Johnny 'The Matchstick Man' Owen tribute

RIP.

The book "The Big IF" is a great read on Johnny Owen

 

I was reading this today too. Great little fighter. His statue is in Merthyr Tydfil Precinct. Tragic end for a really nice guy.

 

Colin Jones sparred with him.

 

The road to Owen v Pintor was very controversial in the fact that Pintor profited from one the biggest robbery in boxing history against Carlos Zarate in '79 ..

Everytime i watch that i cant believe what im seeing, the scoring was insane,

Judge 1 had it 143 - 142 Pintor
Judge 2 had it 143 - 142 Pintor
Judge 3 had it 145 - 133 Zarate
The Associated Press had it 147 - 138 Zarate

I always have Zarate winning by at least 8 rounds .. The point is Johnny Owen was on course to face Zarate before Zarate was jobbed, i know there were fights in between but Zarate was a top line fighter and he was more of a surgeon than the durable, consistently hard puncher in Pintor ..

Its all 'what ifs' and 'maybes', but it might not have turned out so tragic if Owen was facing Zarate instead of Pintor that night ..

This in no way means im not a fan of Lupe Pintor, he starred in my favourite fight of all time against Wilfredo Gomez ..

When the fixers fix fights it can lead to terrible consequences ..

 

Thats certainly an angle on both the Pintor - Zarate and Owen fights that I hadn't in anyway considered...great post :thumbsup

 

RIP

I'll have to get hold of 'The Big IF'.
That one was a really sad story. I remember the guy or his brother visited Owen's family home in Wales, and Owen's old man visited the guy's gym in Mexico.

 

Owen was one tough *******, even though he looked like nothing.

He's the identikit case of a a person being too tough for their own good, which was exasperated (so I read) by the fact he had a really thick jaw bone. So he stayed upright but the damage was already done. Similar to Meldrick Taylor against JCC.

 

Also simliar to Gerald McCllellan.

If McCllellan had been a average jawed fighter Benn would have not have had to dish so much abuse onto him for so long. That guy took more flush punches from Benn than anyone.

 

There was a brilliant tribute in The Times this week.

It is a small comfort, but it is good to know, that an incident like this thankfully could not happen again to a BBB of C licence holder.

Lupe Pintor as well deserves a lot of credit. He comes across as a rather classy individual in the documentary on the story. As does Johnny's late Father.

 

Lupe unveiled Johnnys statue at Johnnys dads request. Can't recommend the book highly enough.

 

Rip

 

Owen was a quality fighter, who cane along in arguably Bantamweights greatest era (though I give the Jofre-Harada-Olivares-Rose-Rudkin days the edge) who looked very good against a truly Elite operator like Pintor.

Terrible ending. Just, so, so sad.

Axl_Nose, I agree wholeheartedly about Zarate-Pintor. Shocking robbery.