IBHOF host Graham Houston looks at how sometimes victory can be taken from the jaws of defeat as he recalls some boxing fights that didn’t hit the blue KO.
Kid Galahad’s KO loss last weekend was a reminder that when a boxer faces an opponent determined to win, the fight isn’t over until it’s over.
It’s also a reminder that one punch can change everything, even against play. Galahad seemed to be on his way to defeat Kiko Martinez only to be defeated by a heavy hand strike in the fifth round. Rescued by the bell after counting eight, Galahad was left with nothing and was leveled by Kiko’s first punch in the sixth round.
The fifth right arm that Kiko landed on was a blockbuster beyond imagination. To me, it seemed like Galahad was under pressure but still boxing well until the moment the shot landed.
These one-punch-change-everything situations don’t happen often but when they do, they are dramatic.
The fourth fight in the Manny Pacquiao vs Juan Manuel Marquez series is a case in point. Pacquiao dropped in the third round but he came back strong.
By the sixth round, it seemed that Manny had completely turned the tide. He’s taking on the pressure and hurting Marquez. The Mexican boxer’s nose was full of blood and he was starting to look beaten up. But it seems Pacquiao was a bit overconfident. He lunged forward with a right jab before hurling left from his Southpaw stance, and as the video shows, Marquez defeated him with a perfectly timed right-handed punch. Pacquiao down the front and didn’t need referee Kenny Bayless to count. “Pacquiao never expected that punch to come back to him,” noted Roy Jones Jr in the HBO commentary.
And speaking of a boxer who didn’t expect to be drilled, that’s what happened when Hasim Rahman finished off Lennox Lewis with his right hand from nowhere in their first meeting for the heavyweight title.
Lewis wasn’t one of his better matches that night in South Africa but by the fifth inning he seemed to have found his rhythm and took control of the competition.
However, former champion George Foreman, commenting in the box for HBO, didn’t like what he saw from Lewis. Foreman felt that it was unnecessary for Lewis to put himself in danger by moving toward Rahman without stabbing his challenger in the face. “If you’re going to step on them – go to the man – use your left stab!” The foreman warned.
But Lewis looks incredibly confident, as if he feels that he has Rahman exactly where he wants to be. Complacency seems to have begun. Lewis stepped back almost by chance, Rahman stepped in with a punch, and it was over.
Then we have a 45-year-old Foreman, behind the referee’s card, knocking out Michael Moorer with his right hand in the 10th round to become the oldest heavyweight champion in the history of the ring.
I was in the ring that night in Las Vegas and, although I felt Moorer was comfortably leading, it always seemed to be the possibility that at some stage in the game he would be crucified.
Coach Teddy Atlas knew the danger in Big George’s right arm and, as I remember, was begging Moorer to punch and move, not to stay in front of the much older but much larger Foreman. But, in the 10th round, Moorer was really in Foreman’s right hand for too long in that split second, and that was it.
Sometimes just one mistake is all that is needed.
I don’t think Foreman’s KO win over Moorer fully qualifies the word “miracle”. But a victory akin to a miracle came earlier this year when Gabriel Rosado, knocked out in the first round and lost, landed firmly with the best right arm he had ever unleashed to take down. Bektemir Melikuziev in his face in the third round. The heavy-handed and heavyweight Olympic silver medalist bullied the old pros. Melikuziev seemed to think he could outrun anything Rosado could throw at him. He’s wrong.
Can Rosado throw a so-called lucky punch? I’m not sure there’s really a “punch of chance” in boxing, because a boxer trying his best to land a blow can turn the tide in a fight he’s losing. But I think a boxer is sometimes a bit unlucky when it comes to one punch that kills a lot of success. Such was the case when Julian Jackson knocked out Herol Graham in the 4th round of their middleweight title fight at a casino in Spain in November 1990.
Everyone knew Jackson would be in danger as the war dragged on. Southpaw Graham will have to fight a perfect fight. “Whatever mistake he makes, I’ll definitely be there to take a chance,” Jackson warned before he started. But Graham boxed beautifully for the first three innings and most of the fourth, even assisting the bigger hitter. Jackson has swelling under his left eye.
All Graham had to do was not get caught by one of Jackson’s big right-hand men and the fight was his. But don’t get caught that is sometimes easier said than done. Graham may have been a bit risky. He fought Jackson in season four, looking for a winner in the whole world – and then Jackson completely strangled him with a right arm from hell (if you’re a fan of the game). Herol Graham, that is).
It was amazing and sudden. But Jackson had a plan. He punched with Graham, let the right hand fly as the Sheffield boxer begins to launch a wide right hook south.
“Oh, what a punch!” commentator Reg Gutteridge uttered during the ITV broadcast. “I can’t believe it!”
Graham looked out before touching the tarp but referee Joe Cortez took No 10 seriously.
I doubt if a lot of people see that right hand coming – Graham definitely doesn’t. However, ring analyst and lightweight champion Jim Watt felt that Graham had kept his chin too high – “where it has often happened in the past”.
Jackson’s right hand was always a threat, rightly so. But he had to land it. And as Gutteridge noted in his post-match recap, it looks like Jackson was never will arrest Graham. “It was the only real punch he landed,” Gutteridge said incredulously.
But, as Kiko Martinez demonstrated last weekend, sometimes just one punch is enough.
Main image: Mark Robinson / Matchroom Boxing.
