SAN ANTONIO – Here’s something you didn’t know. Saturday afternoon round 3:30 P.M., a young Texas amateur named Adam Reynolds almost didn’t make his boxing debut at a 34-bout smoker in San Fernando Gym. Despite his youth and fitness, Reynolds’ blood pressure was too high for a ringside doctor to let him answer the opening bell.
The prospect of being struck in the face can play havoc with your heart.
Eight hours later, about a mile southeast of San Fernando, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. put the finishing touches on the best match of his 42-fight career. It was a performance marked unexpectedly by Chavez’s relaxation under fire.
There’s something to be said for growing up around the sport. There’s something to be said for knowing boxing.
Saturday at Alamodome, before a few fans more than 8,000, Chavez headlined “Latin Fury 15” and beat Ireland’s John Duddy in an entertaining 12-round middleweight scrap that saw sustained action in every round. It also saw Chavez win by two proper scores – Judge Crocker’s 116-112 and Judge Lederman’s 117-111 – and Juergen Langos’ unacceptable tally of 120-108.
For those who watched on pay-per-view or the south side of the ring, if the Texas crowd sounded unenthusiastic, here may be an acoustical explanation. Alamodome, which is cavernous, was configured to seat fans in its northernmost 1/3. That meant cheers had to go through a curtain and then across 200 feet of emptiness before they could hit the south wall and reverberate back to themselves.
There were plenty of folks there, though, and they cheered plenty too. Some cheered the Chavez brand, recalling fondly the night 17 years before that Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. posted a record attendance number in Alamodome. Some, no doubt, went to see a Mexican child of privilege get his ass beat by a tough Irishman. But all were there, in part, because they had no idea what was going to happen.
Chavez was considered soft by even some of his admirers, heading towards the ring Saturday. Among those who didn’t admire him, there was a belief that a 12-round match absolutely favored any Chavez opponent but especially a man rugged as John Duddy. Both were wrong.
“We took (Chavez) into deep water,” Duddy said at the post-fight press conference. “And, yes, he can swim. He’s a tough kid. A tough kid.”
Duddy wore dark sunglasses as he spoke those words. He wore them because Chavez had left bruises and shallow lacerations around his eyes. And there was a good metaphor in those glasses for anyone who had been at Wednesday’s press conference.
There, Chavez sauntered on stage like a kid hoping to become a matinee idol – jeans, open-collared shirt, stylish blazer, sunglasses. Duddy, meanwhile, watched him in a business-casual getup of khakis, belt, dress shirt and green Chuck Taylors. The contrast was stark: Working class meets spoiled brat.
At Saturday’s post-fight press conference, on the other hand, Chavez wore no sunglasses. He didn’t hide the damage round his eyes Duddy’s fists had inflicted; he’d completed a rite of passage in his own mind from novelty to contender.
“Now I am more – how to say it,” Chavez said in Spanish, and he paused. “I am more convinced of myself.”
And to prove it, he employed self-deprecation – the sign of a secure identity. Asked what difference his new trainer Freddie Roach had wrought, Chavez said he’d just needed someone to take out of him the “huevón.”
“Huevón” is a wonderful Mexicanism. It begins with the Spanish slang for a man’s balls, eggs, adds the augmentative “ón” and suggests a man with balls so big he doesn’t bother himself with trying at anything. It’s like laziness on PEDs.
Roach took that from Chavez in their four-week training camp, transforming him from a lazy fighter. Saturday night, in the opening three rounds, Chavez retreated behind an occasional jab and let Duddy impose himself. But at the start of the fourth, confident Duddy could not hurt him, Chavez went out and began to walk the Irishman down.
Duddy couldn’t have asked for more. He got a fair battle with a man who would not run from him. Had you told Duddy before the fight that Chavez would stand in the middle of the ring and trade with him for nine rounds, Duddy might have said, “Then I’ll have me way with him.”
But he didn’t. Duddy managed to buckle Chavez with a counter right hand in the sixth round, but after that, Chavez’s confidence grew in proportion to Duddy’s age; one man got quicker while the other got older. Take nothing away from Duddy’s character, though. After losing the ninth badly enough to justify a stoppage, Duddy went on to win the 12th on one judge’s card.
But Chavez was not in danger. He was entirely untroubled. It surprised a number of folks at ringside. It didn’t surprise Freddie Roach.
“Not at all,” Roach said afterwards. “That’s how he is in the gym. I’m telling you, he knows the ring. He knows boxing.”
Now all Chavez needs is more discipline and some improved balance. He has the right teacher for that. And he has most of the tools he’ll need to contend.
Boxing is a harsh master, of course, but it’s also one that teaches those who wish to learn.
Look at Adam Reynolds. After a second opinion from a ringside nurse allowed his first bout to happen Saturday afternoon, Reynolds fought a tense opening round. But by the third, he was loosened up – enough to win his debut with a knockout.
Bart Barry can be reached via bbarry@15rounds.com
Photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank
