Ruelas Stopped on TKO in Fifth

Arturo Gatti, almost out on his feet in the fourth round, stormed back in the fifth to knock down and stop Gabriel Ruelas and retain the IBF junior lightweight championship Saturday night.

It was a war, especially in the last two rounds of the scheduled 12-round bout on the Lennox Lewis-Andrew Golota undercard.

In another bout, Fernando Vargas of Oxnard stopped Alex Quiroga of Miami at 2:53 of the sixth round.

Ruelas, 27, of Sylmar, nailed Gatti with two right uppercuts late in the fourth round and followed with more punches that had Gatti reeling. But Gatti would not go down and the bell came to his rescue.

For the first two minutes of the fifth round, Gatti, 25, of Jersey City, N.J., and Ruelas went toe-to-toe before an approving crowd.

The boxers were in the midst of a furious exchange when Gatti nailed Ruelas with a left hook to the jaw that dropped Ruelas in a heap. Ruelas struggled up at the count of eight.

Referee Benjy Esteves took one look at Ruelas and stopped the fight at 2:22 of the round.

“It was a very hard fight,” Gatti said. “It could have gone either way, but I expected it that way. He hurt me in the fourth round.”

Ruelas said that when he had Gatti hurt, “I had a flash of some hard times.”

When Ruelas defended the WBC 130-pound title on May 6, 1995 against Jimmy Garcia, Garcia collapsed in the 11th round and died 13 days later.

Ruelas and Gatti weighed in at the class limit of 130 pounds at the official weigh-in Thursday. But a few hours before the fight, Gatti reportedly weighed 146 pounds and Ruelas 145 1/2.

Gatti’s third successful defense gave him a 29-1 record with 24 knockouts. Ruelas, a former WBC 130-pound champion, is 44-4 with 23 knockouts.

Two U.S. Olympians won on the undercard.

Vargas, 149, raked Quiroga, 153, with body punches and sharp blows to the head before stopping him in the sixth round.

Antonio Tarver, 178, of Orlando, Fla., knocked down Berry Butler, 180, of Greenville, S.C., in the first round and won a six-round unanimous decision.

Tarver and Vargas were members of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team. The 12 members of that team now have a combined 91-0 record as pros.