Ruelas Bids Painful Adieu to Country Club in Win

They threw a going-away party for Rafael Ruelas at the Country Club in Reseda on Tuesday. Among the invited guests was Vicente Gonzalez, who was asked to bring a little punch.

Gonzalez, however, brought a lot of punch.

Ruelas, in his final tuneup bout before he steps out of the relative obscurity of the Country Club and into the big time with a North American Boxing Federation featherweight title bout next month, won a unanimous decision over Gonzalez in the 10-round bout. But along the way he was rocked by some heavy punches, punches Gonzalez was not supposed to have.

The two fought last May, and Ruelas stopped Gonzalez after five rounds, taking no more than a few solid blows. But this time, Gonzalez brought a sledgehammer of a right hand and consistently used it to pound Ruelas.

He did it in the second round, stopping Ruelas in his tracks. He did it again in the second round, also, stinging the young Ruelas with five or six heavy rights.

Gonzalez, 127 pounds, dropped the hammer on Ruelas again in the sixth round and in the 10th, two rights sent Ruelas, 128, reeling into the ropes, where Gonzalez delivered several more hard shots.

However, Ruelas weathered each storm. And between Gonzalez’s storms Ruelas ripped dozens of hard, crisp punches of his own to dominate the scoring and win the decision easily on the scorecards.

Ruelas, 19, is 24-0 with 20 knockouts as he heads into his first five-digit paycheck fight March 31 in Las Vegas against former featherweight champion Stevie Cruz.

Gonzalez is 13-10-2.

In the first bout of the night, light heavyweight Joey DeGrandis, of Van Nuys, knocked out Marco Dickson of Sacramento at 1 minute 49 seconds of the first round.

DeGrandis is 7-1 with three knockouts. Dickson is 0-2.

In the final bout, heavyweight Rocky Pepeli of Burbank was stopped in the fourth round of a scheduled six-round by the heavy punches of ex-kickboxer Cash McCallum of Los Angeles. Pepeli is 10-3-1. It was McCallum’s pro boxing debut.

Also, unbeaten super middleweight Frank Liles scored a unanimous but lackluster decision over Robert Carson of Los Angeles in a six-round bout. Liles is 15-0; Carson is 11-7-2.