Hernandez Pounds Overmatched Harris Into Unconsciousness

Junior lightweight Carlos Hernandez of Bellflower gave an overmatched and inexperienced Bernard Harris of Detroit a beating before stopping him in the eighth round, eventually knocking him unconscious Monday night at the Pond.

The fight was finally stopped at 2 minutes 26 seconds of the eighth round by Harris’ manager, Jackie Kallen, who formerly managed world champion James Toney.

“He’s a strong-minded kid,” Kallen said. “He’d fight till his last breath. I was thinking after the seventh it was probably enough, that it would be better to have him around to fight another fight.”

After referee James Jen-Kin stepped in, Harris went to a neutral corner and then collapsed. He remained motionless on his back for five minutes. He was taken out of the ring on a stretcher with an oxygen mask covering his face. Dr. Robert Karns said Harris eventually began responding to commands while in the ambulance.

“He suffered a seizure in the ring,” Karns said. “He gradually began to improve without us doing anything. That’s usually a good sign. If there’s any bleeding [in the brain], he wouldn’t have responded like that.”

Harris was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange.

“He had a CAT scan,” Karns said. “He’s alert. He’s fine. He’ll probably go home tomorrow.”

Kallen tried to stop the bout after the seventh round, but Harris wanted to continue. Dr. Michael DeLuca entered the corner and decided to give Harris one more round.

“He was frustrated,” Kallen said. “He said, ‘I can’t get off.’ He was frustrated and embarrassed.”

Harris entered the ring with only 11 professional fights--winning 10 and drawing one. Hernandez was 23-1-1 and the World Boxing Organization’s No. 6 contender.

“He begged for this fight,” Kallen said. “It’s easy to say now we shouldn’t have made it.”

Hernandez won every round easily and went through Harris’ punches easily. He scored often with punishing body punches and hard combinations to Harris’ head. Hernandez said he knew early on that he was simply too strong for Harris.

“They stopped it too late,” Hernandez said. “I wasn’t playing with the guy but I was taking it easy. They should have stopped it in the fourth or fifth round. I feel bad for him and his family. That’s the part of the sport I hate. But it’s part of the sport. It’s either me or him. I just pray no one gets hurt.”

Bill Slayton, Hernandez’s trainer, said he was worried about Harris’ condition from the early rounds on.

“If I was in his corner, I’d have stopped it a long time ago,” Slayton said. “He was taking a lot of shots.”

In the other 10-round fight, before an announced crowd of 2,845, super flyweight Alejandro Montiel (34-3) of Los Mochis, Mexico, scored an unimpressive and unpopular 10-round unanimous decision over Miguel Granados (17-6-1) of Mexico City. Granados was hurt by having two points taken away by referee Larry Rozadilla for low blows and hitting after the bell.

In a junior featherweight bout, Jorge Eliecer Julio (36-1) of Colombia knocked out Felipe Castillo (10-17) of Mexico City in the fourth round with a crunching overhand right.