The Beast of Stillman’s Gym, Part 1

Published

13 years ago

January 12, 2012

The Beast of Stillman’s Gym

PART 1: CROSSROADS

In the years after World War I, a ghostly lodge of southern terrorists reemerged as a movement with real clout. By 1924 it was at the peak of its power and Texas was the most infested state in America with 170,000 Ku Klux Klansmen armed and organized, every one of them a member of the Democratic Party. Republicans, the Grand Old Party of Lincoln (and then-President Calvin Coolidge) often failed to even muster a candidate for state and local elections.

Like a cactus before the setting sun, fascism cast its lengthening shadow. Dissent wasn’t stifled so much as stomped to protect the interests, real and imagined, of white Protestant Texans. Those guilty of morals violations were taken from their homes and flogged, beaten, shot, or left blind-folded with placards leaning against their broken forms. “Undesirables” were ordered out of town. At Sour Lake, a justice of the peace was tarred and feathered as was a U.S. Marshal in Brenham who later resigned. The governor spoke out publically against the Klan on Independence Day in 1921 and the Klan responded with warnings posted right there on the grounds of the State Capitol.

To black Texans scattered throughout the arid landscape in the early 1920s, it was a reign of terror. Lynch Law was ever-present and selectively applied: Between 1900 and 1924 nine whites were lynched compared with 171 African Americans, and the latter were almost invariably mutilated before and after death by mobs. Simply being friendly toward white women could mean permanent disfigurement if your skin was dark. Neither respectability nor age made any difference. A dentist was mutilated for “associating” with white women. Two bellboys were snatched within two weeks in the same city, beaten, and held down while the letters “KKK” were burned into their foreheads with acid.

These atrocities were committed with impunity because the machinery of government –-the legislature, city halls, the courts, law enforcement–- was infested. When a thousand members marched in full regalia through Dallas carrying torches and waving banners like a conquering army, city authorities added to the spectacle by extinguishing the lights. In 1923, the KKK even managed to deliver one of their own into the United States Senate.

President Coolidge was no friend of the Klan. In 1924 alone he granted Native Americans full citizenship, gave a speech at the Catholic Holy Name Society in Washington, and stood, however stiffly, at a podium in Howard University where he declared the “progress of the colored people on this continent” as one of the “marvels of modern history.” He unsuccessfully urged a Democrat-dominated Congress to pass anti-lynching laws and appointed black men to federal positions. Emmett J. Scott, Secretary-Treasurer at Howard University thanked him for the “great encouragement” he was bringing to the twelve million African Americans who suffered “persecution by a hooded order which seeks to exclude them from the privileges of American citizenship.” “They know Calvin Coolidge,” Scott wrote. “They know his traditional friendship and they know of his distinguished services in behalf of their race.”

In Victoria, Texas on January 24^th 1924, a black auto mechanic welcomed his second son into the world. The infant was given the name Calvin Coolidge Lytle.

The city of Victoria is thirty miles north of the Gulf of Mexico at the intersection of three highways. That fact and its equidistant location from four major cities earned it a nickname: “The Crossroads of South Texas.” For George W. Lytle and his wife Virginia, it was good place to raise a family.

Calvin’s playpen was his father’s auto shop. He was tinkering early and probably scolded regularly for coming into the house with greasy hands. After school and on Sundays, he was a barefoot newsy hawking the Victoria Advocate. He didn’t have to worry about his turf because his big brother, whose name was Loyal, held rivals in check. There was one fight Calvin had when he was eleven: “The kid was a lefty. I was a righty. He gave me such a licking I decided if I ever got into another fight I’d fight like him. So I turned around. I bat left-handed. In football I pass with my left-hand. I’m left-handed all the way now.”

South Texas was far from idyllic for African Americans, but the diminished influence of the KKK, which can be traced to the year of Calvin’s birth, cut the tension in half. Not unlike any other American family, the Lytles huddled up as the Great Depression fell on the country and business slowed to a crawl at the shop. The family of four went on relief and soon became a family of three. On October 22^nd 1936, Virginia Lytle died after a common accident became something worse. Calvin was all of twelve years old.

Records show that Loyal Lytle enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1941. When Calvin turned 17 in January, he became eligible to join the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC, one of the most popular of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, operated between 1933 and 1942 and was intended for unmarried, unemployed young men from families on relief. Between April and September, Calvin was a member of Co. 2873(C) with the “C” standing for “colored.” He lived in a segregated barracks at Ascarate County Park in El Paso and worked 40 hours a week doing heavy, unskilled and semiskilled labor outdoors for $30 a month, with $25 of that being sent home. After September, he returned home to live with his father.

On December 1^st 1941, his father died.

Calvin turns up in San Antonio as the ward of a county judge named C.W. Anderson (whose name is now attached to a loop on the San Antonio freeway). He got a job, or Anderson pulled strings and got him a job as a soda jerker. It was a plum of a position, particularly for a black teenager in Texas. Those weeks or months that Calvin wore that black bow tie must have been a high point, flipping scoops of ice cream into malts for tips, and girls.

On March 8^th 1942, he found himself standing in a Navy recruiting station in Houston. Pearl Harbor had been attacked and American men hoisted up the flag, beat their plowshares into swords, and went to war. Calvin didn’t have much of a choice. His enlistment papers reveal that Judge Anderson signed him up to become a messman in the naval reserves. They reveal more than that. Calvin wrote “serve my country” as his reason for enlisting. It’s a boiler plate answer that required no thought and that was probably transcribed. He scrawled the names of four men as character references, all of them black and from Victoria, two of them mechanics like his father, and none of them known by him for more than a year. There was no one else he could find in his life.

Reading his application for enlistment seventy years after he completed it is enough to make one feel oddly anxious for him. Confused, alone, and about to be sent headlong into something he was completely unprepared for, he was anxious for himself. His handwriting tells it all. The careful script, clumsy with mistakes that he took pains to correct, reveals a nervous hand. It looks like the work of an undereducated man writing his will.

Calvin was shipped off to the messman training center in Norfolk, Virginia. Eight weeks of boot camp included immunizations, gas mask instruction, swimming lessons, and training to properly polish shoes and silverware and set white officers’ tables. Calvin wore a bow-tie again, though it was a step down from the soda fountain. In the United States Navy, African Americans could expect to be nothing but mess attendants and mess attendants were nothing but servants on the lowest rung of the ship’s pecking order.

He was stationed at the U.S. Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone from the end of May until the beginning of August 1942. He’d get a lousy two day pass, and would do what many sailors did –-swagger into a kit kat club and stagger out with rum on his breath and a good time girl on his arm. Calvin’s sexual experiences may or may not have earned him accolades from other messmen; they definitely earned him the “burn.” Contracting venereal diseases was common enough to become proverbial. Enlisting in the Navy, the saying went, was “to be sent out a sacrifice and come home a burnt offering.”

When he wasn’t on what might loosely be called active duty, he played baseball. One rainy day, he found his way into a boxing gym. A 6-foot white man was waiting around for a sparring partner when a coach spotted Calvin and invited him over to see if the gloves fit. They fit just fine. “I just tore into the guy. He was in no condition. I could see that,” he recalled in an interview a few years later at Stillman’s Gym. “I knocked him down with a left to the solar plexus and a right to the jaw.” The white man got up and proceeded to give Calvin, who had never boxed before, his first lesson in leather-pushing. “He started to get me,” he would later admit, “and hurt me a little.”

As he climbed out of the ring, the surprised coach walked up to him.

“You know who you were in with?” he said, “That was Billy Soose!”

Billy Soose was the former middleweight champion of the world. Calvin was signed up for the Navy boxing team on the spot. He remembered that it was a Thursday; on Sunday he had his first three-round, two-minute bout and scored a knockout.

Boxing was the only credit on his ledger. His tour of duty was fixing to be about as pleasant as the clap. While researching his book The Messman Chronicles: African Americans in the U.S. Navy 1932-1943, Richard E. Miller was warned that many veterans would deny that they served as “lowly messboys.” Deprived of the chance to prove themselves in battle, the vast majority of black sailors had to contend with daily humiliations instead. American prejudice could be rabid in the forties, but in the confined society of a ship it was magnified, particularly when southern officers and soldiers were involved. Messmen generally coped by keeping a low profile and preserving their dignity as best they could, though a few played the role of the smiling ‘Sambo’ servant in hopes of having an easier time.

Calvin rebelled.

Nine days after being transported for duty to the naval air station in British Guiana in September 1942, he was in the brig. He spent five days in solitary confinement for disorderly conduct. In December he was “absent from duty” for six days and ended up back in the brig. In March he stole a Navy truck. The commanding officer took away his liberty for two months as well as $32 of the $42 he earned during that time. In April he earned five more days solitary confinement on nothing except bread and water for “Neglect of duty”; in May he earned another month’s restriction for “Falsehood.”

In June he was transferred. During his new assignment on board the U.S.S. Surprise, he was disciplined for shirking watch duty, profane language, insubordination, leaving ship without proper authority, theft, and possession of another man’s liberty card and “a lewd picture.” All told, he was at captain’s mast for disciplinary issues no less than eight times. By November 1943 he was locked up at a U.S. Naval receiving station in New York and awaiting a summary court martial. The problems didn’t end. Calvin was in a U.S. Naval Hospital for twenty days for a medical issue that was “the result of his own misconduct.”

When his enlistment expired in March 1944 no one complained; least of all him. The court martial’s sentence stipulated that he be given a “bad conduct discharge” and further stipulated that he “IS NOT recommended for reenlistment. IS NOT recommended for Good Conduct Medal. IS NOT entitled to mustering out allowance.” Understandably, Calvin didn’t want to go back to Texas and face Judge Anderson. There was nothing left for him there, nothing and no one, and so he formally requested permission to disembark in New York. Permission was granted. With his head in a sling, Calvin was furnished with civilian clothes, handed his discharge certificate, and sent on his way.

“The navy mess attendant,” said one veteran, “had to be a fighter. He had to fight the Germans and the Japanese at sea, red necks in every port, and ignorant Negroes who wanted to insult him for being what he was when he got home.” Calvin managed to make a bad thing worse. After two years in the service, he managed to forfeit almost all of the privileges granted a navy man. He would receive no pension to help him along while he lived and no cemetery plot to help him along when he died.

He drifted over to Brooklyn and got a job at a garage near King’s Highway. As the son of a mechanic, he would have been comfortable in greasy coveralls with a rag sticking out of the pocket. Boraxo soap and gasoline fumes would have reminded him of home, of those all-too-brief better days when the Lytles were together, when he wasn’t alone. He hadn’t been working there long when the familiar bell announcing the arrival of a patron became a fortuitous one. During the conversation that followed, Calvin mentioned that he boxed a little and wanted to get back into it. The patron told him that he had a friend who managed fighters and took down his name. Calvin must have been pleasantly surprised when he received a phone call and then a visit from Bernie Bernstein, who operated out of Sammy Aaronson’s office over on Broadway.

Bernstein took Calvin over to the fabled Stillman’s Gym and threw him in the ring with a professional middleweight –-“just to see if he could really fight.”

____________________________

The most remarkable breed of boxers is called “natural fighters.” One of them will surface at the center of the boxing universe in PART 2 OF “THE BEAST OF STILLMAN’S GYM.”

Graphic: Messmen serve a meal to junior officers on board a cruiser during World War II. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, U.S. National Archives.

Henry Peck Fry’s The Modern Ku Klux Klan pp. 185-189. “Lynching in Texas,” by David L. Chapman, thesis, 1973. Emmet Scott’s letter quoted in an essay by Alvin S. Felzenberg entitled “Calvin Coolidge and Race: His Record in Dealing with the Racial Tensions of the 1920s” (1988). U.S. Census report, 1920, 1930; Telephone interview with Ellen Choyce, October 2011; Texas Death Index, 1936,1941; James Wright Heeley’s Parks for Texas: Enduring Landscapes of the New Deal offers details about where CCC Co. 2873 was assigned before WW II. “Needed Some Exercise –Mauls Ex-Champ” and “Bert Lytell, The Black Streak of Lightning in Gloves” from The Ring, circa 1940s, courtesy of Douglas Cavanaugh. An invaluable resource for this essay was “The Negro in the Navy: First Draft Narrative” prepared by the Historical Section of Naval Personnel, and Black Submariners in the United States Navy, 1940-1975 by Glenn A. Knoblock. Michael E. Ruane’s interview of Lanier W. Phillips in the Washington Post, 9/20/10 accurately depicts the Navy’s treatment of African American messmen during World War II; statements regarding the navy mess attendant as a “fighter” quoted in Richard E. Miller’s The Messman Chronicles: African Americans in the U.S. Navy 1932-1943 pp. 280-281. The military service record of Calvin Coolidge Lytle was obtained from the National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records, in St. Louis, MO through the Freedom of Information Act. The Ring spotlighted Bert Lytell in the December 1944 issue and this was kindly provided by Alister Ottesen for use as a resource.

Springs Toledo can be contacted at scalinatella@hotmail.com“>scalinatella@hotmail.com.

Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel.

Post Views: 1,685

Share The Sweet Science experience!

Springs Toledo

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

Published

28 minutes 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 allegation 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 that 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: 50

Share The Sweet Science experience!

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

Published

4 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: 1,604

Share The Sweet Science experience!

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

Published

4 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: 1,271

Share The Sweet Science experience!