As he had been the last time he fought in this same ring, John Duddy was covered in blood. At least this time it wasn’t his own. Handily ahead on the scorecards, Duddy was awarded a Technical Win in the main event of Irish Ropes’ ‘Erin Go Brawl’ card at a sold-out Madison Square Garden Theatre Friday night when Anthony Bonsante, half-blinded after a fourth-round clash of heads, could not go beyond nine rounds.
The issue went to the scorecards, where Steve Weisfeld (90-81), Frank Lombardi (89-82) and Tom Schreck (88-83) all had Duddy well in command. (The Boxing Talk card agreed with Schreck’s.)
On St. Patrick’s Eve a year ago in the same building Duddy had dispatched North Dakotan Shelby Pudwill in half a round, and while the Derry middleweight’s fervent Irish supporters who turned out in force seemed to anticipate more of the same, it was hardly a realistic expectation. Bonsante is a rugged and willing veteran who was plainly not going to go quietly.
Duddy dominated the first two frames with his jab, mixing in just enough hooks to keep Bonsante off balance, but in the third, the ‘Contender’ alum from Minnesota rocked Duddy with a couple of good right uppercuts, winning the round on our card as well as Lombardi’s.
Early in the fourth the two boxers’ heads came together with a crack that would be heard up in the balcony. As both spun away, Eddie McLoughlin recalled, “my heart leapt to my throat.”
Duddy had emerged from his September win over Yory Boy Campas with cuts severe enough to keep him out of the ring for the next six months, and McLoughlin was terrified that the accidental butt might have reopened one of the wounds.
Duddy was fine, but Bonsante had been gashed on the forehead. Referee Steve Smoger, who properly ruled the butt accidental, and after checking Bonsante’s wound waved the fighters back into action.
Almost immediately the cut began to bleed, and continued to do so for the balance of the evening. Nor did it help matters much that Team Bonsante hadn’t brought a cut man along from Minnesota, nor had they bothered to hire one from among the many available candidates in New York. By the end of the fourth Bonsante was a bloody mess, and remained so for the balance of the evening.
Bonsante fought gamely, even managing to stop Duddy in his tracks with a crisp left-right combination in the sixth, but for the most part it was a matter of Duddy pressing the action. When the Irishmen got hit, which he did, it was usually because he forgot to get out of the way.
“It wasn’t the cut,” Bonsante would say later, “it was the blood dripping into the eye.”
We don’t know how to break this to you, Anthony, but it usually is.
Clearly bothered by the cut, Bonsante tried to buy time by dancing far enough away from Duddy that he could wipe at the eye with his glove. He pawed at it in every available clinch. Bill Kaehn and Lisa Bauch, his apparently bewildered handlers, sponged it off after each round.
But it just kept bleeding.
“Usually when I taste blood I want to go out there and fight,” said Bonsante.
“He came to fight,” agreed Duddy. “Unfortunately, there was a clash of heads. After that he tried to keep away, but he’s a gutsy fighter.”
By the eighth Duddy was sporting what appeared to be a nascent hematoma beneath his right eye. It would have been interesting to see how it might have held up had the bout gone four more rounds.
Duddy appeared to get a bit careless as Bonsante rallied in the eight, catching Duddy with a solid left uppercut, a left-right, and then, moments later, a big right uppercut. Not bad work from a man who could now barely see, but with the blood pouring as if from a faucet, Bonsante was forced back into retreat by the end of the round.
Duddy continued his onslaught in the ninth, and midway through the round Smoger called time and invited Dr. Gerald Verlata, the ringside physician, into the corner to examine the cut. The bout was allowed to continue, but not for long.
At the end of the tenth, NYSAC chairman Ron Scott Stevens made his way around the ring and stood beneath Bonsante’s corner, conversing with Verlata. The doctor shook his head and communicated his diagnoses to Smoger, who announced that the fight was being stopped as the result of the accidental butt. Stevens went off to round up the scorecards.
Duddy’s win was his 19th in as many pro fights, while Bonsante fell to 29-9-3.
Although the announcement of Duddy’s win set off exuberant celebration, it was somewhat muted in comparison to some of his earlier New York fights. Only Bonsante’s courage had made it last as long as it had, but it still seemed a somewhat unsatisfactory conclusion, particularly in light of the fight’s big buildup.
“John Duddy’s a hell of a fighter,” said Bonsante. “I’d love to fight him again.”
Not bloody likely.
Duddy himself confessed to having been “a bit rusty” after the long layoff,
“I should have let my punches go a little more,” he said. “But I give myself a passing grade. I was in control of the fight, but next time out I’ll be better.”
He may have to be. Come this fall he could have his hands full with another fighter who boxed on the Erin Go Brawl undercard.
Dominican middleweight Giovanni Lorenzo raised his record to 23-0 and earned himself a possible September date with Duddy by scoring a one-sided TKO over Ugandan veteran Robert Kamya.
Lorenzo, who made his pitch for support from the predominantly Irish audience by fighting with a large green shamrock tattooed (temporarily, we presume) across his back, wasted little time, decking Kamya with a left hook in the first round.
After an uneventful second, Lorenzo floored his opponent twice in the third, first with a chopping right that caught Kamya on the top of the head, and the second time by landing two successive rights. Although Kamya (now 15-7) made it to his feet, referee Benji Estevez waved it off at 2:38 of the round.
“I felt good, but it wasn’t what I wanted,” said Lorenzo of his brief night’s work. “On a scale of one to ten I’d rate this one about a seven.”
Asked whom he might fight next, Lorenzo replied “it’s up to my managers, but I hear they’ve been talking to Duddy’s people.”
Lorenzo may be ready for Duddy. The question is, or ought to be, is Duddy ready for Lorenzo?
Not quite yet, at least according to Irish Ropes’ McLoughlin, who said Duddy’s next outing would be a nationally-televised (probably ESPN) date in June or thereabouts, either in New York, Boston, or one of the Connecticut casinos. If all goes well, the next step might be a co-featured spot on a September HBO card, very possibly against Lorenzo.
“Hopefully we’ll be fighting Jermain Taylor by this time next year,” added McLoughlin, and at least a dozen scribes of the Irish persuasion nodded dutifully as if to say “of course!”
That’s what Eddie said, anyway, but off what he has showed in his last two outings, you’d have to say that Duddy is nowhere near ready to fight Taylor now, and he may not be a year from now either. Moreover, from Irish Ropes’ standpoint, throwing Duddy into a world title fight might not even make sense.
If Duddy can continue playing to sellout houses against less threatening opponents, why chance killing the off the goose that lays golden eggs?
Another Irish middleweight, Limerick’s Andy Lee scored a sensational one-punch knockout of former WBA junior middle champion Carl Daniels, nailing The Squirrel with a picture-perfect right hook that knocked the usually durable veteran cold.
The KO, which came at 2:36 of the third, raised Lee’s record to 8-0. Daniels, who took the fight on three days’ notice, is 40-11-1.
“He was crafty,” said Lee of his fellow southpaw. “I was touching him with my jab over the first couple of rounds, and he was picking it off with his left glove right in front of his face. So this time I showed the jab and brought the hook around his glove. The punch caught him flush. I knew the second I hit him he wasn’t going to get up.”
As the blow thudded off his head, Daniels wobbled for a minute and then toppled over backward. Lee had sprinted across the ring and climbed the ring rope in his corner in celebration before Esteves even picked up the count – which he almost immediately abandoned. It was that clear that Carl Daniels wasn’t going to regain consciousness for several minutes.
A rueful Daniels later told Boxing Talk that he’d never seen the punch coming.
And Lee later confided that his celebration hadn’t been quite as spontaneous as it might have appeared.
“Not long ago we were watching an old tape of Gerald McClellan,” said Lee. “He hit this guy with a one-two and caught him so perfectly that he ran over and started to climb the ropes before the guy even hit the floor. I said to myself ‘I’d love to be able to do that sometime myself!”
With manager/trainer Emanuel Steward in Las Vegas as part the HBO broadcast team, Steward’s nephew, Sugar Hill, and Lee’s Irish coach Tony Dunlop worked Lee’s corner.
County Clare cruiserweight Mark Clancy (7-0-1) posted a unanimous decision over Andrew Hutchinson (2-9-2) in their four-round prelim. Clancy scored the only knockdown of the fight in the second round when he caught Hutchinson with an overhand right. As the opponent keeled over, he reached out with his left glove to stop his fall, but referee Eddie Cotton correctly administered a count. Clancy looked ready to finish it late in the second, but Hutchinson survived the round. Clancy, cut above the corner of his right eye, fought more cautiously over the final two stanzas but still did enough to win both of them. Billy Costello, Steve Epstein, and Malvina Lathan all scored the bout 40-35.
In the women’s bout on the card, Bronx lightweight Maureen Shea (10-0) took target practice on outclassed Mexican opponent Eva Lidia Silva (4-7) for the better part of three rounds until referee Robin Taylor had seen enough and stopped it.
Silva was willing but utterly lacking in defensive skills, and Shea (who doubled as a publicist for Irish Ropes in the run-up to the St. Patrick’s card) might as well have been hitting a heavy bag. She landed pretty much everything she threw – lefts and rights to the body, hooks, jabs, rights to the head – whenever she wanted until Taylor invoked the mercy rule at 1:06 of the third.
Irish junior middleweight Henry Coyle made a successful pro debut, knocking out New Jersey first-timer Jason Collazo in just a minute and a half. Coyle walked Collazo to the ropes, where he hurt him with a hard right to the body before cuffing him with another right to the head. Obviously in some distress, Collazo made no attempt to rise and took Taylor’s ten-count on his knees.
Heavyweight James Clancy looked on the way to making it a clean sweep for the five Irish-born fighters on the card when he floored Rodney Ray with a chopping right in the first round, but in the second Ray revived and caught the previously unbeaten Clancy flush with a right. Clancy struggled to make Cotton’s count, and was up at six, but toppled over backwards as the referee continued to count. By the time he got to ten, Clancy was still sitting, apparently dumbfounded, on the canvas, blood pouring from his nose.
Clancy said later that he had twisted his ankle on the way down, and that it had given out when he tried to stand.
“Could be, but it was a hard punch,” said referee Cotton. “Clean, too.
Clancy is now 9-1, Ray 4-4-1.
MIDDLEWEIGHTS: John Duddy, 159 æ, Derry, Northern Ireland TDec Anthony Bonsante, 159 º, Shakopee, Minn. (9) (Retains IBA and wins WBC Continental Americas titles)
Giovanni Lorenzo, 160, Dominican Republic TKO’d Robert Kamya, 160, Kampala, Uganda (3)
HEAVYWEIGHTS: Rodney Ray, 204 æ, Ozone Park, NY KO’d James Clancy, 234, Ennis, Ireland (2)
CRUISERWEIGHTS: Mark Clancy, 196, Ennis, Ireland dec. Andrew Hutchinson, 194, New York (4)
SUPER MIDDLEWEIGHTS: Andy Lee, 164, Limerick, Ireland KO’d Carl Daniels, 168, St. Louis (3)
JUNIOR MIDDLEWEIGHTS: Henry Coyle, 152 _, Geesala, Ireland KO’d Jason Collazo, 156 _, Paterson, NJ (1)
JUNIOR WELTERWEIGHTS: Maureen Shea, 134, Bronx, NY TKO’d Eva Lidia Silva, 140, Ciudad Acuna, Mexico (3)
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