Boxing/IBA and WBC Continental Americas Middleweight titles:Well ahead on the scorecards, Derry middleweight John Duddy was awarded a technical win in the main event of Friday night's "Erin Go Brawl" card when Anthony Bonsante, half-blinded by the blood that poured into his right eye for most of the evening, couldn't go on after nine rounds.
Although it was an action-packed fight from start to finish, Bonsante was handicapped from the fourth round on. Early in that stanza, the boxers' heads came together with a resounding crack. Both spun away, but when referee Steve Smoger inspected them for damage, only Bonsante was cut, high on the forehead.
Bonsante, a rugged refugee from Sylvester Stallone's Contender boxing reality series, had arrived in the Big Apple with two trainers, and had dipped into his $30,000 purse to bring along his wife and children. What he did not bring from Minnesota was a cut man, nor did he bother hiring one from among the many available in New York.
It was an oversight for which he would pay a heavy price.
He continually dabbed at the wound, wiping blood away while he was on the run from Duddy's relentless, two-fisted assault, and pawing at the eye in clinches.
The Bonsante corner, in the meantime, could do no better than sponge the cut between rounds, and it bled profusely.
After nine, Smoger, on the advise of a ringside physician, curtailed the bout, sending the result to the scorecards.
Judges Steve Weisfeld (90-81), Frank Lombardi (89-82) and Tom Schreck (88-83) all had the Irishman in front, and Duddy was able to walk away with his 19th win in as many pro fights, as well as a purse that should extend well into the six-figure range. (Duddy had accepted a $20,000 guarantee against a percentage of the gate, and was thus handsomely rewarded when the 5,000-seat Madison Square Garden Theatre sold out three weeks early.)
Irish Ropes promoter Eddie McLoughlin's timetable calls for Duddy to fight again in June in an East Coast venue, before moving on to an HBO fight in September, probably against Giovanni Lorenzo, a slick Dominican middleweight who advanced to 23-0 with a third-round TKO of Kenyan Robert Kamya on Friday night's undercard.
Come next St Patrick's Day, said McLoughlin, he hopes to match Duddy in New York against world middleweight champion Jermain Taylor. That may be an optimistic view, in that even in what should have been a relatively easy fight, Duddy once again evinced a proclivity for absorbing more punishment than is good for him. He's probably not ready for Taylor now, and it is not at all clear that he would be after just two more fights.
Duddy confessed to having been "a bit rusty" after a lay-off of over six months while cuts sustained in his hard-fought win over Yory Boy Campas last September were allowed to heal.
"I should have let my punches go a little more," said the Derryman. "But I give myself a passing grade. I was in control of the fight, but next time out I'll be better."
The largely Irish crowd had come hoping to see another spectacular knockout. They got one, but it didn't come from Duddy. It came from Limerick's Andy Lee, whose third-round KO of former world light-middleweight champion Carl Daniels must now be regarded as the leader in the clubhouse for 2007's "Knockout of the Year" honours.
Daniels, who had taken the bout on just three days' notice, came in as a 170lb light-heavyweight at Thursday's weigh in. Lee was comfortably inside the 160lb limit at 159, but since New York rules specify a disparity of no more than seven pounds in non-heavyweight fights, the match-up seemed in jeopardy.
It was resolved by turning them both into super-middleweights.
Daniels donned a plastic rubbish bag beneath his sweatshirt and ran around the Garden for an hour, while Lee did his part by crossing 8th Avenue to the Stage Door Deli and wolfing down a large bowl of pasta, washed down by a milkshake, followed by several glasses of water.
When they reconvened at the scale, Daniels weighed 168, Lee 164, and the fight was back on.
Lee, who controlled the first two rounds with his right-hand jab, noticed that Daniels had fallen into a pattern.
"He was crafty," said Lee of his fellow southpaw. "I was touching him with my jab over the first couple of rounds, and he was picking it off with his left glove right in front of his face. So this time I showed the jab, and when he tried to parry, I brought the hook around his glove."
As Daniels moved to block the jab, Lee came around the corner with a thunderous right hook that exploded off the side of the former champion's head.
Lee ("I knew the second I hit him he wasn't going to get up.") raced across the ring and had climbed halfway up the ropes in celebration before Daniels even hit the canvas.
Once it became apparent that the usually-durable Daniels was unconscious and unlikely to revive for several minutes, referee Benji Estevez abandoned the count and began to remove the fighter's mouthpiece.
Lee is now 8-0, Daniels 49-11-1.
Three other Irish-born boxers were featured on the card.
Fighting as a junior middleweight, Henry Coyle of Geesala, Co Mayo, made an impressive professional debut, knocking out Jason Collazo of Paterson, New Jersey, in the first round, while Ennis cruiserweight Mark Clancy improved to 7-0-1 with a one-sided decision over Andrew Hutchinson.
Mark's brother James Clancy looked well on the way to making it a clean sweep when he floored Rodney Ray in the first round, but in the second Ray caught Clancy napping and nailed him with a right hand.
Clancy went down so hard he twisted his ankle on the way to the canvas. When he attempted to rise at the count of six, he toppled over backward, unable to stand, and took Eddie Cotton's 10-count from a seated position. It was the first professional loss for the elder Clancy, now 9-1.
