Buchanan Has No Right to Beat Sims : Wins Title Bout With a Hurt Hand

Walter Sims wasn’t sure what Vernon (Yogi) Buchanan had in his left glove, but he just knew it had to be more than Buchanan’s five fingers.

Sims was sure of it when Buchanan won their scheduled 12-round main event Thursday night before a Forum crowd of 4,132 with a powerful left hook. The shot sent Sims down 2:11 into the fourth round of this championship bout in the Forum’s lightweight tournament.

Referee John Thomas took a look at Sims and signaled the fight was over.

And Sims’ corner signaled for a better look at Buchanan’s left glove.

Surprise! When the glove came off, there was nothing but fist.

“I could have sworn he had something in the glove,” said Sims, who weighed in at 134 pounds, in a whisper. He was sitting in his locker room, his head down, blood from a cut over his left eye smeared on a towel around his neck. “He just had a hard hand.”

Buchanan, 134 1/2 pounds, had badly cut that hand a month ago when he attempted to pick up a broken bottle. The hand became swollen and has remained that way.

Buchanan’s manager, Jim Howell, wanted to postpone the fight.

But the 20-year-old fighter (17-4-1, 12 knockouts), who comes from Berkley, Mo., wouldn’t listen to such talk.

“If we postpone it,” Buchanan had told his manager, “they’ll get someone else. I’ll fight with one hand. That’s my championship belt and I don’t want to give it up.”

So instead, Buchanan practiced fighting with one hand tied behind him. Or rather, pressed up against his right temple. He hadn’t thrown a right hand for two weeks before the fight. He hadn’t sparred in three weeks.

And he spent the day of the fight soaking his sore right hand in a mixture of herbs for four hours.

Thursday before the fight was the first time Buchanan had been able to close the hand since the moment he had picked up the bottle.

You’d heard of fighters licking the bottle before, but this brought new meaning to the expression.

For the first two rounds Thursday, Buchanan rarely threw a right.

Sims appeared to shake Buchanan with a right hand in the first round and came back with two good lefts in the second.

But Buchanan kept responding with the jab. “I didn’t throw the right,” said Buchanan, “unless I knew I could hurt him.”

By the third round, however, everybody in the Forum knew Buchanan could hurt Sims. Despite enjoying a four-inch height advantage at 5-9, Sims kept walking into Buchanan’s deadly jab. Again and again, Sims’ head would jerk back from the force of the blows. And again and again, he would come back for more, refusing to move his head or bob and weave.

Buchanan put Sims down once midway through the third round with a flurry of short punches, but Sims was up quickly. Then Buchanan hurt him again in the closing seconds of the round with a solid left.

By the time Buchanan connected with the final blow in the fourth, Sims sagged to the canvas as much from the sum total of all those lefts as he did from the final hook.

“My fighter won,” Howell said, “with an educated left hand.”

The 25-year-old Sims, who fights out of the Ten Goose Boxing Club of North Hollywood, fell to 22-4-2 with 14 knockouts.

In winning the tournament, Buchanan collected $50,000. Sims’ losing share was $10,000.

In an earlier Thursday bout involving Valley fighters, middleweight Abdellah Tabezi of North Hollywood, making his pro debut, fought to a four-round draw with Milford Kemp (4-1-1, two knockouts), also of North Hollywood.