Todd Foster Makes Smashing Debut : He Stops Alvarado in Second Round of His First Pro Bout

The night before Todd Foster’s professional boxing debut, his mother, Vicki Foster, approached Bob Spagnola, her son’s manager.

“Look, I’m his mother, OK?” she said. “Just tell me how much I have to worry about this guy he’s fighting. . . . In other words, how many times do I have to throw up tomorrow?”

“Vicki, don’t worry about it at all,” Spagnola said. “Todd will take him out of there in two, maybe three rounds.”

It was two. So Vicki Foster got sick for nothing.

But two was too much for Chris (the Gangster) Alvarado, who was nearly doubled over by Todd Foster’s thunderous body punches in the first round at a chilly Great Falls hockey arena.

Foster went on to win in smashing fashion, stopping Alvarado at 1:13 of the second round, before his hometown crowd of 3,470 and an ESPN television audience.

It was the first nationally televised boxing show from Montana since Gene Fullmer beat Joey Giardello at Bozeman in 1960.

In the main event, Frank Tate, former International Boxing Federation middleweight champion, gained a unanimous decision over Jimmy Bills of Vallejo in an over-the-weight bout. Tate has been boxing as a super-middleweight but came in at 176 pounds for this one.

Tate seemed slow, was not sharp, and heard only boos when the decision was announced.

For Montanans, the main event was bout No. 3, the 6-round undercard bout Foster was in.

And the crowd, in a sense, was in search of revenge. Or at least a chance to cheer their guy Todd, and maybe make up for some of that unpleasantness at Seoul last summer.

They had watched in September when Foster was forced to defeat the same South Korean opponent twice on one day at the Olympic Games, only to lose in the quarterfinals to an Australian on a decision that still makes folks go purple-faced in these parts.

Now, this was a chance to let off some steam. The placard of one Foster fan read: “This is One Show the Koreans Won’t Screw Up!”

Foster, who trained for 2 months in Houston for his debut, weighed 138 pounds, Alvarado 139. Vicki Foster wasn’t alone in worrying about Foster’s first opponent. Alvarado, appearing more fearsome than he is because his face and throat were scarred in an auto accident, came in with a 13-4 record. The Phoenix boxer had also gone 10 rounds four times.

Not to worry.

Foster leaped on his opponent as if still fighting amateurs: Pop-pop-pop with the left jab, and bang with the right hand to the body. Foster employed that combination for his first two combinations of the bout and hurt Alvarado both times.

“With that first right hand to the body, I knew I hurt him, because he kind of sighed,” Foster said.

Alvarado agreed.

“He’s very good,” Alvarado said. “He’s quick, and he put a lot of pressure on me early, and I just wasn’t ready for that. The body punches hurt a lot.”

The bout became one-sided a minute into the first round. Alvarado was down twice in the round, bouncing up quickly for standing-8 counts. The first knockdown was from a short right inside, the second from a counter left hook.

Foster caught Alvarado in his own corner early in the second and landed about 10 punches to the head, and referee Kevin McCarl waved Foster off and gave Alvarado a standing-8. Foster charged in, began more of the same, and a towel sailed in from Alvarado’s cornermen at 1:13 of the second.

At that point, Foster leaped happily into the arms of his cornermen, trainer Kenny Weldon and Foster’s father, Vern Foster. The crowd stood and cheered for several minutes, until a couple of politicians stepped into the ring to give him an award. The cheers turned to boos.

Then came the TV interview, and a police-escorted trip back to his dressing room. While he talked to reporters, about 50 small boys waited patiently outside, armed with pens and programs, for autographs.

The game plan, Foster said, was rehearsed for 2 months in Houston: Pop-pop-pop and right to the body.

“The first thing I wanted to do was establish the left jab, which I did without any problem, and go to the body with the right. Those first two rights really hurt him.”

No one in Great Falls had ever seen Foster in the ring without the tank-top shirts that amateurs wear. Or headgear.

“Standing in there before it started, not having that headgear on, no tank top, and wearing 8-ounce gloves instead of 10-, I felt great,” he said.

“I felt like, ‘This is my game.’

“And the crowd was great, it really had me pumped up. I could have gone 6 rounds at that pace easy. I think my corner was worried about the pace I was at. They told me after the first round, ‘Remember, you gotta go 6.’ ”

Weldon called it a near-faultless debut.

“I think Todd showed the nation tonight that he’s on his way to being a world-class pro.

“And he dismissed the myth that he is a catcher,” Weldon added, referring to boxing lingo for getting hit in the head a lot. “His hands were up all the way--he just did a great job defensively. The other guy never laid a glove on him.

“And I loved the way he set up over a low center of gravity, something else we’ve worked hard on.”

Almost faultless.

“He had his mouth open all the way, and we don’t want him to do that,” he said. “He’s in there with guys wearing small gloves and he could get a broken jaw.”

Foster had a deviated septum in his nose corrected after the Olympics, and said before the fight that he could now, for the first time, breathe freely through his nose.

“I just can’t get over the habit,” he said.

So, it doesn’t seem as if Vicki Foster needs to be unduly distressed about her son’s first half-dozen or so opponents. Instead, she can begin worrying about a legal mess in which he has become entangled.

Foster, according to Lou Duva’s Main Events boxing group in New Jersey, signed a pro contract with them in September 1987. Duva says he spent $50,000 sponsoring Foster as an amateur, and has sued Foster to get it back.

Spagnola said Foster was “coerced” into signing the contract.

Well, that’s life in the pros, Mom.