LEDYARD, CT: In three and a half years since his second-round KO of Roy Jones Jr., five consecutive Tarver opponents – six if you count Sylvester Stallone – had gone the 12-round distance with the Magic Man, but Saturday night at Foxwoods Tarver found himself facing what is for him the perfect combination: a hostile crowd and an opponent who couldn’t get out of the way.
Tarver scored an almost perfunctory fourth-round TKO over an overmatched Danny Santiago in the main event of Gary Shaw’s Showtime tripleheader at Foxwoods Casino Saturday night, and then, as Chad Dawson’s home-state crowd chanted the WBC champion’s name, The Magic Man said he would like to fight… Jeff Lacy.
Maybe it’s a Florida thing.
For his 30th professional fight, Tarver had returned to the Foxwoods ring where he had defeated Montell Griffin to win the WBC and IBF light-heavyweight titles four and a half years earlier. (Those belts are long gone; the only hardware at stake in this one was the dubious IBO version.)
Santiago, a Bronx-born club fighter based in Ocala, was believed to be in over his head from the moment this bout was signed, and in less than 12 minutes of fighting did nothing to disabuse anyone of that notion.
Tarver looked as if he were engaging in a sparring session with his fellow Floridian, and when decided he had heard enough of the crowd’s booing, he went to work. Less than a minute of earnest fighting was required to do the job: He softened Santiago with a hard left to the body, and then knocked him ass-over-teakettle with a left uppercut.
After administering a count, referee Steve Smoger allowed Santiago to keep fighting, but the opponent didn’t land, or even throw, another punch. Using Santiago’s head for target practice, Tarver landed five or six more punches, and as each blow landed Santiago listed further forward toward the floor. With the last he pitched face-first to the deck, and Smoger declared the bout over at 2:53 of the round.
The chants of “bullshit!” that had reverberated during the fight quickly turned to boos, mixed with pro-Dawson chants.
“I didn’t even hear the crowd,” said Tarver (26-4). “I was too busy trying to execute my game plan.
“Danny took some hard shots, but I’m a patient fighter,” added Tarver.
Asked who might be next on his dance card, the 39 year-old Tarver replied “Set ‘em up and I’ll knock ‘em down. This is my division.”
Tarver refused to rise to the Dawson bait (Bad Chad was present, along with a platoon of supporters), but did allow that Lacy “has a name,” and said that if the former super-middleweight champion was able to get past another New Englander, Peter Manfredo, next weekend in Las Vegas, “I’ll fight him.”
Santiago dropped to 29-4-1 with the loss.
In the co-feature of Showtime’s 2007 finale, Vernon Forrest successfully defended his WBC junior middleweight title via an 11th-round TKO of Italian challenger Michele Piccirrillo.
Dominating behind his quickness and his jab, Forrest floored Piccirillo three times in the one-sided bout to set up a possible third fight with old rival Ricardo Mayorga, the only man to have defeated him professionally.
Piccirrillo fights from a straight-up European style, meaning that his jab has to work before anything else does, and on this evening, not much was working at all.
Controlling the action from start to finish, Forrest put Piccirrillo down the first time just before the bell ended the fifth, catching him with a cuffing right to the ear as the Italian ducked. (Piccirrillo complained that he had been punched behind the head, but referee Arthur Mercante Jr. wasn’t buying it.)
Although Piccirrillo won the eighth, which Forrest inexplicably took off, the champion came back in the ninth to deck him again. As the two stood in mid-ring, Forrest feinted with a shrug, as if he were about to throw a left, and as Piccirrilllo rolled away from the nonexistent punch, he stepped right into a straight right to the jaw that sent him down again.
The final knockdown came inn the scheduled penultimate round, when Forrest drilled the challenger with a right hand that not only knocked him off his feet and through the ropes, but caused him to twist his ankle on the way down as his left leg buckled awkwardly beneath him. Mercante immediately waved the fight off without a count at 2:21 of the 11th.
After being helped back into the ring and onto to his stool (where his left boot was removed), Piccirrillo, now 48-4, was taken by ambulance to Backus Hospital in Norwich to be examined for a possibly broken ankle.
Judges Steve Weisfeld, Massimio Barrovecchio, and Jack Woodburn had Forrest ahead after ten by indentical 98-90 scores. The Boxing Talk scorecard had Forrest up 99-89.
“He hit me more than I expected,” said Forrest (40-2). “Piccirrillo is a good fighter, and he gave me good work.”
Forrest wasted little time in calling out Mayorga, who four years ago decisioned him twice.
“He only has one legitimate win over me,” said Forrrest. “The third time will be a completely different story.”
(Just in case El Matador isn’t interested, Vernon also threw his hat into the ring for the Mayweather-Hatton winner. Oscar De La Hoya’s name also came up, but then doesn’t it always?)
In a fight that was not for the squeamish, Nonito Donaire retained his IBF flyweight title with an 8th-round TKO of rugged Mexican Luis Maldonado. Cut badly in the corner of both eyes in the second round, Maldonado’s face was a mask of gore, but he battled on, even surprising the champion with spirited rallies in the fourth and sixth rounds as he switched to southpaw.
Donaire finally caught up with him near the end of the seventh, decking him with a looping left that came down nearly on the top of Maldonado’s head and sent him to the deck just before the bell. Ringside physician Michael Schwartz visited Maldonadon’s corner between rounds, but after examining the copiously bleeding Mexican, he allowed the bout to continue.
Donaire had landed two thudding rights early in the eighth, and had his foe on the run. As Maldonado retreated into the champion’s corner, Donaire caught stopped him in his tracks with a hard uppercut to the jaw, referee Charlie Dwyer waved the bout to a halt at 1:16 of the round.
Even a fight he dominated, Donaire hardly looked the boxer who had won the title with his dominant knockout of Vic Darchinyan last summer, and admitted afterward that he wasn’t at top form.
“My legs were bothering me and I felt sluggish,” said
Donaire. “I had to rely on my power rather than my speed.”
Although Maldonado won points for bravery, he was hopelessly outclassed in this one, and hadn’t won a round on the cards of George Smith and Clark Sammartino (and just one on Don Trella’s) by the time it ended.
Donaire, who said he hopes to move next toward unifying the world’s 112-pound belts, advanced to 19-1 with the win. Maldonado is now 38-2-1.
Connecticut heavyweight Tony Grano put John Battle down twice in the first round and was battering away at the 40 year-old North Carolina cruiserweight when referee Joey Lupino stepped in to rescue the visitor at 0:34 of the second. Grano is now 13-0-1, Battle 14-19-1.
In the other principal undercard bout, Chris McInenery, trailing on two scorecards (as well as that of Boxing Talk), rallied to stagger former New England cruiserweight champion Tim Flamos with two big right hands, leading referee Joey Lupino to stop their fight at 2:39 of the fifth. Judges Glenn Feldman and Peter Trematerra both had Flamos up 39-37 after four, while Mark Streisand had the same score the other way. McInerney, who had been stopped by 2-8 journeyman Gary Lavender in his last outing, advanced to 9-1 with the win, while the 40 year-old Flamos’ record fell to 19-4-1.
Canadian super-middle Jason Douglas (0-2) was awarded a second-round TKO over his Michigan opponent Anthony Cannon (4-8) when Dwyer intervened at 0:55 of the round. There were no knockdowns, but Douglas spent most of the fight raining unanswered blows on his opponent while Cannon, who didn’t seem especially interested in fighting, cowered in the corner.
The lone women’s bout on the card saw Hartford welterweight Adelita Irizarry outpoint New Yorker Nicole Woods. Irizarry carried all three scorecards (Weisfeld, Barrovercchio, and Woodburn) by the same 39-27 margin to improve to 3-1, while the loss evened Woods’ record at 1-1.
In earlier action, veteran heavyweight Cedric Boswell knocked out Iowan Josh Gutcher (18-8) with a second-round right hand to improve to 25-1, and Duxbury (Mass.) super-middleweight Mark DeLuca went to 3-0 with a unanimous decision over Albany opponent Donyell Dukes (0-4), with Weisfeld, Barravecchio, and Woodburn) all scoring it a 40-36 shutout for the winner.
* * *
AT FOXWOODS RESORT CASINO
MASHANTUCKET, Conn.
December 1, 2007
JUNIOR MIDDLEWEIGHTS: Vernon Forrest, 153, Augusta, Ga. TKO’d Michele Piccirillo, 152, Bari, Italy (11) (Retains WBC title)
FLYWEIGHTS: Nonito Donaire, 111, General Santos City, Philippines TKO’d Luis Maldonado, 111, Mexicali, Mex. (8) (Retains IBF title)
HEAVYWEIGHTS: Tony Grano, 222, Hebron, Conn. TKO’d John Battle, 195, Rocky Mount, N.C. (2)
Cedric Boswell, 245, Detroit, Mich. KO’d Josh Gutcher, 240, Albia, Iowa (2)
CRUISERWEIGHTS: Chris McInerney, 194, Stoughton, Mass. TKO’d Tim Flamos, 195, Brockton, Mass. (5)
LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHTS: Antonio Tarver, 175, Tampa, Fla. TKO’d Danny Santiago, 174, Ocala, Fla. (4)
SUPER MIDDLEWEIGHTS: Mark DeLuca Jr., 166, Duxbury, Mass. dec. Donyell Dukes, 166, Albany, N.Y. (4)
Jason Douglas, 167, Kitchener, Ontario, Can. TKO’d Anthony Cannon, 166, Saginaw, Mich. (2)
WELTERWEIGHTS: Adelita Irizarry, 142, Hartford, Conn. dec. Nicole Wood, 141, New York, N.Y. (4)
(ends)
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