18 years ago today: John Lee Anthony "Mi Vida Loca" Tapia vs. Juan Manuel "El Mantecas" Rubio Medina

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From the HBO BAD vault.

(...goddamn, I miss those guys...)

Hardly the most important fight of either man's career, by a damn sight. It also wasn't particularly sensational - but also not that bad to watch, lest you be scared off from giving it a gander. In terms of action this one is okay. What makes it notable is the controversy around it. When you look at the sum array of differing opinions from the official judges, the commentators, fan scorecards on aggregator websites like EyeOnTheRing, comments on YouTube, and contemporary journalistic publications - there's quite a bit of disagreement on what people are seeing here. Some view it as rather clearly Medina (who broke his own 126lber record on Comp-U-Box here, throwing nearly fifteen hundred) being robbed. Others behold a close but clear win for Tapia.

I'm too busy at the moment but will knock a scorecard in here soon enough. Johnny is on my personal boxing Mt. Rushmore, but I'm planning to give ol' Butters his fair shake here.

Interesting tidbit: Jim Lampley, at 6:41, clearly means to refer to Prince Naz, but mistakenly articulates the name of Tapia not once but twice in place of Hamed's. Really strange that, failing himself catching it mid-sentence, neither Merchant nor Steward corrected this pretty enormous gaffe. I guess they probably developed a habit of tuning out their coworker's meandering (if generally informative) asides.

 

...or go fuck myself...cool.