Hernandez Is a Cut Above Foe : Boxing: Corner able to patch up champion on his way to title defense.

In a bloody, foul-marred fight, Genaro Hernandez of Los Angeles survived 12 rounds of head butts, lacing and thumbing and emerged with a decision over Omar Catari of Venezuela Monday night at the Forum.

Hernandez, in his first defense of the junior-lightweight championship, was cut over both eyes at two points in the fight. But he was saved each time by corner work by his cutman, John Montes Sr., who stopped both cuts completely before the 10th round.

Hernandez, before a crowd of 6,087, won his 25th consecutive victory as a pro without a loss, while the brawling Catari, a Venezuelan who won a bronze medal at the 1984 Olympics, dropped to 10-4 in the World Boxing Assn. title fight.

Catari (129 1/2 pounds), who is shorter and more powerfully built than the surprisingly light Hernandez (126 1/2), ducked inside on Hernandez throughout the fight and seemed to use his head as a weapon as often as his fists.

After he opened a free-flowing cut over the champion’s eye in the fourth round, he often seemed to use the palm side of his glove and sometimes his thumb on the cut. Referee Larry Rozadilla took a point away from Catari in the sixth for repeated head butts, but it didn’t stop their frequency.

Hernandez, who earned $95,000 to Catari’s $10,000, created a lot of problems himself. By not moving laterally enough, Hernandez enabled Catari to simply wait for Hernandez to miss, then duck inside, grab the 5-foot-11 Hernandez and either hit, butt or lace him.

Two minutes into the first round, Catari had drawn his first warning from Rozadilla, for a low blow. And at the end of the round, Hernandez was already complaining to Rozadilla about Catari’s head butts.

When a butt opened up the cut on the outside of his right brow, the wound became steadily worse, at Catari’s urging.

But with Montes working wonders in the champion’s corner, Hernandez fought his way through the tough mid-rounds and nearly ended the fight in the eighth. Then, he had Catari on the verge of being knocked out but couldn’t finish him.

The judges scored it for Hernandez by margins of 116-111, 116-112 and 115-112. The Times card gave Hernandez every round, 120-107.

Hernandez, unbeaten for eight years, had flu last Thursday. He said afterward he wasn’t at full strength.

“I definitely made it a tougher fight than it should have been,” he said. “My (lighter) weight had something to do with it. It was a terrible fight, but I learned a lot.”

On the undercard, hard-hitting light-flyweight Jesus Chong of Los Angeles knocked out Francisco Montiel of Los Mochis, Mexico, at 1:47 of the 11th round.