I appreciate you posting that Scartissue. I knew nothing of the man other than watching him get shredded against Napoles. He had a hell of a lot of scalps on his resume. He had to be good. Now I know better.
I was intrigued while reading one of Pruitt's answers about the Nicolino Loche fight. Sometime back some posters were drooling over the youtube 15th round of Loche-Cervantes I. That is all that is out there on that fight, which the Argentine judges all scored 15-0 for Loche. Well I mention on that thread that i thought Cervantes won that round and i think they wanted to string me up, like I had just defaced an idol in the town square. I explained that Loche did not throw any punches in that round, all he did was act cute and I don't give points for acting cute. Then i read Pruitt saying, all Loche did was the slip and slide, nothing else (acting cute = the old slip and slide). One does begin to connect the dots. i'll always say Loche was an all-time great, but one does have to wonder now about the 'home-cooking' element.
At the risk of the same lynch mob coming after me, I agree. I also think Locche was more circus clown than fighter. Possibly my least favorite fighter to watch ever.
Locche may still be the best in the pocket defender I've ever seen, but I doubt his style would travel well. It's just not built to win on the road. Make guys look silly? Yes. Outscoring the other man enough to capture a road decision where the benefit of the doubt goes to the guy throwing? That'd have been much tougher.
Ive got more of the Locche-Cervantes 1 fight than just the last round and the everything I have shows Locche doing nothing but dodging. There is zero offense by him. I also have a very long highlight of the Locche-Pruitt fight and Pruitt is right, Locche just tries to look cute and pander to his hometown fans. Pruitt was the one making the fight. Ive said numerous times and stick to it: Locche used to be one of my favorite fighters based on the limited footage we have of him here in the states. As soon as I started digging up more and more on him the less impressed I was. He's great defensively but when he was at home and didnt have to anything but survive to win a decision thats all he did. Im sure he was better than his hometown performances indicate, or at least that he could fight better than that but considering the vast majority of his big wins are on home turf I have to question how well he would have done if he were forced to actually throw punches thereby leaving himself vulnerable.
