This Time Out, Duarte Is a Cut Above Davila

It was a throwback fight, all right, but not just to 1977, when these two neighborhood rivals first met. Saturday’s fight between Albert Davila and Frankie Duarte took fans to a far more distant era, when sluggers plied their awful trade in the middle of the ring, in a growing pool of blood and sweat, unmindful of personal safety or disfigurement.

It was at once a heroic and ghastly display, a bloodletting that left even ringsiders queasy. Not once in the nine-plus rounds did the two clinch, flinch or otherwise seek escape from the violence. Had they indeed fought in an earlier era, they might have inspired that cliche, toe-to-toe . Or even crimson mask .

In the end, which came at 2:09 of the 10th round at the Forum, it was Davila’s crimson mask that compelled the stoppage. With blood gushing from a cut above Davila’s left eye, referee Lou Filippo called ringside physician Bernhart Schwartz in to inspect the former bantamweight champion. “It was arterial bleeding and it wouldn’t stop,” Schwartz said. In fact, the Davila corner had been unable to staunch the flow from the seventh round on.

Schwartz may have done the correct thing in stopping the nationally televised fight, although Davila complained bitterly that his vision wasn’t impaired. But officials may have erred in giving the decision to Duarte, who had trailed widely on all three judges’ cards.

According to Marty Denkin of the State Athletic Commission, in the case of an alleged head butt, which Davila did indeed complain about after the third round, the referee is obliged to ask judges whether it was, in fact, a butt. Then, in case of an eventual stoppage, the decision would go to the scoring leader at the time of the physician’s decision. In such a case, Davila would have been declared the winner, as he led on James Jen-Kin’s and Vince Delgado’s scorecards, 87-83, and on Bill Graham’s, 87-84.

However, Filippo, who said he did not see a head butt, failed to ask a judge to back him up. Indeed, he indicated later he had a very vague understanding of the rule. Yet, Denkin defended the referee’s decision, saying that while the rule may apply in a state bout, it does not necessarily apply in a North American Boxing Federation bout, under whose sanctioning the fight was also held.

Asked why those rules weren’t spelled out ahead of time, Denkin said, “We didn’t think anybody would be stopped on a cut.” In fact, a discussion of cuts, due to Duarte’s historically thin skin, was a prominent feature of the rules meeting, and it was decided that the fight wouldn’t be stopped--”We don’t care how bad it looks”--unless the fighter’s safety was in jeopardy.

Aside from the controversy, it was a spectacular match, far more competitive than when the two then-22-year-old boxers met at the Olympic Auditorium 10 years ago. In that fight, Duarte, already beginning an alcoholic slide, was woefully out of shape and went down three times before Davila recorded a TKO.

For this fight, Duarte, his recovery from drink and drugs complete, was in wonderful shape. The same for Davila who, like Duarte, was coming off a recent loss of a bout for a bantamweight title.

From the beginning, Davila established the fight, jabbing Duarte’s eyes swollen and connecting with enough hard rights to shake Duarte. In the fourth round, Davila, 118, hit Duarte, 117 1/2, with a short left and scored a flash knockdown. “That really embarrassed me,” said Duarte, who hadn’t been down since his last fight with Davila. “I knew he had that fast left hand, but you never see the punches that knock you down.”

Davila, who had held the World Boxing Council title briefly and who had failed in four other tries for the championship, gave way a little in the fifth and sixth rounds when Duarte, of Venice, began to overwhelm with the sheer number of punches. But Davila seemed to restore his dominance after that, shaking Duarte badly in the eighth. By then, Duarte, who is always glad to take two punches for the chance to throw one, was peeping through nearly shut eyes. “But I never worry about that,” he said. “If I can smell him, I know which direction to swing.”

However, Davila was, amazingly, beginning to look the worse. In his prime, Davila, of Pomona, never absorbed damage. However, Saturday he was taking a punch or two. And as Dr. Schwartz observed, Duarte was “sharpshooting that eye.” By the seventh round, it was a river of blood flowing down his cheek, onto his chest and spattering even his shoes. Whether it impaired his ability to fight or not, it certainly was a horrifying spectacle.

Davila, in fact, maintained that the blood was only in the eye of the beholder, not his. And he conceded that Duarte took full advantage of the situation. “He was just pushing his hands out there,” Davila said bitterly. “He was just staying busy, hoping they’d stop the fight. I know how he works. He has no fundamentals, no technique, he just stays busy.

“I was bleeding, sure, but he wasn’t hitting me. I was in complete control of the fight. I may have been wiping my eye, but that’s easy to overcome. He never dazed me, nothing.”

Davila was especially bitter about the way the fight was stopped when he believed the rules meeting had specifically said the fight wouldn’t be stopped on cuts. “Maybe it was organized to win this fight, I don’t know,” he said.

Of course, fighter’s paranoia is commonplace, but he had to wonder, given the Forum’s relationship with Duarte, and even the fact that Duarte, though the underdog, scored a $45,000 purse to his $20,000 payday.

The winner may eventually go on to yet another title bid--Davila was top-ranked by the WBC, Duarte fourth. Davila’s future is less clear. Given the controversy and the state of boxing politics to begin with, there is only one certainty, as articulated by Duarte himself: “I think we both showed what fighters should fight like.”