Ruelas Posts Unanimous Decision in Comeback

Featherweight Gabriel Ruelas of Arleta, returning to the boxing ring Saturday for the first time in 13 months after a devastating elbow injury, pounded out a bloody, 10-round unanimous decision over rock-tough Pedro Mendoza of San Diego under a hot sun.

The bout was on the undercard of the Terry Norris-Donald Curry super welterweight championship fight and the Meldrick Taylor-Luis Garcia welterweight title fight. The fights were held in a specially built 7,000-seat arena on the tennis courts of the Radisson Palm Springs Resort.

Ruelas, 20, sustained a possible broken nose in the third round of the brawl and bled heavily in each subsequent round.

In turn, he bloodied Mendoza’s nose with a crushing right hand in the sixth round, and at the final bell both fighters’ white trunks had turned a pinkish color.

The judges scored the fight 99-91, 98-92 and 99-92 for Ruelas, who tagged Mendoza (19-9-2), in the first three rounds with heavy, thudding punches but did not seem to faze the rugged fighter.

In the middle rounds, Mendoza came on, landing heavy blows in the fourth, fifth and sixth rounds and sending Ruelas into a retreat.

But in the seventh Ruelas (22-1) stormed back and began rocking Mendoza again. In the final 30 seconds of the round, Ruelas backed Mendoza against the ropes and pounded him with a dozen jarring blows. For the first time in the fight, Mendoza seemed hurt.

The beating continued in the eighth, ninth and 10th rounds as Ruelas pinned Mendoza against the ropes and rocked him several times with ripping punches to the head and body.

Both fighters weighed 130 pounds.

Ruelas, who began boxing at age 11 at the Ten Goose Boxing Club’s gym in North Hollywood, had built a sensational 21-0 record after turning pro in 1988. On April 14 last year, in a televised bout from Las Vegas against Jeff Franklin, Ruelas suffered a broken elbow.

He had hurt the elbow during training, and reinjured it early in the bout against Franklin. In the seventh round, with the two men in a clinch, Franklin wrenched Ruelas’ right arm violently, snapping the main bone in the elbow.

The resultant loss is the only blemish on Ruelas’ record.

After two operations, Ruelas’ right elbow remains bent, the bone fusing back together in such a manner that he is unable to straighten the joint.

But against Mendoza, he showed in the first round that the punch he had displayed before the injury had not been lost as he landed a crushing straight right to Mendoza’s jaw in the first 30 seconds.

In an earlier bout, Frankie Liles of Sherman Oaks, who also fights out of the Ten Goose Gym, pounded Ralph Ward of Lima, Ohio, and knocked him out with just five seconds left in the fourth round of a 10-round bout.

Liles, 163 1/2, knocked Ward (13-6) down three times in the first round and knocked out Ward’s mouthpiece in the second.

Liles is 19-0 with 10 knockouts.