Ruelases Make Short Work of Opponents at Country Club

Certainly other brothers have had as much fun as Rafael and Gabriel Ruelas of Arleta did Tuesday night.

The Marx brothers, for example, had a chuckle or two. And Wally and the Beaver had a snicker now and then as Ward looked on menacingly.

But for pure adrenaline-laced, wide-eyed thrills and excitement, the Ruelases’ act at the Country Club in Reseda would be hard to top.

Rafael kicked off the show with a blood-bath victory in a lightweight bout over enormously overmatched Juan de La Paz of Ontario, sending a torrent of blood from his nose with the first punch of the fight--a left hook--and then battering De La Paz mercilessly until referee Larry Rosadilla could stand no more and stopped it at 1 minute 38 seconds of the second round.

Rafael, fighting for the first time since the first loss of his career on July 30, fought with abandon from the opening bell, throwing every punch in his arsenal and landing nearly all of them, much to the chagrin of the overwhelmed De La Paz and many ringside spectators who were forced to cover up from the steady flow of blood.

And that was the hard part of the act for the Ruelas brothers.

Just moments after Rafael’s fight was stopped, older (by 10 months) brother Gabriel stepped into the ring for a junior lightweight fight. He knocked Ascencion Lugo of Phoenix down with the second punch he threw, a seemingly innocent left hook.

Lugo got quickly to his feet and pleaded--to no avail--with the referee that it was not a knockdown, only a slip.

Moments later, Ruelas landed that left hook’s older and stronger cousin, a crushing punch that caught Lugo flush on the jaw and knocked him out as he stood, the body falling a moment later with all the grace of a mannequin toppling off its platform in a department store.

Gabriel’s knockout came at 1:58 of the first round.

“They were OK, weren’t they?” Joe Goossen, trainer of the Ruelas brothers, asked about their fallen opponents.

In the first bout, Rafael 28-1 with 23 knockouts, came out firing with both hands and quickly turned his scheduled 10-round bout into a mismatch. De La Paz threw only 12 punches in the first round, and only two of those found any part of Ruelas, 134 1/2. In contrast, Ruelas punched non-stop from the opening bell, unloading more than 60 heavy, thudding blows as the bleeding De La Paz, 135, sought to cover up.

By the end of the first round, both fighters were bathed in blood, all of it belonging previously to De La Paz. Even the fighters’ white shoes had turned crimson from the blood.

The beating continued with the same fury in the second round and midway through the round Rosadilla had seen enough and stopped it, ruling the fight “non-competitive.”

“No one expected Ruelas to come out like the damn Raging Bull,” said De La Paz cornerman Jeff Evans.

Gabriel Ruelas executed a much more surgical strike against his opponent, knocking Lugo (10-5-2) out with a single punch.

“I felt that punch all the way up to my shoulder,” said Ruelas, who is 26-1 with 14 knockouts. “I just felt so strong tonight.”