Brick City Boxing

Thursday, July 27th

By Saul Lelchuk

The Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan center was the venue last night for promoter Cedric Kushner’s “Heavyweight Extravaganza” put on by Gotham Boxing. It was an exciting night that featured seven bouts, including David Tua’s New York return and the NABO Cruiserweight championship title fight. The sold-out Ballroom was covered by ESPN for its Wednesday Night Fights with commentary by Teddy Atlas, and was attended by DMC of the legendary Run-D.M.C., Yankee’s Gary Sheffield, and boxers Winky Wright, Shannon Briggs, and Paulie Malignaggi.

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The main event featured Eliseo Castillo (20-2-1) fighting out of Miami against Emanual Steward’s undefeated Johnathon Banks (12-0), a Detroit native trained at Chicago’s Kronk Gym. The match was full-on from the opening bell, and reminded me why the lesser-known cruiserweight class can be so exciting when its fighters have the speed of middleweights and can hit like heavyweights. Both boxers were fast, hard punchers, and they were swinging as though it was two minutes into a one round fight. I didn’t think anyone could last at that pace, and as it turned out that was correct – Banks was knocked down twice in the first round. Each time he jumped to his feet within a few seconds, his anger and eagerness apparently compensating for any damage the blows had done to him. By the second round both fighters seemed to have settled down a little and traded shots a bit more fairly, although Castillo caught Banks with a hard left hook midway through the fight. After his first round success, Castillo didn’t seem particularly inclined to go for a knockout, but by the third round Banks seemed pretty well recovered and it struck me that Castillo was probably wishing that he had tried harder to finish off Banks while he was still shaky. Moments after jotting down that thought I looked up for the fourth round as Banks, with a burst of energy and a flurry of punches, managed to get Castillo against the ropes and knock him down, ending the fight in another victory for Steward and the Kronk gym.

The other main event, featuring New Zealand veteran David Tua (45-3-1, 39 KO’s) against Edward Gutierrez (15-3-1, 6 KO’s), gave Tua a chance to show the crowd how he had changed in the nearly ten years since he had last fought in New York. The outcome of the fight never seemed at issue to me, only its length, and by the beginning we were already making the usual jokes about Gutierrez earning every penny he was being paid, etc. I have said before that personally Tua is one of the nicest boxers out there, but none of this was evident in the hard stare he gave Gutierrez before the first bell. It struck me as the kind of look a New Zealander several generations back might have given an opponent before tossing him in a pot of boiling water. The first round was unhurried and cautious on the parts of both fighters – essentially the exact opposite of Castillo/Banks. This displeased the crowd, and the fighters were booed and told to “stop shadowboxing.” Tua did not cave to this pressure, perhaps thinking that he had ten rounds to dispatch his opponent and would do it on his own time when he was good and ready to (although Tua does hold the second place record for most first round knockouts; first place goes to Tyson). Gutierrez, meanwhile, seemed content to let Tua set the pace.
By the second round the fight warmed up a bit, and Tua caught Gutierrez with a semi-hard (by Tua’s standards, anyway) left hook that sent him to the canvas. The fight heated up a bit more in the third, and much of the action occurred in close quarters, shoulder to shoulder – the rough equivalent of soldiers fighting with ‘fixed bayonets.’ This style of fighting suits Tua well, for his impressively wide shoulders and lack of height allows him to throw the short, devastating hooks that are his specialty, and though Gutierrez was admirably game he got the worst of these trade-offs. In the fourth round the man next to me shook his head and proclaimed the fight was going to go all ten rounds; I said I’d be surprised if it did half of that, and a few seconds later Tua hit Gutierrez with a left hook to the head followed by another hard one straight to the liver; this proved sufficient to put Gutierrez down for good. As I said, the fight seemed less about who would win and more about how Tua would look while doing so, and the answer was he looked good. None of the punches he took gave him any trouble, and as the referee held his arm up he didn’t even appear to be breathing hard. All told, it didn’t seem as though it would have been a big deal at all for him to remain in the ring and take on another one or two people just to get a good sweat going.

New Yorker Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin (6-0) scored an easy first-round knockout of William Prieto (2-1) in their middleweight bout. The knockout was very legitimate – Prieto fell close to me and his eyes were wide and vacant as he landed. He tried to lurch to his feet and fell straight on his face in the sort of boneless flopping motion that displays better than a biology textbook just what exactly a hard blow does to the human brain. Quillin’s win was fine with me, for it meant the crowd and myself got showered with chocolates (his trademark after every victory), and it had been several hours since I had had dinner.

Brooklyn’s Cindy Serrano bumped her undefeated record up to 13-0 with a solid unanimous decision against Tawnyah Freeman after an engaging six rounds. Bronx lightweight Jorge Teron won on decision against Armando Cordoba, and Brooklyn middleweight “Mean” Joe Green easily knocked out Damone Wright in the final fight of the night. It was also a good night for New York law enforcement: super middleweight Bryant “The Fighting Cop” Pappas defeated James Durham, and heavyweight Jon “The Fighting Marine” Schneider won against Eddie Kimbrough; both victories were first-round knockouts.

I walked around a bit, congratulating Tua and looking around as the security shooed the thinning crowd towards the doors and the crew began picking up the crumpled papers and plastic cups that littered the floor, folding chairs, and dismantling the empty media tables. As I walked out I noticed Damone Wright, still standing in the ring as his corner quietly took off his gloves and wraps. No one spoke, and though not cheerful, no one seemed especially disappointed; he had been hired and paid, that was that. After everything else, boxing, to boxers, remains foremost a profession.