Bejinez’s Return a Ringing Success : Boxing: After eight years out of the game, he starts slowly but registers a unanimous decision.

Even after eight years, David (El Galan) Bejinez didn’t forget. It just took him a few rounds to get going.

Bejinez, a regular at the old Olympic Auditorium in the 1980s, returned to the ring Wednesday night at the Warner Center Marriott, earning a unanimous six-round decision over Osvaldo Valenzuela in a featherweight bout before a crowd of about 400.

Bejinez, 30, started painstakingly slow, tentatively throwing jabs while waiting to load up a big right hand in the early rounds.

His problem wasn’t nerves. Bejinez said his return “seemed just like the first day I stepped into the ring at the Olympic.”

His problem was timing. And once he found a rhythm, Valenzuela (8-3) didn’t have a chance.

“I started to relax around the third or fourth round,” Bejinez said through an interpreter. “Until then, my arms were tight. I couldn’t get going.”

Valenzuela (8-3-1) scored mostly with counter punches.

Bejinez (18-5) was encouraged enough by his performance to dream about returning to the Olympic to box in a main event.

The way matchups were falling at the Marriott, his was almost the featured event Wednesday.

Only five of the seven scheduled fights came off. Francisco Reos decided less than an hour before his fight that he wasn’t ready to make his pro debut in a lightweight bout against Miguel Angel Ruiz.

At the weigh-in, featherweight Alejandro Gonzalez bowed out after deciding that Paul Paez had too much of an edge in experience.

P.J. Goossen, who was supposed to headline the show in a junior middleweight bout against Ruben Ruiz, pulled out earlier this week because of an illness.

Gerrie Coetzee, promoter of the monthly Marriott shows, planned to turn to light heavyweight contender Gary Ballard as the feature. But Ballard was called off to Hamburg, Germany, for a last-minute World Boxing Organization championship bout against Dariusz (Tiger) Michalczewski on Saturday.

That left Coetzee with two promising super welterweights, Fili Castro and Rodney Jones, for the feature.

They didn’t disappoint.

In an action-packed fight, Jones (9-2) stopped Castro (14-3) with a flurry of punches at 1 minute 52 seconds of the fourth round.

Castro, shorter in stature and reach, attacked Jones inside during the first two rounds, but Jones kept moving, kept jabbing and counter-punching, and, ultimately, wore down his opponent.

The third round ended with Jones pounding away and Castro almost defenseless, gloves down.

Castro tried to work inside in the opening minute of the final round, but Jones made him pay for it, peppering him with shots and splitting his lip.

Robert Galstyan also helped save the night.

Galstyan, from Armenia via Glendale, took only 1 minute 4 seconds to stop Felipe Parra and win his second professional fight.

Much to the delight of more than a hundred Armenian fight fans, Galstyan decked Parra with the first right he threw, then finished him with a solid right to the chest.

Parra (1-4) crumpled in the center of the ring and looked up only to find the nearest exit.

Stan Ward, who trains Galstyan, said he didn’t blame Parra.

“My guy hits like a heavyweight,” said Ward, who was once a heavyweight contender.

In a featherweight bout, Tiger Small (5-2-1) proved style points account for little once inside the ring.

Small, decked out in shorts with black and red tiger stripes, white tassels and a gold sequined tiger, mostly used his white (with red blinkers) high-tops to run around his opponent, Sergio Sanchez, for the duration of a six-round fight.

Sanchez (7-3) managed to catch up with him often enough to score a majority decision.

One judge scored the fight a draw, but the other two gave the advantage to Sanchez.

In a heavyweight bout, Jovo Pudar of Bosnia won a unanimous decision over Roberto Ramirez.