Lets talk Tony Baltazar Jr.

This guy could PUNCH!

Lets talk resume first.

He had a sterling amateur career with apparently hundreds of fights and very very few losses.

He was brought up on a steady diet of low level opposition. Apparently he had been sparring the likes of Olivares, Danny Lopez, Pintor, Davila and Sandoval since he was 15yo. He reeled off 24 fights without loss before dramatically stepping up in class to fight the extremely highly regarded Howard Davis Jr. He dropped Davis hard twice and staggered him another time before losing a unanimous decision. Davis himself said the 8-2 card was ridiculous and he felt it was a 6-4 fight. Davis only remembered one knock down admitting that was due to how hard Tony hit him. It was a very close affair.

Tony was not long after stopped (in a war) by Rockin' Robin Blake (he of the pink trunks) who had been making some nice noise of his own in the era of himself, Baltazar, Jimmy Paul, Ruben Munoz, Tyrone Crawley, the two Charlie Browns and Harry Arroyo. The group make some good music together with many an exciting bout.

Two fights later he beat Roger Mayweather by decision who was coming back from losing his title to Rocky Lockridge in just 90 seconds. The decision was seen as a robbery i believe.

Then the bad. Not long after Mayweather Baltazar (who was now apparently mingling with celebs and delving into booze and coke) crashed a car drunk that killed his best friend and did 3 1/2 years jail time.

He reeled off a handful of wins around welterweight when he came back and took on Buddy McGirt at 147. Buddy was 4 fights deep in his post Taylor comeback and about 2 years short of beating Simon Brown for the title.

Baltazar dropped McGirt hard in the 2nd stanza but Buddy weathered the storm and outboxed him.

McGirt mentioned Tony in a Best I Faced article when talking best punchers.

He stated -

BM - "I went down against Tony Baltazar, and for seven rounds I didn’t know where I was or who I was fighting. When I looked up it was Round 9 and I said to my manager, ‘How did we get to round nine?’ He said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ He said, “Keep boxing.’ I won every round after I got knocked down but I don’t remember anything from the fight to this day."

It's safe to say by this time Baltazar was above his best weight and past his very best. He lost a decision to Hector Camacho at 140 for the WBO title about a year later. His career went all south from there.

Footnotes -

Frankie, his brother, was also a fair boxer finishing his career at 39-3-1. Besides being stopped by Bazooka Limon he didn't have much filler in there however.

Baltazar lost his 6yo son aged 6 in 2001 to a rare blood disease. During this battle he had developed a foundation for kids with this disease and it might still be going i think. At one point he was also doing work for the Canadian government talking to kids on an Indian reservation about the perils of drugs and gangs.

The big thing boxing wise for me regarding Tony is that he is one of the hardest punchers to ever fight at 135. His left hook was sheer devastation and it's power was evident on world class fighters like McGirt even above Tony's best weight.

Tho not a great or even "very good" fighter that hook deserves mention when power and left hooks are being talked about. Like plenty of other huge punchers (Shavers, Hart etc etc etc) his overall abilities around that power were just not good enough to take true advantage of such an asset. History is littered with them but man how they could hit.

I was originally going to talk about Tony and his hook in the hook thread recently but thought i may as well just start one for him and make a little story of it.

 

Thanks Jel!!!! That group of guys i named had some really top fights together. Baltazar - Blake is a top fight. From memory Tony had him in a spot of bother at one point. I must re-watch it myself.

 

Pretty sure i remember him in here.

 

Hard to beat that!!!!