The Telefutura FNF offering from Tucson, Arizona country tossed us a twin-bill of small club IBA championship action - and when the smoke cleared it was Tomas Villa taking home the super bantam strap and Freddy Hernandez retaining his welter bauble.  

Curtain opens with both Tomas Villa (age 24) and Adolfo Landeros (age 28) willingly swapping jabs and right hands in a standoff - continues hot and heavy into stanza two with Villa having the edge. 

Round four begins with Landeros still in search of a winning stanza but is again out-muscled by the physically stronger Villa - the punctuation late in the round, a Villa right hand that staggers his game opponent. 

Goes the full ten stanzas with Villa claiming the win by unanimous verdict of 98-92, 97-93, 97-93. 

Closing comments:

• Tomas Villa ( 19-5-4, 12 KO)  and Adolfo Landeros (18-10-1, 9KO) fit in nicely at the small club level. The IBA strap a bonus to the winner - but shortage of skills make both entertaining but more brawler than boxers. Not a chance for either among a hotbed of serious talent at Super Bantamweight.

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Feature attraction pitted Freddy Hernandez with veteran Norberto Bravo in a 12 round IBA welter mismatch that saw Hernandez in control from start to finish - the tale of the tape pretty much summed up a foregone conclusion. 

Hernandez at age 29, with 23-1 with 18 KOs facing the age 37 war horse Bravo with tainted rap sheet 25-15-3, 14 KOs went as expected. Hernandez gobbled up the early stanzas using height and reach behind a rat-tat-tat left jab and backed with straight right hands. 

Missing from the Hernandez offense is firepower - the round ten and eleven knockdowns were courtesy of solid right hand body punches to a tiring Bravo - still, the old pro, battered or not, managed to make it to the wire. 

The post fight scoring boggled the mind when announced as a split decision for Hernandez - wasn’t until later, the revised (accurate) results went unanimous Hernandez 118-107, 118-106, 118-106 - my unofficial had it Hernandez 119-107 ( 11-1 in rounds). 

Post Scripts:

• Hernandez ~ IBA champion as good as he gets. Much too slow and the power shortage will not get it done among the elite at 147 and above.

• Bravo ~ old school courage but the rap sheet doesn’t speak with forked tongue. Needs to call it no-mas.

• Referees - Rocky Burke ~ have said it before and say it again - somebody gift this fool with a pencil and seat at ring apron. Has himself action Villa-Landeros - a mismatch, but non-stop flailing - and there’s numb-nuts shouting “break” before they are tied up.

• Main event man in charge Tony Zaino was holding up well over the early rounds - bingo! Come midstream this hack catches himself a severe case of Burke virus and goes ballistic with the house rules. A one sided busy affair with Bravo running out of gas - and Tony baloney wants more than they have to offer.

Oh, well, there’s New York, New York - and there’s outta town Tucson, AZ. 
 

GEL