Unable to Finish, Vaca Still Wins

Quincy Taylor, while coming back from what seemed to be certain defeat, saw his hopes snatched away when he and Jorge Vaca banged heads in the sixth round of a lively junior-middleweight fight before 5,160 at the Forum Monday night.

Taylor seemed to have turned the fight around from the opening seconds of the sixth, starting with a right-left combination that rocked the more aggressive Vaca for the first time in the fight.

But Vaca, bleeding badly from a forehead cut sustained in the butt, was unable to continue. Thus, the verdict went to the judges’ scorecards, where Vaca was a clear winner, by margins of 50-45, 49-46 and 48-47. It goes into the books as a technical decision for Vaca. The Times had Vaca winning every round through five, 50-45.

Vaca (43-8), briefly the World Boxing Council welterweight champion in 1988, beat the Forum’s junior-middleweight champion. Taylor’s record skidded to 14-2.

Vaca (153 3/4 pounds) had for five rounds been the aggressor against Taylor (154), who missed the 154-pound weight limit by three-quarters of a pound at the 11 a.m. weigh-in and had to lose the excess in an hour.

Through five rounds, Vaca backed up Taylor, opened up his defense with trailing right hands and hooks and seemed to be in clear command. But Taylor came out hot for the sixth and seemed to surprise Vaca. The end came after Taylor had connected with a left hand while Vaca was on the ropes.

On Taylor’s follow-through, their heads smacked together, and Vaca got by far the worst of it. Vaca gripped his forehead in pain and blood gushed from behind his gloves. The cut was high on the forehead. Ringside physician Dr. Bernhard Schwartz didn’t give it a long look before signaling referee Lou Moret to stop it.

“It was cut real deep, to the bone--no way he could continue,” Schwartz said. A second ringside physician, Dr. Robert Karns, examined Taylor in the locker room afterward and confirmed Schwartz’s diagnosis. “There was arterial bleeding,” Karns said.

Taylor, from Dallas, seemed lethargic, a distant likeness of the quick, fast-hitting fighter who won the Forum tournament last July. Forum matchmaker Tony Curtis said afterward he wants to match the two again Jan. 28.

Taylor earned $7,500, Vaca $4,000.

In the co-main event, middleweight Reggie Johnson of Long Beach, in pursuit of Michael Nunn’s International Boxing Federation championship, pounded Atlantic City journeyman Ralph Ward (165) nearly at will for seven rounds, after which it was stopped.

Johnson (27-1-1), a well-schooled, competent, left-handed boxer with a booming but seldom-used right jab, found himself matched against a long-armed, awkward fighter with poor balance.

Ward (13-4-1) hit hard enough and often enough to keep Johnson (163) wary, but Johnson’s body shots gradually took their toll over the middle rounds.

Ward’s left eye began to close in the fifth and he also came up with a cut inside his mouth. Johnson, late in the seventh, abandoned his technical game and poured it on. At the bell, as Ward stumbled toward his corner, referee James Jen-Kin signaled for Karns to take a look at Ward and he stopped it.