Been reading up on this era lately, and noticed that these two (at least to me) previously unknown fighters managed to wrack up some pretty impressive-looking wins between them. Petty outpointed a young Daniel Zaragoza twice, stopped the great Hilario Zapata, beat Kelvin Seabrooks with ease, and held both the NABF bantamweight title and the WBC Continental Americas super-bantamweight title. Sandoval twice beat Petty, won the WBA title by becoming the first man to drop Jeff Chandler before stopping him in the 15th, then retired at 26 after taking a beating from Gaby Canizales. Anyone seen much of either of these two guys fight? :bbb
"Little Man" Petty was a superb southpaw technician, outstanding defensive specialist, and something of a perfectionist, his own worst critic continually looking to improve his craft. Had plenty of televised bouts in the early 1980s, and owned Zaragoza, but just couldn't get that deserved world title shot, one of the very best contenders not to obtain such an opportunity in the early 1980s. I'm rather surprised none of those numerous televised matches of his are on-line. Not a particularly exciting battler, but an enjoyable one to watch if you're interested in the technical aspects of the sport. I just Googled the terms "Harold Petty" and "Little Man" together, and came up with exactly one hit, in a five sentence brief by Thomas Rogers of the NY Times from February 3, 1984. This is incredible, as EVERYBODY who was a boxing fan at the time knew that was Harold's nickname. The more time I spend on-line, the more amazed I am at the extraordinarily and increasingly severe limitations of cyberspace.
See this recent thread for thoughts on Sandoval: http://www.eastsideboxing.com/forum/showthread.php?p=9666804 In a nutshell, he was a very talented, but underrated and hard-luck fighter. He was an amateur phenom and a hot favorite to win the upcoming Olympics, but he was deprived the chance when the US boycotted the Olympics that year. Consequently, he turned pro in semi-obscurity, without an Olympic medal to jumpstart his career. He was basically thought of as just a "good TV fighter" heading into his shot at Chandler, but those people "in the know" knew he was really something better, based on his amateur background. Sure enough, he completely outclassed and befuddled Chandler (who was being hyped as one of the top P4P fighters in the world at that time) before scoring a late-round stoppage. He defended his new title a couple of times, then spent some time fighting a couple weight classes above the weight, then made the mistake of dropping back down to defend against the limited but hard-punching slugger Canizales. Canizales dropped him early and Sandoval never really got into the fight after that. Sandoval suffered a brain injury in this fight, which is the reason he never fought again.
chandler's eyes were ****ed by the time he lost to Sandoval. That said, i've always thought he turned in a particularly pathetic, whining performance that day.
Supposedly Chandler was on drugs also.Petty was a damned good fighter who gave Richard Sandoval two good fights back in the days when they had fights on Network TV.
