It was another Fight Night in Colon, the most time-honored part of the Atlantic side’s professional sports scene. (In soccer there is Arabe Unido, which plays in Rainbow City, but Panama Al Brown was rising from Colon’s boxing circles to world dominance more than three generations before Panama’s ANAPROF league was founded.)

Fittingly, the video on the bus from Panama City was a Hong Kong kung fu opera, wherein Jet Li, his cinematic son, a kung fu floozy, her dart-throwing mom and five tattooed young monks demonstrated that it’s a bad idea to mess with the Shaolin Temple, and an even worse one to betray the master. You DON'T want to make the likes of Jet Li teach you a lesson in Confucian manners.

According to my usual practice, I went the few blocks from Cristobal to Panama Al Brown Arena by taxi. Unless you blend in well or are an accomplished martial artist in your own right, walking to the arena early in the evening, especially by way of Front Street or Bottle Alley, is cruising for a bruising, or at least asking to get mugged. Walking back to Cristobal after the fights around midnight is a much safer proposition, as the maleantes abhor the sorts of crowds that come streaming out of the arena after the fisticuffs are over.

This time I sat in the cheap seats, paying $5 for general admission to the concrete bleachers, where I selected a spot with an excellent view. As the place filled up I found myself surrounded by young couples, old men and some of the fighters’ families. ¡Sociedad civil, presente! --- that is, using the term in its proper sense rather than in its more common usage as those members of the political elite not currently holding public office.

It was to be an eight-bout card, with undefeateds Ricardo Córdoba and Angelo Dottin, the latter a Colon buay, taking on Colombian opponents in the night’s concluding matches. But first we got to see some less experienced prizefighters taking their first, and sometimes their last, steps in the professional game. Half of these lesser fights were noteworthy.

In the second bout, a four-rounder between Alexander Murillo and Anselmo Moreno in the 113-pound class, Moreno showed a most unorthodox style. A lefthander, he would crouch, almost coil like a bushmaster, flicking little jabs as Murillo barged right in with fists flying. Most of these first-round flurries ended in clinches, and I had the two pugilists even on my card.

Then, 1:17 into the second round, Murillo mounted another of his frontal assaults and Moreno uncoiled with a devastating left that sent his opponent crashing to the canvas. Murillo was out like a light, with the doctor kneeling over him, as Moreno was pronounced the winner.

(After awhile Murillo got up and walked away, but bearing in mind what happened to Pedro Alcázar last year, having seen punch drunk ex-fighters so many times and paying heed to the pleas of Muhammad Ali --- which were championed by Senator McCain but ignored by a US Congress more receptive to the slave-owner arguments of Don King et al --- I’d have to say that the lack of a CAT scan for Alexander Murillo after this concussion amounts to intolerable working conditions for a professional boxer. There are now drugs to limit the damage if there is internal bleeding in the brain, but the doctors have to diagnose it to treat it, which can generally be done with modern equipment if someone is willing to pay for the procedure.)

In the night’s fifth bout, Chiriqui’s Roynet Caballero took a split decision after a frenetic back-and-forth six-rounder with Colon’s Raúl Vernier. I’ve watched Caballero before, as a professional and in the Golden Gloves. Nobody’s expecting him to rise to the top of his 130-pound category, and on this night he lost the first round and got staggered early in the second before coming back to take command of the fight. But Caballero’s good, getting better and may just surprise a lot of people.

In the next fight Islam beat the Devil. José Miranda, who wears a kufi cap, took on Angel “El Diablo” Valencia in an eight-rounder that was marred by Valencia’s low blows and head butts, one of which opened a nasty gash above Miranda’s right eye. Going into the final round I had Miranda two points up, but that all became academic when Miranda decked his opponent twice, then got him up against the ropes and pounded him until the ref stopped the fight. Miranda put his kufi cap back on, picked up his baby daughter and savored the victory.

The penultimate bout pitted undefeated Ricardo “El Maestrito” Córdoba (18-0 before this fight) against Colombia’s Pedro Rincón (20-5-1). Córdoba is a good technical fighter and dominated his opponent with the exception of a few close middle rounds. There were few hard blows landed by either fighter in this match, and those mostly came in the final round. True, one of those involved Córdoba knocking Rincón off of his feet toward the start of the tenth. Thus the Little Master rightly took a unanimous decision. However, did we see the athleticism that will propel Córdoba to the higher rungs of his profession, or just a mismatch?

The top of the card was hometown favorite Angelo Dottin’s eighth professional fight, a 12-round confrontation with Colombian José Ospino (6-2-2 before this bout) for the Bolivarian regional championship in the 108-pound classification.

Dottin came out wearing a congo dancer hat to cheers and fanfare, and to the greetings of hometown hero Ismael Laguna. Then he proceeded to wage a most unorthodox fight, unlike anything I have seen him do in the several of his amateur and professional bouts I have witnessed. As a matter of fact, it was not quite like anything I had ever seen before. The rest of the crowd also seemed puzzled.

Throughout the first three rounds, every now and then Dottin would flick a little jab at Ospino, but never anything significant. Ospino, on the other hand, threw many a very substantial punch --- and missed every one of them. Dottin bobbed, weaved, ducked, backpedaled, did the double clutch shuffle and fluttered like a dizzy moth.

It wasn’t a crowd pleaser, but it was an impressive show of quickness that psychologically devastated Ospino. By the time that the two fighters began mixing it up a bit more in the fourth round, Dottin was getting just a bit the better of it. He continued to duck or dance away from Ospino’s best shots. The Colombian connected with enough good licks to win the sixth and eighth rounds on my scorecard, but by then Ospino was putting down his dukes and taunting, pleading with Dottin to come slug it out.

In the ninth and tenth rounds Dottin somewhat obliged Ospino, getting the better of some toe-to-toe exchanges. Then he flitted away, with Ospino in fruitless pursuit.

My scoring, according to the 10-point must system, had Dottin winning 118- 116. How does one score a round in which one guy lands multiple devastating blows on the thin air but the guy who avoids those shots throws no punches of significance himself? I say 10-10, but I can understand why others might differ. The judges at ringside scored the fight 119-111, 118-113 and 117-114 to give Dottin a convincing unanimous decision.

Now there’s a good chance that Angelo Dottin will appear in the world rankings for his classification.

Surely he’s a remarkable fighter. The quickness and total body control Dottin demonstrated on May 16 in Colon were quite rare and very beautiful. The mental discipline he used to demoralize his opponent is something hardly ever seen in such a young boxer.

But can Angelo Dottin hit hard enough to make it to the top? Can he get up and win after having been knocked down? He’s won half of his fights by knockouts, and has come from behind to win before, but we still don’t know if he can do these things against world-class opposition.

I doubt that it will be very long before Dottin gets a chance to answer these questions.

Also in this section:
Fight Night in Colon
Panamanians in Major League Baseball

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