Hembrick, Pepeli Take Different Routes to Victory

It seemed strange. Here was Anthony Hembrick, the 1988 Olympian who became famous in Seoul for missing a bus, and yet Tuesday night at the Country Club in Reseda he seldom missed Israel Cole’s head, which is nowhere near bus-size.

Go figure.

Hembrick, one of the rising stars in the light heavyweight division who is ranked 17th by the World Boxing Assn., pounded out a laughably easy eight-round decision over Cole, hitting him with nearly every punch he threw.

Only in the third round, however, did Hembrick cause much damage. He rocked Cole with a straight right and then sent him stumbling around the ring with a series of lightning-quick lefts and rights. Cole made it to the bell, however, although for the remaining five rounds he just could not seem to get his head out of the way of Hembrick’s fists.

Hembrick ran his record to 16-1, the lone loss coming last year to Booker Word. Cole, of Las Vegas, is 12-7-4.

Hembrick, 178 1/2 pounds, started slowly, throwing few punches in the first two rounds. But the few he threw landed flush on Cole’s face. In the third he began throwing heavy punches, catching Cole midway through the round, and then coasted to the easy win.

“No doubt I was quicker,” Hembrick said. “I’m one of the quickest light heavyweights in the division.”

If only he had been so quick in Seoul.

Hembrick was the United States’ light heavyweight in the 1988 Olympics and was thought to have a strong shot at the gold medal. But he jumped onto the front pages immediately when he missed the bus from his hotel on the day of his first scheduled fight and was disqualified from the competition after the forfeit.

In a four-round heavyweight bout, Rocky Pepeli of Burbank, hammered out a tough and bloody decision over Vince Jones of Houston.

Pepeli, 224, and Jones, 212, traded crushing punches in the first two rounds. Near the end of the second round, Pepeli began bleeding heavily from a cut on his forehead caused by a head butt.

In the third, Jones lost a point because of another head butt.

Pepeli had to survive more than a dozen frighteningly heavy punches in the first two rounds. He appeared hurt by a few of the hard blows, but each time came back with his own heavy punches, stopping Jones in his tracks.

Pepeli is 10-2-1; Jones 6-3.

In another heavyweight fight, Jimmy Ellis of Redondo Beach stopped Greg Gorrell of Wichita, Kan., at 1:03 of the second round of a scheduled eight-round fight.

In an earlier bout, Joey DeGrandis of Van Nuys scored a six-round unanimous decision over Fred Thomas of Los Angeles in a super middleweight bout.

DeGrandis, 163, landed the cleaner punches in every round en route to the easy win. He is 6-1. Thomas is 4-5.

In the quickest fight of the night, Frank Liles, who built a 14-0 record fighting out of Kronk Gym in Detroit, ran his record to 15-0 by stopping overmatched Tim Williams of San Diego at 2:11 of the first round.