Padilla Stops Foe in Fourth Round : Boxing: Junior-welterweight improves to 20-1-1 with 13th consecutive victory.

For five years, between boxing careers, Zack Padilla toiled in the real world.

He operated a shovel. He worked on loading docks. He pushed paint brushes. He nailed roofs together.

Not much fun.

Saturday night, before 2,347 at the Olympic Auditorium, Padilla relied on past work experience to defeat Dwayne Swift in a junior-welterweight bout.

Padilla (20-1-1), scored a technical knockout over Swift (41-16) in the fourth round, shortly after Padilla knocked him down with a left hand.

It was Padilla’s 13th consecutive victory since ending his five-year retirement in 1991. Next for Padilla is an April match in the Netherlands against an opponent to be determined. And after that, there might be an August match against World Boxing Council welterweight champion Pernell Whitaker.

Padilla said afterward that Swift eventually fell to an old sucker play.

“I was going hard to his body, trying to get him to lower his bands to block me, then I was going to go up to his chin,” he said.

“That’s what happened . . . but I really hurt him with a right hand to the stomach just before I took him out.”

It was the first fight of the year for Padilla, 30, who fought five times in 1993.

“I want to fight a lot more often,” he said. “When I sit around and get bored, I eat too much. I get out of shape. I’m still trying to get over Christmas and New Year’s--people handing me food all the time.”

It seemed to some Saturday that Padilla didn’t have the snap on his punches he normally does, and he acknowledged that he’s been in better shape.

He started off in uncharacteristic fashion, jabbing and boxing Swift for maybe half of the first round. But after he stung Swift with a straight right hand and a left hook, Swift backed up.

Swift rocked Padilla with 15 seconds to go in the first with a right, but Padilla was never in serious difficulty.

Early in the second, Swift was holding on. But when he fought back, Padilla suddenly had crispness and snap to his punches.

By the third, Swift was lying on the ropes, covering up. Padilla was landing short, close-range right uppercuts at will.

Said Swift: “He threw a lot of punches and he wore me out. I had no trouble hitting him, but I didn’t expect him to throw that many punches.”