A Pearl from the Boxing Vault: Fritzie Zivic Will See You Now

Published

8 months ago

June 19, 2024

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“He was a great teacher,” said Billy Conn. “[Fighting Zivic] was like going to college for five years, just boxing him ten rounds…”

Fritzie Zivic never asked why. He never asked if his opponent hit hard, if his opponent deserved the shot, if the opponent would be tough. He just said “yes” and signed the contract. While [Jake] LaMotta, who somehow gained the reputation for fearlessness of which Zivic was more deserving, was asked about Charley Burley, he is supposed to have muttered “Why do I need Burley when I have Zivic?” Zivic, of course, stepped out of his weight class to lose an under-celebrated series with LaMotta, and was one of the few top white contenders to ever meet the avoided Burley.

Perhaps this fearlessness is the reason why Zivic may have fought a better array of boxers than any fighter in history. In addition to the multiple contests with LaMotta and Burley, he met Kid Azteca, Bob Montgomery, Beau Jack, Henry Armstrong, Freddie Cochrane, Lew Jenkins, Izzy Jannazzo, Phil Furr, Bummy Davis, Sammy Angott, Lou Ambers and Jimmy Leto, something very close to a “who’s who” of boxing’s golden age, and he met most of them more than once. He didn’t always win, but he always gave his all and for this the people and the promoters of his hometown of Pittsburgh and beyond loved him. Other fighters? Not so much.

“He’s the dirtiest fighter I ever met,” claimed Charley Burley after his disputed points loss in their first fight. “He thumbed me over and over again.”

“When you fight for a living,” Zivic would explain years later, “if you’re smart you fight with every trick you know. If I hadn’t known nine zillion of them I never could have won the welterweight title from Henry Armstrong.”

In the modern era, fighters can come to a title without even matching a top contender. Forty fights is a career. But in the 1940s, it was unusual to see a champion with so few fights, even a young one. Like other trades, to reach the top of the heap a fighter had to become a master craftsman, the tools at his disposal needed to be of the highest quality. To this end, fighters needed to be matched often or tough or both. But there were and are some fighters who can provide a special lesson to that prospect or contender, a boxing lesson that, win or lose, crystallizes the nature of the sport for the man in the opposite corner.

Fritzie Zivic was such a fighter. Unquestionably world class in his own right, Zivic was a quick learner who took his “zillion tricks” and applied them to roughhouse boxing that tested every corner of his opponent, technical, physical and mental. Anybody that beat him looked destined for the top, anyone that lost could still pick up more than a thing or two. Unquestionably teak-tough, a stinging if not prohibitive puncher, he could box inside or out and a tight defense and iron chin kept him to two legitimate stoppage losses in a 232-fight career. But unquestionably, Zivic’s greatest strength were his smarts, the tricks, traps and roughhouse tactics he absorbed like a sponge during his eighteen years in the ring.

In December of 1936, Zivic would teach some of these tricks to a wonder-kid tearing his way up the middleweight division, one Billy Conn. Zivic was not yet in his own absolute prime but he was twenty-three and listed as a veteran of some sixty-eight fights. Still a teenager, Conn would at least have had bulk to fall back on as a substitute for experience, weighing some seven pounds heavier on fight night at just under 157lbs.

Zivic started fast, attacking with both hands and Conn allowed him his way, trying to outbox and outpunch the smaller man in the pocket. This had become Billy’s habit, fighting, as he did, in a fan-friendly manner that had made him Pittsburgh’s favorite prospect. He had been in a desperately close series with resident local tough and brutal infighter “Honey Boy” Jones. According to some, Conn had been lucky to emerge from their third fight with a decision, his inability to adapt costing him dear in points and punches. Now Zivic fought in a style intent on taking advantage of the same flaws Jones had partially exposed, and Billy was paying for it in blood.

“Through two torrid rounds,” wrote Regis Welsh for The Pittsburgh Press, “Fritzie belted Conn to a fare-thee-well, but never quite touched the vital spot. At the end of the second…[Conn] was smeared with blood from a cut on his left cheek and a badly battered mouth.”

The press hadn’t yet been enlightened to Conn’s iron chin and it’s quite possible that Fritzie had found the “vital spot” over and again throughout the fight. As time would tell, even history’s mightiest puncher would struggle to get over on the near invulnerable Conn. However, at the beginning of the third Billy looked “tired, weary and worn out” and “in the fourth and fifth, Zivic, in a rushing charge, bore Conn to neutral ropes and belted him about the head and body until it seemed that the anticipated kayo was inevitable.”

It needs to be said though, that in spite of his fighting the wrong fight, Conn was doing his own good work, mainly to the body. Some reports credit Conn with turning the fight with a body punch as early as the third, but whilst the supposed fight of two halves (Zivic winning the first five, Conn coming back in the second half of the fight) did not occur, it’s unlikely that Conn’s hooks had the supposed affect this early. Only two judges scored the third for Conn, and all three gave Zivic the fourth. Conn wouldn’t win a round on all three judges’ scorecards until the sixth.

It was in the sixth round that Conn cracked, and went outside. In the seventh and eighth Conn “boxed beautifully…he danced, feinted, pranced and punched.”  Zivic, now out of his element as a bullying counterpuncher and destructive infighter struggled to get past Billy’s “piston-like” jab. Conn had been trained for this by defensive specialist Johnny Ray from the very beginning, but he had been unable to make the transition in the ring until Fritzie had forced it. As one would expect, Zivic now changed tactics too, gunning almost exclusively for the body, only hunting Conn with power punches, bringing him the eighth round on one card. In the tenth, they went at it toe-to-toe again. “The boys used everything but knives,” stated the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “A wild-eyed crowd looked on.” The final round was shared on the three official cards resulting in a split decision win for Conn (6-3-1, 5-4-1, 4-5-1).

“From a mile in the rear to a nose in front takes heart in a man or a horse,” wrote Welsh in The Press. “Particularly in a novice of Conn’s immature ring experience against a seasoned veteran of Zivic’s type.”

Zivic’s type indeed! Fritzie was hell on wheels for a young fighter, one that hadn’t seen a top class cutie, never mind a back-alley wizard. But Conn knew what that fight had been worth, and he knew he was the better for it.

“He was a great teacher. [Fighting Zivic] was like going to college for five years, just boxing him ten rounds…I learned a lot in that fight. He’s a tough fighter, but I believe I’m just as tough.”

It’s a double lesson for a relative novice like Conn. First, he remembers every foul, every slither out of sight of the referee, every feint that cost him a round, every dig inside on the break. But it also teaches him that he can take it, that he can get in there with world-class fighters who know more than him and beat them. The first lesson is priceless, but the second can be the key to a career. Over the next twelve months the young Conn, who had struggled so desperately with Honey Boy Jones only three months earlier, would defeat great champions and ring legends such as Teddy Yarosz, Young Corbett III and Vince Dundee before adding Fred Apostoli and Solly Krieger and annexing the world’s light heavyweight title in 1939.

In 1941 he would be matched with the great Joe Louis. It would be unfair to Conn’s great trainer Ray, and to Conn himself, to lay too much credit for Conn’s legendary performance at Zivic’s door, but Conn’s tactics against Louis—mixing careful, punch-picking infighting with beautiful movement and judge of distance on the outside—were basically a more perfect version of the tactics he used in rounds six, seven, eight and nine against Zivic.

As for the teacher, he was naturally disappointed and was keen on a rematch, but fate was to intervene. Zivic would contract pneumonia the following summer whilst training for a match with Vince Dundee.

Chet Smith, then editor of The Pittsburgh Press: “There didn’t seem to be a chance for him…so we collected all we knew about him, wrote it into a story and sent it to the composing room…There were two weeks when it was touch and go with Fritzie, and the hospital folk refused to give out a single cheerful bulletin. We knew of course when he finally came out of the hospital that his boxing days were ended.”

I guess Zivic would have snorted at that. However they build them out in Zivic’s ancestral Croatia, they build them tough because Zivic was not only far from ended as a boxer, he would get better. There were more lessons to give out. The greatest fighter that would ever draw breath, he needed a lesson.

“I learned more in these two fights with Zivic than in all my other fights put together!”

So said Ray Robinson after pulling off the extraordinary feat of stopping Zivic in January of 1942. But this was the second time Zivic, a rarity in that he never discriminated against opposition on the grounds of colour or quality, had met Robinson. The first had occurred when Zivic had already slipped past his absolute prime, in October of 1941.

“It might have been a draw. It was close,” wrote the correspondent for The Telegraph Herald, but Zivic, the heavier man for a change, looked unsurprised at the unanimous decision against him. In the middle rounds he had, to a degree, had his way with Robinson but Sugar’s explosive domination of the ninth had left him struggling and at no time had he solved the Robinson jab. He knew he was beaten. “[Robinson] took a unanimous decision with such a convincing demonstration of speed and power,” wrote United Press ringside reporter Jack Cuddy, “that he will be favored to win the title.”

Robinson was learning from Zivic the same thing Conn had, that he could master a man at the next level, a veteran, a bigger one at that. But he learned more specific and unpleasant lessons in this fight, too.

“He was about the smartest I ever fought,” Robinson would later say in conversation with writer WC Heinz.  “…he showed me how you can make a man butt open his own eye…he’d slip my lead, then he’d put his hand behind my neck and he’d bring my eye down on his head. Fritzie was smart.”

He also taught Ray that he could coast a little in those middle rounds, that at the highest level he didn’t need to put forth every ounce in every moment, that he could let the occasional round go as long as he was paying attention. The same pattern that Sugar used in his first fight with Zivic he would use in his sixth fight with LaMotta, for the middleweight title, contesting the early rounds, easing off in the middle, and finishing so strongly as to stop the unstoppable, lifting the title on a late TKO. He sharpened that tool for the first time against Zivic.

By now Zivic was almost past the stage of teaching fighters of Robinson’s calibre lessons, but he had one more to give in their second fight just three months later.

Firstly, Robinson showed the importance of a lesson learned, nullifying Zivic’s darker arts, like Conn he was a better fighter for his 10 rounds in the ring with Fritzie. He worked hard to the body in clinches he couldn’t contest with craft or strength (something else he would repeat against LaMotta in their title meeting) and he was careful to break clinches at any cost when Zivic looked to utilize those lethal butts. When his opponent tried holding and hitting on the referee’s blindside, instead of trading he would dance away. Robinson had learned that the man who owned the real estate would win the negotiation and Zivic was being outclassed as a result. Of the first six rounds he won perhaps the first. In the seventh though, Robinson momentarily forgot himself and Fritzie delivered his last lesson. As Robinson came in Zivic stepped back and cracked Robinson with a left hook. “It really hurt. I was coming in and it met me on the chin!” Robinson would say afterwards that it was the hardest punch he had ever been hit with, according to The Afro American.

In the middle of the ninth, Robinson dropped Zivic with a perfect mirror image of the punch he had been shown in the seventh, using the right hand to ditch the heavier man as he was on the way in. Up at nine, Zivic never recovered, and although he was likely stopped prematurely in the tenth, he had nothing left to teach, at least not to Sugar. At 28-0, Ray, like Billy before him, saw his 20 rounds with Zivic as nothing less than finishing school for one of the most storied careers in boxing. They are only two of the dozens of fighters that Fritzie took to school, but perhaps they are the gifts he helped in giving that we can be most grateful for.

For the purposes of this article we’ve taken a look at three Zivic losses. I hoped, by looking at his fights with Billy Conn and Sugar Ray, we might see the benefit of letting a top prospect meet a dangerous genius-thug like Fritzie, the self-proclaimed “second dirtiest fighter in history” (he reserved top spot for Harry Greb). But Zivic did lose those fights. Let it not be forgotten then that between losing to Conn and Robinson, Zivic lifted the world’s welterweight title, destroying with a mixture of aggression, uppercuts and that dirty bag of tricks for which he remains famous, one Henry Armstrong. Zivic finished Armstrong as title material, beating him for the championship of the world not once but twice.

A 4-1 underdog, Zivic had been magnanimous about his own chances going in to their opener.

“If I lose it won’t be the first fight I lost, and if I win it, it won’t be the first fight I won.”

But Zivic had learned his own brutal lessons across the years and would be merciless in bringing them to bear. Also, across the years, between his title win and these more enlightened times, Zivic’s achievement in beating Armstrong has been undermined. Armstrong was old. He was past his best. Zivic had to get dirty to do it. All of that may be true, but it needs to be remembered that Armstrong had gone undefeated in thirteen bouts prior to meeting Zivic and that all of these fights were in defence of his welterweight crown, outside of one, his celebrated tilt at a world middleweight title. It needs to be remembered that in the previous three months, Armstrong had knocked out world-class contenders Phil Furr and Lew Jenkins. It needs to be remembered that Armstrong had his own bag of tricks, and that referee Arthur Donovan’s famous refrain, “if you guys wanna fight like that it‘s okay with me” was prompted by an Armstrong foul and not a Zivic one.

Most of all it needs to be remembered that Zivic never asked why, he just signed the contract. Whichever way you want to look at it, they just don’t make them like that anymore.

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Hall of Fame Boxing Writer Michael Katz (1939-2025) Could Wield His Pen like a Stiletto

Published

4 hours ago

January 30, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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One of the last of the breed – a full-time boxing writer for the print edition of a major metropolitan daily – left us this week. Hall of Fame boxing writer Michael Katz was 85 when he drew his last breath at an assisted living facility in Brooklyn on Monday, Jan. 27.

Born in the Bronx, Katz earned his spurs writing for the school newspaper “The Campus” at the City College of New York. He was living in Paris and working for the international edition of the New York Times when he covered his first fight, the 15-round contest between Floyd Patterson and Jimmy Ellis at Stockholm in 1968. He eventually became the Times boxing writer, serving in that capacity for almost nine years before bolting for the New York Daily News in 1985 where he was reunited with the late Vic Ziegel, his former CCNY classmate and cohort at the campus newspaper.

From a legacy standpoint, leaving America’s “paper of record” for a tabloid would seem to be a step down. Before the digital age, the Times was one of only a handful of papers that could be found on microfilm in every college library. Tabloids like the Daily News were evanescent. Yesterday’s paper, said the cynics, was only good for wrapping fish.

But at the Daily News, Michael Katz was less fettered, less of a straight reporter and more of a columnist, freer to air his opinions which tended toward the snarky. Regarding the promoter Don King, Katz wrote, “On the way to the gallows, Don King would try to pick the pocket of the executioner.”

With his metaphoric inkwell steeped in bile, Katz made many enemies. “Bob Arum would sell tickets to a Joey Buttafuoco lecture on morals and be convinced it was for a noble cause,” wrote Katz in 1993. Arum had had enough when Katz took him to task for promoting a fight on the night of Yom Kippur and sued Katz for libel.

“It was out of my hands, HBO picked the date,” said Arum of the 1997 bout between Buster Douglas and John Ruiz that never did come off after Douglas suffered a hand injury in training. (Arum would subsequently drop the suit, saying it wasn’t worth the hassle.)

At press luncheons in Las Vegas, the PR people always made certain to seat Katz with his pals Ed Schuyler, the Associated Press boxing writer, and Pat Putnam, the Sports Illustrated guy. They reveled in each other’s company. But Katz also made enemies with some of his peers on press row, in some cases fracturing longstanding friendships.

“I like Hauser,” wrote Katz in a review of Thomas Hauser’s award-winning biography of Muhammad Ali, “and was afraid that after Tom put in those thousands of hours with Ali, somehow the book couldn’t be as good as I wanted. With relief, I can report it’s better than I had hoped.”

The two later had a falling-out.

Katz’s most celebrated run-in with a colleague happened in June of 2004 when he scuffled with Boston Globe boxing writer Ron Borges in the media room at the MGM Grand during the pre-fight press conference for the fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Felix Sturm. During the fracas, Katz, Borges, Arum, and Arum’s publicist Lee Samuels toppled to the floor. The cantankerous Katz, who initiated the fracas by attacking Borges verbally, then wore a neck brace and carried a cane.

“I had my ups and downs with him,” wrote Borges on social media upon learning of Katz’s death, “but we traveled the world together for nearly 50 years and I long admired his talent, his willingness to stand up for fighters and to call out the b.s. of boxing and its promoters and broadcast entities who worked diligently to try and destroy a noble sport.”

A little-known fact about Michael Katz is that he played a role in getting one of the best boxing books, George Kimball’s vaunted “Four Kings,” to its publishing house. Kimball, who passed away in 2011, an esophageal cancer victim at age 67, was hospitalized and too ill to finish the proofing and editing of the manuscript and enlisted the aid of Katz and an old friend from Boston, Tom Frail, an editor at the Smithsonian magazine, to complete the finishing touches. “If there are any mistakes in the book,” wisecracked Kimball, “blame them.”

Katz was one of the first sportswriters to hop on the internet bandwagon, moving his tack to HouseofBoxing.com which became MaxBoxing.com. That didn’t work out so well for him. Some of his last published pieces ran in the Memphis Commercial Appeal and in the Las Vegas weekly Gaming Today.

A widower for much of his adult life, Katz was predeceased by his only child, his beloved daughter Moorea, a cancer sufferer who passed away in 2021. Her death took all the spirit out of him, noted matchmaker and freelance boxing writer Eric Bottjer in a moving tribute.

During a moment in Atlantic City, Bottjer had been privy to a different side of the irascible curmudgeon, “a beautiful soul when open and vulnerable.” The best way to honor Katz’s memory, he writes, is to reach out to a long lost friend. Pass it on.

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Boxing Odds and Ends: Ernesto Mercado, Marcel Cerdan and More

Published

2 days ago

January 28, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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The TSS Fighter of the Month for January is super lightweight Ernesto “Tito” Mercado who scored his sixth straight knockout, advancing his record to 17-0 (16 KOs) with a fourth-round stoppage of Jose Pedraza on the undercard of Diego Pacheco vs. Steven Nelson at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas.

Mercado was expected to win. At age 35, Pedraza’s best days were behind him. But the Puerto Rican “Sniper” wasn’t chopped liver. A 2008 Beijing Olympian, he was a former two-division title-holder. In a previous fight in Las Vegas, in June of 2021, Pedraza proved too savvy for Julian Rodriguez (currently 23-1) whose corner pulled him out after eight rounds. So, although Mercado knew that he was the “A-side,” he also knew, presumably, that it was important to bring his “A” game.

Mercado edged each of the first three frames in what was shaping up as a tactical fight. In round four, he followed a short left hand with an overhand right that landed flush on Pedraza’s temple. “It was a discombobulating punch,” said one of DAZN’s talking heads. Indeed, the way that Pedraza fell was awkward. “[He] crushed colorfully backward and struck the back of his head on the canvas before rising on badly wobbled legs,” wrote ringside reporter Lance Pugmire.

He beat the count, but referee Robert Hoyle wisely waived it off.

Now 23 years old, Ernesto “Tito” Mercado was reportedly 58-5 as an amateur. At the December 2019 U.S. Olympic Trials in Lake Charles, Louisiana, he advanced to the finals in the lightweight division but then took sick and was medically disqualified from competing in the championship round. His opponent, Keyshawn Davis, won in a walkover and went on to win a silver medal at the Tokyo Games.

As a pro, only one of Mercado’s opponents, South African campaigner Xolisani Ndongeni, heard the final bell. Mercado won nine of the 10 rounds. The stubborn Ndongeni had previously gone 10 rounds with Devin Haney and would subsequently go 10 rounds with Raymond Muratalla.

The Ndongeni fight, in July of 2023, was staged in Nicaragua, the homeland of Mercado’s parents. Tito was born in Upland in Southern California’s Inland Empire and currently resides in Pomona.

Pomona has spawned two world champions, the late Richie Sandoval and Sugar Shane Mosley. Mercado is well on his way to becoming the third.

Marcel Cerdan Jr

Born in Casablanca, Marcel Cerdan Jr was four years old when his dad ripped the world middleweight title from Tony Zale. A good fighter in his own right, albeit nowhere near the level of his ill-fated father, the younger Cerdan passed away last week at age 81.

Fighting mostly as a welterweight, Cerdan Jr scored 56 wins in 64 professional bouts against carefully selected opponents. He came up short in his lone appearance in a U.S. ring where he was matched tough against Canadian champion Donato Paduano, losing a 10-round decision on May 11, 1970 at Madison Square Garden. This was a hard, bloody fight in which both men suffered cuts from accidental head butts.

Cerdan Jr and Paduano both trained for the match at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills. In the U.S. papers, Cerdan Jr’s record was listed as 47-0-1. The record conveniently omitted the loss that he had suffered in his third pro bout.

Eight years after his final fight, Cerdan Jr acquired his highest measure of fame for his role in the movie Edith et Marcel. He portrayed his father who famously died at age 33 in a plane crash in the Azores as he was returning to the United States for a rematch with Jake LaMotta who had taken away his title.

Edith et Marcel, directed by Claude Lelouch, focused on the love affair between Cerdan and his mistress Edith Piaf, the former street performer turned cabaret star who remains today the most revered of all the French song stylists.

Released in 1983, twenty years after the troubled Piaf passed away at age 47, the film, which opened to the greatest advertising blitz in French cinematic history, caused a sensation in France, spawning five new books and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles. Cerdan Jr’s performance was “surprisingly proficient” said the Associated Press about the ex-boxer making his big screen debut.

The French language film occasionally turns up on Turner Classic Movies. Although it got mixed reviews, the film is a feast for the ears for fans of Edith Piaf. The musical score is comprised of Piaf’s original songs in her distinctive voice.

Marcel Cerdan Jr’s death was attributed to pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer’s. May he rest in peace.

Claressa Shields

Speaking of movies, the Claressa Shields biopic, The Fire Inside, released on Christmas day, garnered favorable reviews from some of America’s most respected film critics with Esquire’s Max Cea calling it the year’s best biopic. First-time director Rachel Morrison, screenwriter Barry Jenkins, and Ryan Destiny, who portrays Claressa, were singled out for their excellent work.

The movie highlights Shields’ preparation for the 2012 London Olympics and concludes with her training for the Rio Games where, as we know, she would win a second gold medal. In some respects, the movie is reminiscent of The Fighter, the 2010 film starring Mark Wahlberg as Irish Micky Ward where the filmmakers managed to manufacture a great movie without touching on Ward’s famous trilogy with Arturo Gatti.

The view from here is that screenwriter Jenkins was smart to end the movie where he did. In boxing, and especially in women’s boxing, titles are tossed around like confetti. Had Jenkins delved into Claressa’s pro career, a very sensitive, nuanced biopic, could have easily devolved into something hokey. And that’s certainly no knock on Claressa Shields. The self-described GWOAT, she is dedicated to her craft and a very special talent.

Shields hopes that the buzz from the movie will translate into a full house for her homecoming fight this coming Sunday, Feb. 2, at the Dort Financial Center in Flint, Michigan. A bevy of heavyweight-division straps will be at stake when Shields, who turns 30 in March, takes on 42-year-old Brooklynite Danielle Perkins.

At bookmaking establishments, Claressa is as high as a 25/1 favorite. That informs us that the oddsmakers believe that Perkins is marginally better than Claressa’s last opponent, Vanessa Lepage-Joanisse. That’s damning Perkins with faint praise.

Shields vs. Perkins plus selected undercard bouts will air worldwide on DAZN at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT.

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Ringside at the Cosmo: Pacheco Outpoints Nelson plus Undercard Results

Published

5 days ago

January 25, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Ringside at the Cosmo: Pacheco Outpoints Nelson plus Undercard Results

LAS VEGAS, NV – Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Promotions was at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas tonight for the second half of a DAZN doubleheader that began in Nottingham, England. In the main event, Diego Pacheco, ranked #1 by the WBO at super middleweight, continued his ascent toward a world title with a unanimous decision over Steven Nelson.

Pacheco glides round the ring smoothly whereas Nelson wastes a lot energy with something of a herky-jerky style. However, although Nelson figured to slow down as the fight progressed, he did some of his best work in rounds 11 and 12. Fighting with a cut over his left eye from round four, a cut that periodically reopened, the gritty Nelson fulfilled his promise that he would a fight as if he had everything to lose if he failed to win, but it just wasn’t enough, even after his Omaha homie Terence “Bud” Crawford entered his corner before the last round to give him a pep talk (back home in North Omaha, Nelson runs the B&B (Bud and Bomac) Sports Academy.

All three judges had it 117-111 for Pacheco who mostly fought off his back foot but landed the cleaner punches throughout. A stablemate of David Benavidez and trained by David’s father Jose Benevidez Sr, Pacheco improved to 23-0 (18). It was the first pro loss for the 36-year-old Nelson (20-1).

Semi wind-up

Olympic gold medalist Andy Cruz, who as a pro has never fought a match slated for fewer than 10 rounds, had too much class for Hermosillo, Mexico’s rugged Omar Salcido who returned to his corner with a puffy face after the fourth stanza, but won the next round and never stopped trying. The outcome was inevitable even before the final round when Salcido barely made it to the final gun, but the Mexican was far more competitive than many expected.

The Cuban, who was 4-0 vs. Keyshawn Davis in closely-contested bouts as an amateur, advanced his pro record to 5-0 (2), winning by scores by 99-91 and 98-92 twice. Salido, coming off his career-best win, a 9^th-round stoppage of former WBA super featherweight title-holder Chris Colbert, falls to 20-2.

Other TV bouts

Ernesto “Tito” Mercado, a 23-year-old super lightweight, aims to become the next world champion from Pomona, California, following in the footsteps of the late Richie Sandoval and Sugar Shane Mosely, and based on his showing tonight against former Beijing Olympian and former two-division title-holder Jose Pedraza, he is well on his way.

After three rounds after what had been a technical fight, Mercado (17-0, 16 KOs) knocked Pedraza off his pins with a short left hand followed by an overhand right. Pedraza bounced back and fell on his backside. When he arose on unsteady legs, the bout was waived off. The official time was 2:08 of round four and the fading, 35-year-old Pedraza (29-7-1) was saddled with his third loss in his last four outings.

The 8-round super lightweight clash between Israel Mercado (the 29-year-old uncle of “Tito”) and Leonardo Rubalcava was a fan-friendly skirmish with many robust exchanges. When the smoke cleared, the verdict was a majority draw. Mercado got the nod on one card (76-74), but was overruled by a pair of 75-75 scores.

Mercado came out strong in the opening round, but suffered a flash knockdown before the round ended. The referee ruled it a slip but was overruled by replay operator Jay Nady and what would have been a 10-9 round for Mercado became a 10-8 round for Rubalcava. Mercado lost another point in round seven when he was penalized for low blows.

The scores were 76-74 for Mercado (11-1-2) and 75-75 twice. The verdict was mildly unpopular with most thinking that Mercado deserved the nod. Reportedly a four-time Mexican amateur champion, Rubalcava (9-0-1) is trained by Robert Garcia.

Also

New Matchroom signee Nishant Dev, a 24-year-old southpaw from India, had an auspicious pro debut (pardon the cliché). Before a beaming Eddie Hearn, Dev stopped Oakland’s Alton Wiggins (1-1-1) in the opening round. The referee waived it off after the second knockdown.

Boxers from India have made large gains at the amateur level in recent years and Matchroom honcho Eddie Hearn anticipates that Dev, a Paris Olympian, will be the first fighter from India to make his mark as a pro.

Undefeated Brooklyn lightweight Harley Mederos, managed by the influential Keith Connolly, scored his seventh knockout in eight tries with a brutal third-round KO of Mexico’s Arturo de Isla.

A left-right combination knocked de Isla (5-3-1) flat on his back. Referee Raul Caiz did not bother to count and several minutes elapsed before the stricken fighter was fit to leave the ring. The official time was 1:27 of round three.

In the opener, Newark junior lightweight Zaquin Moses, a cousin of Shakur Stevenson, improved to 2-0 when his opponent retired on his stool after the opening round.

Photo credit: Melina Pizano / Matchroom

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