NEW YORK --- Say what you will about those unsophisticated Wall Street boxing crowds, they were still smart enough to run for the doors when they saw James McGirt heading for the ring. By the time the (pick one) main event/walk-out bout finished eight rounds later, the paying customers at Cipriani Wall Street were outnumbered by the round-card girls.
McGirt, the son of former Trainer of the Year Buddy McGirt, ran his pro record to 17-0, with the last six wins coming under Lou DiBella’s Broadway Boxing banner, but once again he failed to capture the allegiance of the crowd. By the end of the eight-round slapfest, the white trunks McGirt had worn into the ring were some shade of pink. After getting his nose bloodied by 40 year-old Thomas Reid (35-19-1), McGirt bled for the latter half of the fight, but once again he was a runaway winner, rolling up perfect 80-72 scores on the cards of judges George DeGabriel and George Smith, and 79-72 on that of Frank Lombardi.
The BoxingTalk scorecard was a bit more charitable toward Reid, but still had McGirt in front 77-75.
In fairness to the younger McGirt, he was trying all the way, and he obviously doesn’t set out to be boring. It’s just that when they handed out the boxing genes, he seems to have inherited his mother’s punch.
It might also be noted that the crowd may well have been spurred on their way toward the exits by another eight-round exercise in tedium immediately preceding McGirt’s fight, Bronx lightweight Jorge Teron’s win over Mike Gonzalez. The Mark Breland-trained Teron (18-0-1) has to be half a foot taller than Gonzalez (now 10-2-1), but he somehow turned his pronounced reach advantage into a detriment for much of the night, and even got himself rocked by a Gonzalez right in the final round, when it was too late to make much difference.
Despite an often-uninspired performance, Teron also won handily on the scorecards, with an 80-72 shutout on DeGabriel’s and Lombardi’s cards and a 79-73 score on Don Trella’s. (BoxingTalk had it 78-74.)
In fairness, neither McGirt nor Teron was supposed to carry the show. When DiBella’s Broadway Boxing and Tommy Gallagher’s Black Tie Boxing joined forces for Wednesday night’s card, the main event was supposed to feature popular junior welterweight Dmitry Salita, but when Salita withdrew after suffering a training camp hand injury less than two weeks before the curtain went up, DiBella and Gallagher opted to go with a three-headed monster in the form of 8-rounders featuring McGirt, Teron, and Michael Grant.
Grant didn’t exactly set the world on fire either, but he disposed of his Detroit opponent, Kevin (Big Dog) Montiy, in seven rounds. It was the fifth straight win on the comeback trail for the 35 year-old Grant, who at one point was 31-0 before suffering back-to-back humiliations at the hands of Lennox Lewis and Jameel McCline. Although Grant took two rounds longer to subdue Montiy than did Kevin McBride (two years ago, in his last fight before Mike Tyson), he did have his man down in both the sixth and seventh rounds before Steve Smoger rescued Big Dog at 1:59 of the seventh. Grant is now 43-3, Montiy 17-4-1.
Which is not to suggest that the evening was lacking in fireworks. New York heavyweight Israel Garcia (17-1) got things off with a bang when he unleashed a combination punctuated by a big left hook to stop Mike Jones (6-12) 59 seconds into the second round, and, in his pro debut, Bronx junior middleweight Ronny Vargas needed just 20 seconds to subdue his Michigan opponent Ricky Dew (0-2), whom he decked with a pair of rights before the cornermen could even get down the stairs.
The most exciting bout of the evening turned out to be a scheduled four-rounder between Ariel Espina and Jimmy Campbell. Campbell, a British middleweight, brought a 10-0 record to the fight, while Espina’s ledger read 5-2-1. And while Campbell clearly possessed the superior boxing skills, Espina never gave him a chance to use them, making up for it with a display of energy and enthusiasm that never let the Londoner get untracked.
Campbell tried his best to box, but kept getting interrupted by left hooks to the face, and then in the third round when Espina began to mix in some big right hands, the visitor was forced to take a knee. (Espina hit him once, and at least twice, on the top of the head after he did so, and might have been disqualified by another referee, but Ricky Gonzalez allowed the infraction to go unpunished.)
In the fourth, with the crowd on its feet and sensing an upset, Espina started Campbell with a solid left hook and then tagged him with left-right-left combination before moving in to land two huge right hands. By the time the second one landed, Dr. Barry Jordan, the chairman of the NSAC medical board, had bolted through the ropes, determined to stop the fight even if Gonzalez wouldn’t, but by the time he got there, the punch had floored the helpless Campbell.
It might not have been the fight of the year, but if they had an award for FOUR-round fight of the year, Espina-Campbell one would be a hands-down winner.
In the distaff bout, Bronx featherweight Maureen Shea improved to 12-0, meting out a ritual beating to an utterly outclassed Jessica Mohs (7-16-2) until referee Sparkle Lee stopped it at 1:42 of the second.
Mohs seemed so inept that it’s difficult to imagine how useless the seven girls she beat must be, but the one-sided rout didn’t stop one of her cornermen from crossing the ring and, by way of congratulation, patting Maureen Shea’s fanny after the bout.
In a super-middleweight prelim, New Yorker Peter (Kid Chocolate) Quillen put Texan Jesse Orta down with a short right in the second round, but was unable to capitalize on the damage and wound up going the distance to post a one-sided victory. (Lombardi, Smith, Trella, and BoxingTalk all had it 60-53.) Quillen is now 15-0, Orta 7-11-1.
To make matters worse, the television truck was unable reach its position before the card, reducing the Broadway Boxing broadcast team of Nick Charles, Steve Farhood, and Bryan Adams to speechless spectators. Presumably the tape-delayed broadcast can be salvaged with a subsequent in-studio voice-over, but if not, never fear. There were at least 500 I-phones in the audience, so there’s plenty of available video footage.
Â
*Â *Â Â *
BROADWAY & BLACK-TIE BOXING
Cipriani’s Wall Street, New York City
September 5, 2007
HEAVYWEIGHTS: Miichael Grant, 262, Blue Bell, Penn. TKO’d Kevin Montiy, 241, Detroit, Mich. (7)
Israel Garcia, 245, New York TKO’d Mike Jones, 290, Jackson, Mich. (2)
LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHTS: James McGirt Jr., 169 ¾, Brentwood, N.Y. dec. Thomas Reid, 169 ½, Jackson, Tenn. (8)
SUPER MIDDLEWEIGHTS: Peter Quillen, 162 ¾, New York dec. Jesse Orta, 162, Dallas (6)
Ariel Espinal, 162, Brooklyn, N.Y. TKO’d Jimmy Campbell, 159, London, England (4)
JUNIOR MIDDLEWEIGHTS: Ronny Vargas, 150, Bronx, N.Y. TKO’d Ricky Dew, 146 ¾, Flint, Mich. (1)
LIGHTWEIGHTS: Jorge Teron, 135, Bronx, N.Y. dec. Mike Gonzalez, 134, Bayamon, Puerto Rico (8)
FEATHERWEIGHTS: Maureen Shea, 126, Bronx, N.Y. TKO’d Jessica Mohs, 126, Oklahoma City, Okla. (2)
M
Send questions and comments to: gkimball@boxingtalk.com