Chavez Defeats Camacho : Boxing: Mexican champion dominates before a record crowd of 19,100. Nunn wins WBA super-middleweight title.

Julio Cesar Chavez of Mexico aggressively pursued Hector Camacho of Puerto Rico from the opening bell to the last and won a unanimous decision before 19,100 at Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center Saturday night.

Chavez raked Camacho to the body with left hooks throughout, as well as landing lead rights and lefts to the head. Camacho finished with a left eye that was nearly closed, and a cut over his right eye. Chavez had only a cut on the bridge of his nose.

Chavez won his 23rd consecutive championship fight and helped affirm the claim of his partisans, that he is the world’s greatest boxer.

The judges had Chavez winning by 117-111, 119-110 and 120-107. The Times card also had Chavez winning every round, 120-107.

The crowd was the largest indoor boxing crowd in Nevada history. Both 140-pounders earned $3 million.

Chavez easily preserved his World Boxing Council junior-welterweight championship, and implied afterward that he would grant Camacho a rematch, although some might wonder what the point would be, particularly because a Chavez-Meldrick Taylor rematch is said to be in the works.

“I have to give credit to Hector--he was much better than I anticipated,” Chavez said. “I will give him a rematch.”

Said Camacho: “I couldn’t keep him off of me. The pressure he put on me was amazing. He deserves a lot of credit. Yes, I do want a rematch.”

Chavez, depending on who is keeping track, raised his record to either 82-0 or 81-1. Camacho slipped to 40-2.

In a 12-round title fight on the undercard, former middleweight champion Michael Nunn took Victor Cordoba’s World Boxing Assn. super-middleweight (168 pounds) title with a close decision.

As expected, the Camacho-Chavez fight was a footrace, with Camacho retreating around the ring. There was little activity at center ring, but Chavez caught him often in the corners or on the ropes, and there he punished him.

Chavez, who had said that merely defeating Camacho wouldn’t be enough (“I want to punish him.”) was uncharacteristically aggressive at the opening bell, opening up in hot pursuit of a man he had been waiting to fight since the mid-1980s.

Camacho started off keeping a busy right jab in Chavez’s face as he retreated during the first, but Chavez was all over him. No one in boxing mixes punches to the body and head as effectively as Chavez, and on Saturday night he put on a clinic.

Once, during the sixth round, he caught Camacho on the ropes and hit him with a solid left hook to the head that snapped Camacho’s head back and caused him to drop his hands. But instead of coming back to the head with a follow, Chavez landed a right to Camacho’s mid-section.

On several occasions, the exhausted Camacho would cover up his head with his gloves on the ropes, and Chavez would rip away to the body. Had Camacho not fought back throughout, referee Richard Steele probably would have stopped the fight.

Camacho bravely strutted and raised his right arm to the crowd early in the fight, as the rounds ended. But when the sixth ended, he returned to his stool, head down, his left eye swollen and his mouth agape.

In the late rounds, Camacho’s right jabs had lost their steam--not they they helped much anyway. But by the eighth round, Camacho’s jabs were using up his dwindling energy reserves, they weren’t scoring points for him and, even worse, Chavez was walking right through them.

Chavez seemed to tire early in the eighth round, his ferocious pace slowing a bit. But he hurt Camacho with an uppercut late in the round, turned up the volume again, and dominated Camacho over the last 30 seconds of the round.

The knockout the pro-Chavez crowd wanted so badly almost came during the 12th. A long lead Chavez right sent Camacho reeling along the ropes, but he regained his balance. Then the same thing occurred, seconds later. And even then, Camacho fought back, throwing punches through the pain.

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Thunderous boos rolled out of the stands when the decision for Nunn was announced. Two judges had it for Nunn, 114-113 and 114-112, but another had Cordoba, 114-112, the same as The Times’ card. Referee Mills Lane took a point away from Cordoba for a low punch during the ninth round.

In what developed into an exciting, hard-hitting match, Cordoba was much the stronger fighter in the early rounds while Nunn seemed to have an edge in the stretch because of his superior physical condition.

Nunn was nearly knocked out during the second round, first by a right-left Cordoba combination that had Nunn reeling for the duration of the round.

And during the 10th, after Nunn seemed to take over, Cordoba flattened him with a left hook. Nunn arose smiling, however, and finished the round.

Nunn, who lost his middleweight championship on a knockout loss to James Toney 16 months ago, is 38-1. Cordoba fell to 18-4-2.

Also, heavyweight Francesco Damiani moved to 30-1 with an easy decision over Greg Page, 35-11. Damiani knocked Page’s mouthpiece out nine times.

At least, everyone in the crowd thought it was easy--except for judges Jerry Roth, Dave Moretti and Art Lurie. They all scored it for Damiani, but by only 95-93, which meant the two points referee Carlos Padilla deducted from Page for spitting out his mouthpiece cost him the fight.

Los Angeles heavyweight King Ipitan improved to 6-0 with a loudly booed four-round decision over another Los Angeles fighter, Barry Forbes, who is 6-4-1. Ipitan had to chase Forbes, who appeared more interested in trying to avoid being knocked out than in winning.