Quite an interesting little battle this one. Alli dished out a whole lot more offensive success in spurts than the callers gave him credit for. He also showed enormous determination, gritting his teeth many times while hurt and thrashing back, with quite good speed at times. Tho Chavez always in control and Alli was never going to get home the stoppage was a pretty shitty one. Hesitation allowed Alli to start winging again and Chavez to pull out of their with no chance of a fix. A worthy little scrap.
............My standout memory of that fight was the first round. Alii, as he always did, came out winging like a madman, and Chavez calmly picked off many punches while absorbing a few, all the while the Showtime analysts describing how he'd been told by doctors that he'd had an abnormally thick skull (insert joke here). Chavez, while throwing almost nothing back, still seemed in contol, like the neighborhood bully up against the small kid that had been cornered and forced to fight for his life. Then, toward the end of the round, Chavez threw a single right hand, and Alli's legs folded comically. Somehow he didn't go down, fighting back with a ton of spirit, but it was a quick message from Julio that there would be no real contest that day. He sent the message then and there that he could and would hurt Alli any time the mood hit him.
Your memory is spot on, tho Alli foiled a few offensive efforts when Chavez opened up. It was indeed just a matter of time tho. Alli went in saying he could take a punch and he didn't think Chavez hit THAT hard, which puts a bit of an ironic twist on the right hand you described.
I seem to remember it being pretty one-sided actually, but my memory has been known to fail me in the past. Chavez was something else back then though, eh? Those long lefts under the short rib...wow. I seem to remember Chavez nailing Alli with 4 or 5 consecutive left hooks - upstairs and downstairs - in the 5th round. It was a pretty impressive performance, but Alli was as gutsy as heck, one cannot deny that.
Eh, Alli's offense wasn't having any effect on Chavez, so while Alli was throwing and landing and while he was brave and determined as hell, (for one thing I've never seen a guy just shrug off getting his mouthpiece constantly knocked out, I think Julio knocked it clean out of his mouth three times, once it was caught in the air by Bobby Czyz who was doing commentary for Showtime) he didn't have a chance to have any success even if the reports I heard that Chavez hurt his right in the bout are true. (I remember reading Chavez had his right in a cast after the bout, and there is a time or two where he shook the right after throwing a punch, as if it was bothering him). All that having been said, very bad stoppage by the ref. If he'd stepped in 5 seconds earlier when it looking like Chavez was battering Alli after Alli got up from a knockdown, fine. Understandable, even if Alli has his guard up and was blocking many of those shots. Instead because of the hesitation in getting in there he waits until Alli has had a chance to start to throw back and show he can still fight. Probably a merciful stoppage because Alli would have kept going even when he was being physically dominated and dismantled, but the execution of the stoppage was horrendous.
I watched this fight not too long ago. I thought Alli gave a gutty effort and had his moments, but Chavez was always a step ahead. I felt that Chavez was just starting to slow down around this time, ever so slightly, but while the speed and fire of his attack had slipped, he showed the best punching accuracy and precision in this fight (and his previous fight against Haugen) than any other stage of his career.
