by David P. Greisman
Photo © Chris Cozzone/FightWireImages.com
Some fighters stroll leisurely to the ring, accompanied by their corner men, their manager, assorted hangers-on and a carefully selected backing tune. Others choose to dance, stepping and shaking occasionally accompanied by personalized live rap music that pumps up the champion while deflating the waiting challenger. A rare few prefer traveling to the squared circle aboard a contraption, be it a flying carpet, a trapeze or a throne, the ego boost of being carried in weighed carefully against the potential humbling of being carried out.
Daniel Ponce De Leon’s trip from standby to stairs took 20 seconds.
The World Boxing Organization junior featherweight titlist, who must have made dinner plans, wasted little time retaining his belt in the main event of Saturday night’s “Boxing After Dark.” What began with his intent entrance of jogging and shaking hands ended with him still focused, still coming forward behind an intense onslaught of jabs and left hands. His opponent, Rey “Boom Boom” Bautista, imploded under the pressure and the overwhelming power, going down and down again from left hands that hit Bautista’s button and brought the challenger’s elevator to the bottom floor.
Ponce De Leon, ever the conquistador, had found his fountain of truth.
The journey hadn’t been easy. Ponce De Leon was one of only two Mexican boxers returning from the group that, in October 2005, had battled Thai fighters in Golden Boy Promotions’ first-ever World Cup. On that night, Ponce De Leon had to recover from a second-round knockdown to outpoint Sod Looknongyantoy for a dreary unanimous 12-round decision.
With that win, a vacant title. But that victory also filled a hole, the wounded pride that Ponce De Leon felt eight months earlier, when the then-undefeated prospect dropped a decision – and the chance to contend in the 122-pound division – to Celestino Caballero.
Nevertheless, Ponce De Leon had gone from hyped to hidden. He knocked out Gerson Guerrero on the non-televised undercard of a May 2006 “Boxing After Dark,” did the same in a rematch with Looknongyantoy on the pay-per-view undercard of Shane Mosley-Fernando Vargas 2, and stopped Al Seeger on a minor Golden Boy pay-per-view.
He was not only winning, but also destroying his competition in the process. His ascent, however, wasn’t making him a star, nor could it until he had a real chance for widespread appeal.
And the Gerry Penalosa fight nearly derailed him.
Ponce De Leon met the former junior bantamweight titlist on yet another pay-per-view undercard, fighting underneath Marco Antonio Barrera’s March clash with Juan Manuel Marquez. On the surface, it appeared to some that Ponce De Leon defended successfully against the wily veteran, throwing punches in volume and building a lead. The judges’ scorecards, however –119-109 (twice) and 120-108 – didn’t match what many saw in the ring. Penalosa, a naturally smaller fighter, was timing Ponce De Leon’s attacks, countering with effective punches that should’ve received more credit than that given Ponce De Leon’s aggression.
This time, on a “Boxing After Dark” card main event, Ponce De Leon needed to send a message, a fountain of truth to show that he was a force to be reckoned with and a fighter to be followed.
From the opening bell, he didn’t just pour it on – he swept Bautista away. Ponce De Leon threw 65 punches and landed 20, 19 of which were power punches, according to CompuBox figures. Bautista never knew what hit him, not that it would have done him any good.
Ponce De Leon accomplished in less than three minutes what old rival Celestino Caballero failed to do the previous week over 12 rounds with Jorge Lacierva. The junior featherweight division has seen Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez, in the span of five months, take center stage with their 13 rounds of back-and-forth battling. Ponce De Leon, with his 20 seconds of ring walk and one round of action, has sent himself to the front of the line as the logical next opponent for whoever comes out atop the Vazquez-Marquez trilogy. That shot at glory may not come as quickly as Ponce De Leon would like, but odds are that he won’t waste any time once that moment arrives.
The 10 Count
1. On the undercard, Gerry Penalosa captured the WBO bantamweight belt from Jhonny Gonzalez, a single body shot putting Gonzalez down for the count with 30 seconds remaining in the seventh round.
Penalosa’s last appearance saw the former 115-pound beltholder drop a wide decision to the aforementioned Ponce De Leon, scorecards that, as mentioned before, varied tremendously from those put together by numerous boxing writers and observers. This time, Penalosa’s left hand made sure that nothing was left to chance.
Gonzalez won the WBO title at the first Golden Boy Promotions World Cup, a seventh-round stoppage of Ratanachai Sor Vorapin that, with Saturday’s result, seems to mean that the Mexico City resident’s career has come full circle. He now seems destined to join the action-packed junior featherweight division, where last year he twice sent Israel Vazquez to the canvas before succumbing to a 10th-round technical knockout.
2. Eye-yi-yi, part one: Anthony Mundine may be forced to retire due to an infected left eye, a serious injury caused when the super middleweight titlist, bothered by smoke at a New Zealand restaurant, removed his contact lens and then licked it before putting it back on, according to Australian newspaper The Sun-Herald.
Mundine, who regained the World Boxing Association’s “regular” trinket with a March knockout of Sam Soliman, had undergone corrective surgery on his eye before the restaurant incident and was wearing the contact lens as a protective measure.
3. Eye-yi-yi, part two: Jorge Barrios was forced to withdraw from his September pay-per-view bout against Juan Manuel Marquez after the former junior lightweight titlist underwent surgery for retina tears in both of his eyes, according to ESPN.com scribe Dan Rafael.
Rocky Juarez, who was to have challenged International Boxing Federation featherweight beltholder Robert Guerrero, will fill in four pounds north against Marquez. Guerrero will now defend against Martin Honorio.
4. Eye-yi-yi, part three: Z Gorres was nearly derailed himself by eye issues, a minor retina tear almost forcing the junior bantamweight contender to withdraw from Saturday’s Mexico vs. the Philippines World Cup, according to BoxingScene’s own Ronnie Nathanielsz. Gorres received a laser treatment, though, and proceeded toward a showdown with Gerson Guerrero, except Guerrero, too, was then sent to the sideline with a detached retina, according to multiple Filipino reporters.
Eric Ortiz stepped in as a late replacement for Guerrero, but Gorres defeated the former 108-pound titlist via eighth-round stoppage. Gorres improved to 27-2-1 with 15 knockouts, and he has now repositioned himself for a second title challenge. His first came in February, a split decision loss to WBO beltholder Fernando Montiel.
5. Gorres and Penalosa, along with 115-pound prospect A.J. Banal, bantamweight journeyman Michael Domingo and former flyweight contender Diosdado Gabi, led the Philippines to a 5-1 triumph over Mexico, who itself had won the inaugural World Cup against Thailand by a 5-1 tally. Banal downed Jorge Cardenas, Domingo outpointed the previously undefeated Mickey Roman, and Gabi took a unanimous decision over Jose Angel Beranza.
6. The question becomes: What country should the Philippines face in the next World Cup? Or will Golden Boy Promotions just pick another nation for its Mexican fighters to face off with?
7. Boxers Behaving Badly: Super middleweight prospect Donovan George is facing six to 30 years in prison on multiple felony sexual assault charges stemming from crimes allegedly committed between 1996 and 1998, when George was between the ages of 11 and 13 and the alleged victim was between the ages of 5 and 8, according to the Chicago Sun-Times (via BoxingScene’s own Mark Vester).
George has been charged with eight counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault, 15 counts of criminal sexual assault and four counts of sexual relations with a family member. And on a quick side note: Despite the list of charges being public knowledge, one wonders if the Sun-Times should have followed typical journalistic practice and erred on the side of caution considering the latter four counts so as to better protect the identity of the alleged victim.
George was sentenced to community service and 18 months probation in 2004 after being convicted on two felony hate crime charges, according to the Sun-Times. That case came from an Illinois incident in which George had gotten in a fight with two men after he had yelled anti-homosexual slurs at them.
8. Boxers Behaving Badly Update, part one: Citing a lack of evidence, prosecutors chose last week to release Paul Spadafora from a Pennsylvania prison after holding the former lightweight titlist for more than two months for an alleged parole violation, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Spadafora was arrested in late May after what appears to have been a domestic dispute between the Pittsburgh-based fighter and his girlfriend, Nadine Russo, according to the Associated Press. Both attempted to file protection orders against each other, though Spadafora’s was denied when he didn’t show up at a hearing.
Russo had accused Spadafora of choking her and pulling her hair. Spadafora was sent to jail two years ago for shooting Russo in a dispute over two flat tires on his Hummer. He was paroled in April 2006 after serving seven months in prison and then completing a six-month boot camp program recommended by his trial judge.
Spadafora, if found guilty of violating his parole, would have served the 21 months to five years remaining on his original prison sentence. He has fought twice since his 2006 release, stopping Frankie Zepeda and taking a split decision over Oisin Fagan.
9. Boxers Behaving Badly Update, part two: Former flyweight titlist Eric Morel was also released from prison last week, leaving Wisconsin’s Fox Lake Correctional Institution after serving about 22 months of his two-year sentence for second-degree sexual assault charges, according to the Associated Press.
Wisconsin state law allows inmates who were imprisoned on lower-level felony convictions and who have served 75 to 85 percent of their jail time to ask a judge to modify their sentence, said a state Department of Corrections spokesman to the AP. Morel had petitioned a judge in July to serve the rest of his jail time on extended supervision.
That remainder will be added to the two years of extended supervision that Morel was sentenced to in October 2005, when the boxer, now 31 years old, pleaded no contest to sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl who had passed out drunk.
Morel will also have to register as a sex offender.
10. James Toney, who faced a one-year suspension and a maximum fine of $2,500 after testing positive for two different steroids, saw his suspension cut to 180 days last week at a California State Athletic Commission hearing in which the defiant Toney had his penalty reduced while contrite mixed martial artist Hermes Franca had his suspension upheld, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Toney, who was caught with boldenone and stanazolol in his system following his May split decision victory over journeyman Danny Batchelder, told the commission that he was innocent and that his positive steroids test must have been the result of a tainted vitamin or herbal supplement.
Franca, meanwhile, tested positive for drostanolone prior to his July loss to Ultimate Fighting Championship lightweight champion Sean Sherk. Franca has apologized to his fans, and he explained to the commission that he took steroids to help recover from an ankle injury suffered in training.
Toney tested positive for the steroid nandrolone two years ago, changing his decision over then-World Boxing Association heavyweight titlist John Ruiz to a no contest.
Batchelder, interestingly, also tested positive for steroids, the drug test showing stanazolol and oxandolone in his system. Batchelder did not show up for the hearing, meaning his one-year and $2,500 were upheld, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.
David P. Greisman’s weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com