White Lightning Strikes Again, Drops Delgado

Ramon Delgado could take a moral victory home with him Tuesday night.

Charley (White Lightning) Brown was unable to knock Delgado down in the 10 rounds of their junior welterweight bout at Reseda’s Country Club.

But Delgado didn’t win anything else.

Not even a round.

Brown, 20, dominated the fight from the opening bell in winning for the 26th time in 28 professional outings.

Brown hit Delgado with everything but the ring stool Tuesday night, but appeared to hurt him only once with a flurry in the ninth round.

“He’s a tough kid,” Brown said. “I thought I would knock him out, but he took a couple of right hands clean and still didn’t go down. I figured since I was throwing so many punches, they would take their toll. But they didn’t. He took a hell of a punch.”

Which is more than he gave. Delgado (19-6-4) demonstrated little offense, getting in one good left in the second round, but few others the rest of the evening.

His manager, Peter Alvarse, blamed Brown for that. “He didn’t have any respect for my fight,” Alvarse said of Brown. “He threw a few punches in the beginning, then, for eight rounds he melted on his bicycle and ran around. He wouldn’t throw punches and fight.

“This was great work for him,” said Joe Goossen, trainer for Brown. “He’s got a tough fight coming up Jan. 3 and this was a good 10-round workout.”

Brown, who fights out of the Ten Goose Boxing Gym in North Hollywood, will fight unbeaten lightweight Greg Haugen at Las Vegas’ Showboat Hotel. Haugen is 14-0-1 with seven knockouts.

This is considered a pivotal match-up in Brown’s young career. In the first fight of the evening, Luis Prado of San Jose stopped Fidel Bricena of Eagle Rock at 2:34 of the third round of their scheduled five-round bantamweight bout.

That was followed by a five-rounder between North Hollywood’s bantamweights Manny Olivas and Genaro Espitia. Olivas knocked Espitia down in the second round and wound up with a unanimous decision, giving him five wins in his six professional fights.

In the final preliminary event, Richard Lira of El Monte knocked out Jose Martinez of Visalia at 1:37 of the second round of their four-round featherweight fight. Lira is now 6-1.

Pedro Lara of Bell won a four-round decision over Javier Lara of North Hollywood in a bantamweight fight that followed the main event. The two Laras are not related.

And in the final bout of the evening, Kenny Wyatt of North Hollywood stopped Jorge Zamora at 2:00 of the first round of their scheduled featherweight fight.