ORLANDO, Fla. – The official boxing record will state that, on Saturday night, Yankiel Rivera and Angelino Cordova fought to a draw in a battle for an interim flyweight title, and at the end of the day, that's what truly matters. But that alone doesn't even begin to tell the story of what happened over 12 rounds at the Caribe Royale.
This was a fight that featured a knockdown that wasn't, a point deduction for rabbit punches, both men thrown to the canvas on several occasions, a series of head clashes and so much more – a little something of everything, really, except clean punching and quality boxing.
This was an ugly, sloppy, bad-tempered, foul-filled barroom brawl of a fight. It was everything a title fight shouldn't be. It was utterly, batshit crazy. It was also bizarrely entertaining.
The first sign that this might be an unusual evening came in the first round, when Cordova came out swinging wildly as if he were wearing a blindfold and Rivera were an unwitting pinata. The combination of Cordova’s wild swings and Rivera’s habit of ducking underneath them led to Cordova, 19-0-2 (12 KOs), landing on the back of Rivera’s head. Perhaps in revenge, Rivera broke out of a clinch by hip-tossing Cordova to the canvas.
That was just the beginning of the ugliness.
Adding to the equation, Rivera’s southpaw stance and Cordova’s right-handedness (orthodox feels the wrong word in these circumstances) led inevitably to a clash of heads in the fourth round, which opened a cut on Rivera’s left eyelid. The action paused for the doctor to look at the cut, and when it resumed, the two men pulled each other to the canvas. Then they did it again. Then Rivera threw Cordova down – and this time referee Luis Pabon called a knockdown.
Rivera, 7-0-1 (3 KOs), went down to one knee in the fifth, but it was from another cuffing blow to the back of the head and no knockdown was called.
If they didn't dislike each other before, Cordova and Rivera certainly seemed to detest each other now, and they were allowing their mutual dislike to infect the fight as they fought angrily and sloppily. In Round 6, Rivera ducked again as Cordova threw, the punch once more hit him on the back of the head and Pabon took a point from Cordova.
In Round 7, Cordova hit the deck again, but in a perfect illustration of how the fight was devolving, it was from another clash of heads, not a punch.
In the eighth, Rivera threw Cordova into the ropes, Cordova bounced off and into Rivera with his head, and Rivera wheeled away in pain. Again, the doctor checked his cut. Again, action – of a sort – resumed. The two fell into a clinch, and with one hand free, Rivera started punching Cordova in the ass. Pabon stopped the action to yell at Cordova’s corner.
A passage from this writer’s notes: “What is happening?”
By the ninth, I had basically given up on trying to document the action, let alone score the fight. It felt as if Rivera was landing the cleaner punches and probably ahead on the cards, but with so little in the way of clean punching, who could tell? There was at least clearly plenty of moisture in the air, as in the 11th when Pabon paused proceedings again, this time to wipe the ring mat dry with a towel.
The crowd was having a grand old time anyway, all the way through the 12th and final round. And then the scores were read out, and while judge Robert Hoyle saw Cordova the winner by 115-111, the other two judges had it as a 113-113 draw.
Suddenly, the crowd went quiet, trying to process it all. It was that kind of night.
Kieran Mulvaney has written, broadcast and podcast about boxing for HBO, Showtime, ESPN and Reuters, among other outlets. He presently co-hosts the “Fighter Health Podcast” with Dr. Margaret Goodman. He also writes regularly for National Geographic, has written several books on the Arctic and Antarctic, including most recently Arctic Passages: Ice, Exploration, and the Battle for Power at the Top of the World, and is at his happiest hanging out with wild polar bears. His website is www.kieranmulvaney.com.
