OCTOBER 14 1980 will likely be remembered as a black day in British skilled boxing and an particularly low level between the editor and employees of Boxing News and the main British promoters on the time, Mickey Duff and Mike Barrett.
The sport was already reeling from the plight of Johnny Owen, who was mendacity in a coma following his contest with Lupe Pintor (and who was to die just some weeks later), the appalling spectacle of Muhammad Ali’s final contest towards Larry Holmes and the disgraceful scenes that adopted Alan Minter’s loss to Marvin Hagler. Then we had the present at The Royal Albert Hall on the aforementioned date.
The BN headline stated all of it, “Oh, what a load of rubbish”, and editor Harry Mullan added additional criticism with the opening phrases of his column, “There can be no excuse, no justification for this travesty of a tournament.”
Four Mexican imports went right down to main British fighters in a complete of solely seven rounds and, on a present consisting of seven contests, that meant that the followers noticed little precise boxing and nearly none of any high quality. On the undercard, up-and-coming Mark Kaylor hammered one-time welterweight contender Peter Morris of Bridgnorth in 5 one-sided rounds, Coventry’s Joe Jackson upset Davey Armstrong in “an untidy bout which drew boos and slow handclaps from the crowd”, and Gary Nickels outpointed Billy Straub in an eight-rounder that was satisfactory, at the very least, as a contest.
Then got here the debacle. Jimmy Flint, a big-hitter from Wapping, stopped Cordobes Lopez in two rounds with BN commenting that “Bob Galloway’s intervention would have been justified far earlier.” Next, Cornelius Boza-Edwards stopped Roberto Torres on a minimize eyebrow within the second spherical of a bout which “from the first minute of the opening round it had been apparent that the fight had no chance of going the distance,” such was the distinction at school between the 2.
Dave Boy Green was coming back from his current loss to Sugar Ray Leonard, and one might subsequently excuse the truth that he was being eased in, however his opponent, Mario Mendez, supplied “precious little to beat. He produced the odd glimmer of the talented, canny fighter that he may have been years back, but his resolve against Green was hardly made of iron.”
Finally, we got here to the headliner between Charlie Magri and Enrique Castro. This one lasted just one spherical and was “not so much a boxing match between two evenly matched contestants as a one-sided beating-up.” Castro was brave, however totally outclassed.
Duff and Barrett claimed that their American matchmaker Don Chagrin equipped them with particulars that recommended that each one 4 Mexicans have been worthy opponents for the British lads. Castro, as an illustration, had supposedly taken half in eight earlier contests that 12 months, all of them being wins. With the advantage of hindsight, and BoxRec specifically, we will now see the reality; Castro had fought solely as soon as that 12 months, a victory over Raul Bacheco for the Baja California state flyweight title and had suffered two back-to-back knockout losses in 1979 in a complete of solely three rounds. He was clearly no match for Magri.
Similarly, Mendez had misplaced his all of his earlier 5 bouts inside the space and hadn’t fought in any respect for 2 years, Lopez had misplaced 4 of his earlier six and Torres had received solely certainly one of his final seven. Quite clearly, Duff and Barret had been sailed down the river by their American advisors they usually needed to take the criticism on the chin, as too did the Board, who had accepted the opponents.
Thankfully, on the subsequent present at this iconic venue, Duff and Barrett pulled all of the stops out, with Tony Sibson’s victory over Matteo Salvemini for the European middleweight title being a humdinger and Charlie Magri outscoring Santos Laciar in a a lot more durable contest towards a world-rated Argentinian.
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