric Griffin left Barcelona with a gold medal, he would have likely commanded a nice bonus from a major promotional group. But the sport’s heavy hitters – Bob Arum, Don King, and Dan Duva – had no interest in him; he was too small and too black. When he turned pro, it was with Philadelphia promoter Artie Pelullo who had a contract to promote a series of monthly shows at Las Vegas’ Riviera Hotel.

As a Pro

Fighting for Pelullo, Griffin won his first 11 fights. He lost the twelfth to Marcos Pacheco, a journeyman from Mexico, when he dislocated his left shoulder and was pulled out by his corner after six rounds. He avenged that setback in his next fight, winning a lopsided decision, and won three more fights before he suffered a loss that could not be explained away as a fluke. Against Carlos Murillo, a rough customer from Panama, both of Eric’s eyes were nearly shut when he was knocked down with a body punch in round nine and referee Steve Smoger waived it off.

Two more losses would follow, both to Jesus Chong, and they would write the finish to Eric Griffin’s boxing career. Chong stopped him in the seventh in their first encounter and in the second round of the sequel. The rematch at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas was for the WBO world light flyweight title vacated by Venezuela’s Leo Gamez who surrendered the belt when he could no longer make the weight.

Chong, from Durango, Mexico, packed a powerful punch – 28 of his 32 victories would come by knockout – but he was a wild swinger. Could it be that Eric Griffin, now only 29 years old and having answered the bell for only 102 rounds at the pro level, was already a shot fighter?

Yes. Davey Lee Armstrong, a two-time Olympian who fell victim to dementia before he died at age 64, was only 27 years old when his manager/trainer Emanuel Steward saw that his reflexes had dulled and urged him to retire. It wasn’t only that Armstrong had taken up boxing at a very young age, said Steward, but that as the best he was continually fighting the best and that compounded the wear and tear on his body.

After the Fall

When Eric left the sport, he returned to his hometown, Broussard, a city of about 10,000 situated a few miles down the road from Lafayette, the largest city and unofficial capital of Louisiana’s Cajun Country and worked on and off as a short order cook, the same occupation of his maternal grandmother, the woman that raised him. He had no conspicuous cognitive problems said his cousin Jason Papillion, with whom we spoke, but a clump of health issues that Papillion attributed to obesity. The picture of him that accompanied his obituary (the only useful picture that we could find for this story) is incongruent with that of a man who in his athletic heyday weighed less than 110 pounds.

In 1997, when Griffin was preparing for what would be his final fight, Michael Carbajal, his amateur rival, had already broken the glass ceiling for boxers in the smallest weight class, commanding a seven-figure purse for his first fight with Humberto “Chiquita” Gonzalez, and Oscar De La Hoya, Eric’s Olympic teammate, was already a multi-millionaire. Griffin’s last ring appearance was in a world title fight at Caesars Palace, home to some of the grandest boxing events of the era, but don’t be fooled. Griffin-Chong II wasn’t staged in the big outdoor arena under the stars, but in a ballroom. The fight wasn’t nationally televised; it aired exclusively on KCAL-TV in Los Angeles. The attendance, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was 727, and Griffin’s purse, akin to that of Jesus Chong, was $20,000. That’s $20,000 gross before his manager and Uncle Sam got their cut.

Someone glancing at Griffin’s 16-4 pro record on boxrec, oblivious to his amateur exploits, would be surprised to find his name on a top-ten list with such legends as Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Joe Frazier, and Sugar Ray Leonard. But boxing can be a cruel mistress and even some who achieved great heights in the squared circle have life stories that read as cautionary tales.

Griffin was laid to rest Saturday, Oct. 14. He is survived by, among others, two children, five grandchildren and Ms. Junel Thomas of Opelousas, Louisiana, his companion the last 10 years of his life. We here at TSS send our condolences.

Griffin’s cousin Jason Papillion keeps the flame of boxing alive in Cajun Country. If you are ever down in that neck of the woods, drop by Papillion’s Boxing Club in Lafayette and tell him we said “hi.” Papillion had a solid, if unspectacular, pro boxing career of his own, competing against such notables as Winky Wright, and Jason’s son Keon Papillion is a promising super welterweight prospect with a 6-0-1 record.

We asked Papillion what he would remember about Eric Griffin the man. “He was full of love and got a lot of love in return,” he said. “He was a very humble guy who never forgot where he came from.”

In the grand scheme of things, perhaps that counts for more than an Olympic gold medal.

—

Arne K. Lang is a recognized authority on the history of prizefighting and the history of American sports gambling. His latest book, titled Clash of the Little Giants: George Dixon, Terry McGovern, and the Culture of Boxing in America, 1890-1910, was released by McFarland in September, 2022.

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

Published

1 day ago

April 2, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published

5 days ago

March 30, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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

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

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

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

Co-Feature

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

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

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

Other Bouts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos credit: Al Applerose

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

Published

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.

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