(Atlantic City, NJ) As Hank
Lundy was introduced to the audience of Resorts Casino Hotel, fellow
Philadelphian and newly-unified junior welterweight champion Danny Garcia stood
in his corner holding his index finger in the air. The card was dubbed
“Title Wave” by promoter CES Boxing, making crystal clear what had been
discussed ad nauseam in the pre-fight press and what Garcia and almost everyone
else in attendance surely already knew. All that stood between Lundy, 22-2-1
(11), and a lightweight world title fight was the man who had just been
introduced in the opposite corner, Raymundo Beltran, 26-6 (17).
As it turned out, Beltran
was more of an impediment than anticipated. The battle-tested veteran
pressed the action throughout the seesaw main event of ESPN2’s “Friday Night
Fights” and was ultimately awarded a close and hard-fought victory, propelling
his 13-year career to a new apex and sending Lundy back to Philadelphia to
search for a path back into contention.
Location, Location, Location
The fight hinged on a simple
premise; when Lundy threw his jab consistently, keeping the fight in the center
of the ring, he controlled the action and won rounds. When he abandoned
that elemental unit of warfare—defying the counsel of his corner and
fandom—Beltran routinely escorted him toward the ropes and aggressed
effectively. As the judges saw
it, the latter scenario played out a fraction more frequently than the former.
In the first round, it was
not clear whether Lundy would need his offensive arsenal at all as he
demonstrated his almost peerless reflexes on the other side of the ball. Lundy
slipped, parried or danced away from virtually everything that Beltran threw at
him without being more than grazed over the course of the three minutes. The
second was not all that different as Lundy began to use his jab and score with
a sporadic power punch.
It was in the third where
the fight inadvertently pivoted. Midway through the round, Lundy stumbled
and momentarily retreated toward his corner to regain his footing as Beltran
walked forward. It was as though the brief interplay was a moment of
enlightenment for Beltran. He suddenly seemed to decide that keeping Lundy
against the ropes as often as possible was a novel idea. Beltran soon
landed the first of a number of sharp, compact left hooks and then began
implementing a thudding body attack. As the round ended, Beltran landed a
pair of powerful right hands and Lundy bounced from the ropes to counter with a
cracking left hook at the bell. The two fighters flashed big, knowing
smiles at each other and embraced before returning to their corners. Game
on.
But for all of Lundy’s
advantages in speed, he continued to find it difficult to avoid being
methodically walked backward to the ropes by Beltran, who continued to be the
bully, applying a body attack and his timely left hook. It was not until
the sixth round when Lundy again began firing the jab consistently, effectively
stopping Beltran in his tracks. Lundy
intermittently fought out of the southpaw stance with the right jab working just
as soundly as the left one and the occasional power shot following.
But the strategic
realignment would not sustain itself. By the eighth, Lundy once again
found himself in the unenviable position of having to continually weasel his
way off of the ropes and he was not always able to do so without coming away
worse for the wear. Whether it
was due to a strategic lapse or the cumulative effect of Beltran’s hooks to his
ribs—some of which sounded like phone books being dropped on a wooden
floor—Lundy had lost the elusiveness and activity that carried him through the
earliest parts of the fight. Beltran closed the show strong, dictating
that the fight would be held along the margins of the ring and establishing
himself as the busier fighter. He definitively landed the most meaningful
punches in the final rounds.
The fight was a close affair
with several tight stanzas, so the outcome was still very much uncertain as the
scores were read and even more so after the first of those scores was revealed
to be a 95-95 draw. Suspense lingered when the next two were read as 96-94
and when Beltran was announced the “new” NABF champion, he and his corner
rightfully went ballistic. It is no guarantee that Beltran will assume
Lundy’s position on the precipice of a world title fight but it seems as if
that question had little bearing on his satisfaction. In a career spanning
three decades, he beat a world-class opponent for the first time (after several
unsuccessful prior bids) and earned by far his biggest achievement.
Letting Go
In the evening’s co-feature,
also broadcast on “Friday Night Fights,” Richard Pierson once again proved the
old adage that you cannot land a punch you do not throw. With rare
exception, Pierson, 11-3 (8), proved in his 10-round bout with his more
experienced opponent, Farah Ennis, to be a statuesque fighter—and obviously not
in a good way. He stood behind a peek-a-boo guard from round-to-round,
waiting hesitantly for openings that either were not there or on which he could
not pull the trigger.
Ennis, 20-1 (12), was
economical as well, landing here and there with nothing especially deleterious
to Pierson, but it was enough to win almost every round. He adopted an
exemplary approach to combating Pierson’s high and stationary guard with
regular body work and also navigated his way around Pierson’s shield on
occasion to land upstairs. When Ennis sensed that Pierson was attempting
to establish a rhythm, he let a jab fly or crowded him into stasis, forcing him
to start thinking anew. Pierson landed a few noteworthy punches but only a
few—not nearly enough to swing the bout in his favor.
Hope Springs Eternal
“He’s tired already!” This
exclamation came approximately eight seconds into the first round of the
night’s second bout, blurted by an overzealous member of the regiment who
traveled from the southernmost tip of New Jersey to encourage the apparent
pride of Cape May, Josh Mercado, 6-1 (2). The opponent in the four-rounder
was Philadelphia’s Korey Sloane, whose then-2-4-1 record had been almost
exclusively amassed in Atlantic City over the past year. Sloane, abnormally tall for a
140-pounder, moved gingerly around the canvas and threw long, awkward
punches. Mercado’s movements were far more polished; he landed the first
meaningful shot, a hook, and his fans hollered.
Then one of Sloane’s
telegraphed crosses found its way to the chin and his smaller legion sounded
off. Then he landed another cross and then one more that seemed to
unexpectedly secure the first round. Sloane continued to fight Mercado
evenly through a spirited but inefficient round two until Mercado finally
landed one big right hand and the crowd erupted again as he propelled
forward. Sloane gamely fought back and landed his own power shots, but
Mercado continued pressing and putting glove to target. The supporters
traded outbursts from their respective sides of the ring, the Mercados drowning
out the Sloanes.
Exhaustion
did finally seem to set in for Sloane during the third frame but he continued
flailing at Mercado, perhaps sensing he was still very much in the fight. But
Mercado slowly began to land in rhythm, even nodding patronizingly after one
effective hook-cross combination. As Sloane sat in his corner at the end
of the round, he panted rapidly. He hung tough for most of the final round
but Mercado again barraged as the clock wound down, his crowd yelling
maniacally. In fact, the onslaught became so one-sided at one-point that
Mercado stopped, turned to the referee and shrugged as Sloane remained crouched
against the ropes. But as his corner pleaded for him to keep
fighting—exuding hope for their underdog—Sloane held on, even mustering a final
one-two as the bell sounded. For all of the late punishment he suffered, a
draw at least still seemed feasible.
It was not to be—Mercado
took a decision with one score at 39-37 and two at 39-36. Sloane exhaled
genuine disappointment upon hearing the scores and then walked out of the
theater, his seconds close behind him. Afterward, one of the men in his
corner, William Snow, talked about this latest defeat. Like Sloane, he
thought the bout and several others that Sloane has fought could have
conceivably been scored draws but he was not too surprised. Snow remained
hopeful for his friend though, mentioning that if Sloane could get behind his
jab more, maybe he could string some wins together and get some more
significant fights. For better or worse, hope springs eternal even in the
lower rungs of the sport. For whatever it is worth, Sloane can at the very
least say he did his part in providing fans with the most entertaining fight of
the night.
