Until now, pugilist Angelo Dottin has been a Colon hometown hero, drawing ever-larger crowds to Panama Al Brown Arena as he climbed to the top of the card over a course of eight professional bouts. After his May 16 decision over Colombian José Ospino, the junior flyweight (110-pound category) found himself ranked number 27 by the World Boxing Council and ready to take his show on the road.
He didn’t go very far down the road --- just to the Other Side, to Panama City’s Magnum Eventos for a July 19 boxing night. Some of his local boosters made the trip with him, but by and large this was a different social milieu, somewhat up the economic scale and less purely there for the sport than the fans who pack the arena back in Colon.
It’s a very different setting as well. Magnum Eventos features dim lighting for dances and nightclub shows, with less-than-perfect improvisation for boxing events. Unlike Panama Al Brown Arena, there are no bleachers but there are tables. At Magnum Eventos they don’t serve mixed drinks, but instead will bring a glass bottle of liquor, a glass carafe of the stuff with which you care to mix it and a plastic tub full of ice. As in Colon, there is been in plastic cups. The beverages and finger food --- no ceviche here, as in Colon --- are brought by waiters in uniforms rather than vendors in casual attire. The boxing is punctuated with stand-up comedy and a wet t-shirt competition. The young ladies carrying the signs around the ring between rounds are all light-skinned. This is boxing as Saturday night nightclub fare, rather than as the sport of the masses. Ticket prices are higher and if a reasonable cut of the liquor sales makes its way into the pockets of promoters and athletes, it ought to mean a slightly bigger payday for the fighters.
(Let this Colon Fight Night loyalist note that my first reaction to the presence of glass bottles and carafes in the crowd was “uh-oh,” and that I really think that the lighting needs to be improved for boxing events. I look at these issues in terms of working conditions for the fighters rather than as entertainment atmospherics. The crowd on this night was, however, perfectly well behaved. The nightmare of some drunken jerk throwing a rum bottle into the ring was left for some other time, if ever. It’s an issue that the Boxing Commission ought to review.)
Anyway, the action began about an hour and one-half after the time advertised on the tickets and there were a few highlights on the undercard. In my opinion the best of it came in the fourth bout, between two fighters who aren’t going anywhere in the world scheme of things. Colon prison screw Rex Saldaña (“El Custodio,” 7-7-1) and Santeño Raúl Alonso (7-6-3) came out swinging, not clinching, the former throwing blinding-speed combinations to the body, the latter headhunting. If ever I end up in a cellblock guarded by Saldaña I’ll be sure to be nice to him, but after three rounds in which my scoring had the guard ahead, Alonso showed sufficient irrespeto that the doctor stopped the fight, giving the fighter from Los Santos the TKO.
Also noteworthy on the undercard was William González’s unanimous decision over Edison Benítez, the latter who shamed himself before the action started by showing up at the weigh-in two pounds too heavy. I think that the announcer, along with whoever may have put him up to it, shamed himself by calling González, who hails from Chiriqui, “The White Hope.” The young man is a good athlete with a good record (11-1-1), a disciplined technical boxer who prevailed by unanimous decision over a sloppy, undistinguished (3-4) brawler on this night. González, however, is not one of those fighters with the often intangible but never unmistakable spark that makes a fight fan say “wow.” Still, I wouldn’t dismiss the long-shot possibility of his induction into the lineup of Panama’s pantheon of world champions.
Dottin, however, has that spark, and before the final bout four of Panama’s former world champions were introduced in the ring to receive the crowd’s and give Dottin their respect.
At the outset it appeared as if Colon’s reigning hope for further world championship glory might be derailed. His Colombian opponent Donaldo Mulett, who entered the right with a 10-0 record as compared to Dottin’s 8-0, came out the aggressor and promptly knocked Dottin to the canvas. By my way of scoring, Mulett won that round by a point.
The way I saw it, that was the only round that the Colombian won, although several asaltos were drawn.
Angelo Dottin keeps himself in wonderful condition, which enables him to circle, bob, weave and flutter throughout his fights, presenting a most elusive target for those who would otherwise knock his block off. Does he float like a butterfly? That was Muhammad Ali’s innovation, the effect of the double clutch shuffle of his early fighting years. I like to think that Dottin has captured the essence of the butterfly’s rare-as-a-unicorn jungle cousin, the man-eating serrated fleebydoo moth.
This, however, was not like Dottin’s May 16 victory over Ospino in Colon, when he ran all night, had his opponent throwing savage blows at the thin air, and in the later rounds flitted in just enough to pound out the the licks that gave him a unanimous decision. It was a bit more like his January 31 fight, wherein Dottin took a beating at the outset and came from behind to score a thrilling seventh-round knockout.
By the middle of this fight, I was expecting that it would end in a knockout. Dottin and Mulett were trading licks, the latter demonstrating that he, too, can duck blows that would otherwise turn the lights out. But in the third round Dottin knocked Mulett down three times and it looked as if this would be the fight in which the Colon buay would dispel all doubts about whether he’s enough of a slugger to be a world contender.
But then Mulett came out and held his own, in my opinion drawing the fourth and fifth rounds. In the sixth Dottin looked slower on his feet but traded licks with Mulett and got the better of it. The seventh was more of the same, this time even in my judgment.
Then in the eighth Dottin knocked Mulett down for a fourth time, and the Colombian went on the all-out offensive, knowing that after that he’d have to win this bout by knockout or not at all. Mulett made a good account of himself, but by now Dottin has regained his impressive mobility and his head was always in a different place from that toward which his opponent had thrown his punch.
I scored it 99-95 for Dottin. Two of the judges considered the fight closer, giving the Panamanian one- and two-point edges respectively, while the third judge had Dottin winning by a whopping eight-point margin. There was nothing controversial about the unanimous result.
So where does Dottin, who came into the fight ranked number 27 in the world by one of the international organizations and unrecognized by the others, need to go en route to the top? First, he needs to settle the questions of who are the national and regional junior flyweight champs in his favor. He needs to fight and win in some neutral or hostile venues. He needs to beat three or four guys who are ranked higher than he is at the times when he fights them. If he can do all of those things without a setback --- and I expect that he will --- then Angelo Dottin ought to be fighting for a world championship belt in a year or two.
(A note about spelling: in the usual American journalism class, you get a failing grade on an assignment if you spell someone’s name wrong. In Panama orthography isn’t taken as seriously. In the dailies, the surname of the Colombian protagonist in this story has variously been reported as “Muleth,” “Mullet” and “Mulett.” The sheet I got from the Boxing Commission had it “Mulett,” while the promoter’s sheet had it “Mullet.” The young man’s boxing trunks said “Mulett,” so that’s how it is in this story. When I first saw Dottin in the Golden Gloves, he was listed at “Dotín,” and in some of his earlier professional bouts the promoters had it “Dottín.” It’s “Dottin,” pronounced with the accent on the first syllable, so it seems. But meanwhile, the winner of the night’s third bout was listed as “William González” on both the promoter’s and commission’s lists, but his trunks said “Williams González” --- possibly as in the son of Mr. Williams and Ms. González. I can think of various explanations, but I’ll have to ask the guy to be sure.)
Also in this section:
Boxing: Dottin impresses again
Swimming: Masters swimmers recognized
