On October 3
Promociones y Eventos del Istmo put on a six-bout boxing card
that produced several controversies, but not one of them
involved the judges’s scoring. It never got to that. Each
fight ended in a knockout or a technical knockout.
By now I know
all about Panamanian boxing time. The ads said that the show
would begin at 7 p.m., but I didn’t leave the office in
Perejil for the arena in Juan Diaz until about quarter to
seven, and as we didn’t take the Corredor Sur, I got out
of the taxi at about quarter after the hour. I wanted to get a
good look at Roberto “Araña” Vásquez,
one of the protagonists in the evening’s main bout, so I
plunked down my $12 for a “terreno” seat and was the
first person to select a seat in the front row. Had I wanted to
spend $25 I could have bought a “VIP” ticket, which
would have given me the option of sitting in a small section in
which the seats were only very slightly closer to the ring than
the one where I sat, or at one of the tables served by white-
jacketed waiters. The closest tables to the ring, however, were
reserved by corporate groups, and moreover the seating
arrangements in even the choicest spots in the VIP section were
not really the best for viewing. For six bucks I could have had
a very good bleacher seat, and for half that a general
admission ticket for a spot where I’d have been able to
see everything from a distance.
As the PA
system was tested and place began to fill up, the people
watching began to get very interesting. The people around the
VIP section tables tended toward a much lighter hue, with
distilled alcohol, tobacco, cell phones, corporate execs and
trophy wives/dates among the defining features. Meanwhile, in
the terreno seats the salient features were beer, peanuts,
chicharrones and the Very Important People of the Panamanian
boxing scene.
The guy after
whom the venue was named, Roberto Duran, was in the terreno
seats. Behind me were Miguel Callist, who’s going to
Romania to fight Leonard Dorin for a world championship later
this month, and retired boxing hero Víctor
Córdoba. Other former champions sitting in the terreno
section included Ismael Laguna, Eusebio Pedroza, Púas
Murillo, Nieto Marcel, Hilario Zapata and Santiago Samaniego.
Tagging along with some of these people were young relatives
who are in the process of learning the sport, some of whom we
will no doubt see at upcoming Golden Gloves competitions. Also
sitting in the terreno seats was rapper El General (Edgardo
Franco), who’s back in Panama after making a name for
himself in New York, promoting a foundation to help improve the
lives of some of this country’s neediest kids. Though I
spotted a TV personality or two at the VIP tables, there were
more journalists, print and broadcast, who had paid for tickets
in the cheaper seats.
Sometime after
8 p.m. the boxing got underway, with the first bout between
super-lightweights Marvin Concepción and Gonzalo Del Cid
serving as a brief reminder of the old adage that “kill
the body and the head must die.” In the first round
Concepción was the aggressor who had the upper hand, but
in the next one he came with a furious assault of body shots,
one of which hit Del Cid in the midsection and knocked him
down. The ref stopped the fight at 43 seconds of the first
round, a rare TKO on a body blow. That makes young Marvin
Concepción 3-0 in his professional career.
The next bout
was between lightweights, Panamanian Ameth Díaz (14-3-0,
with one fight in which there was no decision) and Juan
García, a Nicaraguan whose record was not available on
the promoter’s information sheet. It was the first and
worst of the night’s controversies. García
didn’t land a single punch. Díaz battered him
around for a little bit before sending him down to the canvas
with a crushing left hook at 1:26 of the first round. The rumor
circulating among the journalists was that back in Nicaragua
García has 13 defeats on his record. Whatever the truth
of the particulars, there is no denying that this was a
mismatch that shouldn’t have happened, and the consensus
around where I was sitting is that the Boxing Commission made a
grave error by sanctioning a bout in which one of the
contestants’ record was so inferior that it was too
embarrassing to publish.
There followed
another fight, this time one that was controversial as to the
result.
Southpaw 110-
pounders Jairo Arango (14-5) and Reynaldo Frutos (9-4) squared
off for an eight-rounder, and the first round was a hellacious
exchange of fisticuffs, with Arango getting the best of it by
my way of scoring. The second round went to Frutos, in my
opinion, and meanwhile Arango got a nasty gash on his left eye.
But how did he get the gash? I couldn’t quite tell, but in
Arango’s corner and in the seats around me they were
saying it was a head butt. In the third round Arango went into
a crouch and won the round. I’d call the fourth round,
similarly fought, a draw. By now Frutos was working to
aggravate his opponent’s eye injury. In the fifth round,
upon the doctor’s advice, the ref stopped the fight and
awarded the TKO to Frutos. The crowd and the Arango corner were
most displeased. If it was a butt that caused the injury, the
ref’s decision was wrong, especially as Arango had to my
point of view and those of many fans outpointed Frutos up to
the time that the fight was stopped.
Next came super-
featherweights Vicente “Loco” Mosquera (13-1-1) and
Roynet Caballero (7-4), fighting for the Central American belt.
I’ve watched Caballero several times, both as an amateur
and a pro, and he’s a hard-working and valiant fighter. I
may have seen the chiricano’s last bout. Mosquera came out
in command, and in the second round he busted Caballero’s
nose and then sent him to the canvass with a punch to the solar
plexus. But then Caballero came back to draw the third round
and win the fourth, as Mosquera played cautiously with his
injured opponent. In the fifth, however, Mosquera regained
command and at 28 seconds of the sixth the ref stopped the
fight to give Mosquera the TKO.
The penultimate
match was for the national and WBC Latin American super-
flyweight belts, between Ricardo Córdoba (19-0) and
Davis Arosemena (11-5). After an uneventful and even first
round, the two pugilists traded many licks in the second, with
Córdoba getting the upper hand. Then in the third, call
it a knockdown or call it a slip, but Arosemena stumbled to his
knees, and, as the ref didn’t begin counting or order
Córdoba to a neutral corner, he pursued Arosemena and
punched him as he was down. Arosemena crawled toward the corner
and the ref stepped in, calling it a TKO. So did the ref make a
mistake? It looked that way to me, but the argument to the
contrary was that Arosemena ran away and effectively abandoned
the fight. Ismael Laguna wasn’t the only one laughing
about the way this bout ended, and even Arosemena’s fans
would have to admit that their man took a beating however
anyone wants to look at it.
The controversy
about the night’s final bout began the day before.
Nicaraguan light flyweight Eduardo Rey Márquez, a former
world champion, was late for the previous day’s weigh-in.
Overweight, he spent several hours pumping iron at the gym to
sweat off the extra ounces, showed up several hours later than
the appointed time and made the required weight. He was fined
$150 for the infraction.
Did the
previous day’s workout also put him out of shape for the
fight? That theory would explain a lot.
Panama has two
highly regarded light flyweights at the moment, Roberto
Vásquez (12-1-0 before this bout) and Colon’s
Angelo Dottin (11-0). Going into the night the WBO ranked
Vásquez number five, the WBC number seven and the IBF
number 15. Dottin is ranked number 28 by the WBC, and whereas
the WBO considers Vásquez its Latin American champion,
it puts Dottin at number three in the region. Dottin’s
next bout will be on October 31 at Colon’s Panama Al Brown
Arena.
The
fighters’ grand entries and the playing of the Nicaraguan
and Panamanian national anthems took longer than the final bout
itself. After his entourage snake-danced its way from the
dressing through the crowd to the ring to a Spanish reggae
beat, Vásquez shed his spider-motif robe and tipico
straw hat, stood at patriotic attention for the flags and
anthems, and proceeded to beat the stuffing out of
Márquez. The former world champ went down once in the
first round, then took a pounding that led to the fight being
stopped at 1:45 in the second.
With all of the
various boxing organizations having their different rankings,
it’s usually hard to say that a champion is or an ex-
champion was the best in the world. Because of the way that
Márquez had to make the required weight, it’s
doubtful that he was at his top form when he stepped into the
ring with Vásquez. But nevertheless, Roberto
Vásquez scored his 11th knockout in 14 fights and showed
that he can decisively beat people near the top of his
classification. If he keeps winning it shouldn’t be very
many more steps before he gets a title shot.
And Dottin?
He’s not as far along in his career, and there remain
questions about whether he can hit very hard. However, he shows
a truly amazing athleticism and like the young Muhammad Ali he
has such quick reflexes that he’s very hard to hit.
Business
considerations would indicate that, unless he suffers a setback
along the way, Vásquez won’t fight Dottin on his
way to the top. There are good and bad things to say about
that. On the down side, in this centennial year Panama
won’t get to see which of its two outstanding light
flyweights is really better. However, we are left with a
tantalizing outside chance that one of these years in the not-
to-distant future, we may see a world championship fight
between two Panamanians.
