Arredondo Wins Title, Knocks Out Smith in 5th : New WBC Super-Lightweight Champion Finally Turns On Power at Olympic

For four rounds, everyone in the Olympic Auditorium Monday night, including WBC super-lightweight champion Lonnie Smith, wondered where all the vaunted power was in Rene Arredondo’s fists.

As a world championship fight, this one had all the makings of a dog. Smith tried unsuccessfully to establish a left jab for four rounds, and occasionally threw a wild right hand or a left hook. Arredondo, tall and skinny, played a waiting game, occasionally smiling coolly at Smith, who was defending his WBC super-lightweight crown for the first time.

You looked closely at Smith’s tall opponent. Was this really the guy everyone said had one of boxing’s best knockout records?

You bet it was. Stay tuned, Lonnie.

In the fifth round, with 1:36 left, Arredondo (139) showed the first sellout (8,000) at the Olympic in several years where the power was. With Smith (139 1/2) retreating cautiously into his own corner, Arredondo unloaded a straight right that connected flush on Smith’s jaw. Smith crashed to the deck, on his back. Referee Marty Denkin took one look at Smith’s motionless form, removed his mouthpiece and waved Arredondo off.

With that, bedlam. Paper cups filled with beer sailed down on the crowd from the balcony, hundreds ran into the aisles trying to get into the ring. Arredondo was hoisted onto the shoulders of his supporters and out came the traditional black and gold sombrero.

Once again, a predominately Mexican crowd at the Olympic had a new champion to toast at the old Olympic, the scene of so many Hispanic boxers’ triumphs since the 1930s.

And, in Arredondo, they have a most unlikely champion. Thin to the point of being scrawny, he plays a cool waiting game, showing nothing of his weapons until an opening presents itself. Cool? This guy smiles at you while he waits.

And does this guy hit? Ouch.

Even with the noise of a huge crowd, ringsiders could hear the “Thud!” when Arredondo’s right impacted on Smith’s chin.

This has happened many times before. Arredondo, 24, from Mexico City and Los Angeles, has a knockout percentage to rank with the all-timers, 33 K0s in 35 victories. He’s lost twice.

Smith, 23, from Denver, was defending for the first time the championship he won in New York last August.

It was a bout some figured would never come off. It had been scheduled for March 1, 8, 15 and 29 and for April 3. Arredondo boxed as if it didn’t matter.

Smith seemed tight, at times tied up in knots.

After five postponements, it started out as if both fighters had long since lost interest. In the first, Smith reached out with a highly tentative jab and took a few wild swings that missed by nearly an arm’s length.

By the second, Smith was on his lateral bicycle, and the boisterous crowd booed lustily. Cops were summoned to ringside to learn who was throwing peanuts at Smith. The peanut thrower went undiscovered. Smith should have been so lucky.

Arredondo smiled a couple of times at Smith in the third, but showed no sign of the power that had flattened so many of his opponents. The right remained cocked. Occasionally, Arredondo flicked out a lifeless jab, as if he was biding for time.

It was an inactive, nearly lifeless bout through three. If this had been a prelim bout Monday night, they would have booed them both out of the building.

Activity increased in the fourth, but not by much. Smith took some more wild swings and missed all but one of them, a solid right to Arredondo’s chin that stopped him in his tracks with 15 seconds left in the round. With a minute left, Arredondo rattled Smith’s chin with a left hook. Smith was briefly wobbled and he backed up into his own corner, where Arredondo let him get away.

The finishing punch in the fifth, which occurred in Smith’s corner, was reminiscent of Tommy Hearns’ knockout of the late James Shuler in Las Vegas in March. It was a short, straight right, fired down upon a shorter opponent who was crouching.

And Smith, like Shuler, kept going down.

And so did his luck.

Smith is one of boxing’s sadder stories, of which there are many. Beset with legal problems with some of his promoters and advisers, he says he’s seen not a dime of the $100,000 he was to have earned for beating Billy Costello for the championship 10 months ago. One report had him stacking boxes in a warehouse a few months ago, for $4.25 an hour--not a pretty sight for a world champion.

Bazooka Limon wasn’t a pretty sight Monday night, either. The former super-featherweight world champion, now 32, his skills faded beyond retrieval, was stopped by Oscar Bejines in the fourth round in a companion 10-rounder that was far more lively than the main event.

Limon (135), from Taxco, Mexico, complaining of low blows in the first two rounds, was dropped with two seconds left in the third round and referee Larry Rozadilla stopped it after he was decked again in the fourth, with 1:30 to go.