Pepeli Wins With a Knockout in 6th Round to Reverse Tide

In nearly 18 minutes of heavy combat, Rocky Pepeli of Burbank was involved in perhaps 100 heavy punches.

Well, his face was involved in 100 heavy punches.

His left hand was involved in one, however, and that one ended the fight.

Pepeli knocked out Troy Baudoin of Los Angeles with one second remaining in the sixth round of a scheduled 10-round heavyweight bout Tuesday night at the Country Club in Reseda.

Pepeli had absorbed a beating in each round, losing all but one on the three judges’ score cards. But in the closing seconds of the sixth, he backed Baudoin into a neutral corner and caught him flush on the chin with a whistling left. Baudoin crumbled to the mat where he was counted out.

Pepeli, 226 pounds, is 12-3-1 with 10 knockouts. Baudoin, 229, fell to 6-3.

“Nobody can take a punch like I can,” Pepeli said. “That takes the fight out of a guy as much as getting hit by a punch--to land your best punch and I’m still standing there looking at him. I could see his expression changing when I didn’t go down.

“I kept pressuring him in the sixth round. I got him backing up and then I let my hand go. There was no doubt at all when it landed. I knew he wouldn’t be getting up.”

In an earlier bout, middleweight Joey DeGrandis of Van Nuys took a major step up against Greg Dickson of Los Angeles and overwhelmed him to win a unanimous eight-round decision. Dickson, 157, came into the fight with a record of 22-2-1 with 190 knockouts. One of his losses came against Reggie Johnson, the No. 1 contender in the International Boxing Federation rankings.

DeGrandis, 160, won nearly every round as he avoided Dickson’s heavy punches and landed consistently with lefts and rights.

DeGrandis is 11-1.

In another bout, unbeaten Frank Liles of Sherman Oaks ran his record to 21-0 by stopping Hector Zaragoza of Tijuana at 1 minute 37 seconds of the second round. Liles, 165, opened a huge cut over the left eye of Zaragoza and the ringside doctor stopped the bout. Zaragoza, 164, is 18-4.