Jeff Fenech

First time I saw him,,,,,,,

March 1985 versus Phillippine Rolly Navarro, who was a fairly decent
Bantamweight/Super Bantamweight with a 26-7-2 record.

In only his '6th Professional Bout', Jeff Fenech walked through
the experienced Rolly, an TKO'd him in '4' one-sided rounds.

Without the 'hand problems' ????

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Without the hand problems (he was born with unusualy small and fragile hands) he would have achieved much more as he would have fought more. I'm not talking about moving up in weight as IMO he peaked IMO at 122 / 126

He could and should have unified 122 and 126. I still don't know why he didn't as he had the connections and backing to make the fights

At 122 there were no challengers capable of giving him barely a decent contest and at 126 I would have liked to have seen him fight Esparragosa. He was once asked who he'd really like to fight and he said Jorge Paez. Not because he thought Paez was a top fighter or whatever, he just didn't like him and wanted to smash his face in

 

"I've got a Rolls-Royce body with VW hands." - Fenech in an interview with KO magazine.

 

Just gave it another watch big man. No doubt Villasana was as tough as they come, he was actually coming on as the fight wore on, amazingly, because he took a massive amount of punishment in the first 8 or so rounds...

Jeff won it easily on the cards though... I actually had it 118-111 for Fenech (with a point deduction to Marcos).

If you wanted to be generous you could probably give it 8-4 to Jeff at the closest, but Fenech just had the work rate and speed edges on him and did what he always did to opponents, out-mauled them.

Showed a good bit of boxing ability to top it off in the last third of the fight, when his hands busted up too.

 

Understandable...

 

Jeff Fenech,

Was supposed to fight Juan LaPorte for the vacant WBC Super-Featherweight
Championship, on July 17, 1990.

The bout was to be broadcasted by ABC-TV.

Juan LaPorte, at age 30 1/2 and with a record of 36-9-0 (19 KO's),
was fading-fast, but was still a Top-Ranked 130 lb. fighter.

Pre-fight interviews, only 30-Days before the scheduled contest, had Jeff up to 160 lbs.,
and interviewer Jeff Ryan questioned whether the 30 lb. weight-loss would sap his strength.

Promoter Bill Mordey, was more worried about the 'fragile hands', when Jeff hit the
'bigger fellows', than the draining weight loss.

 

Quite a while after their fight Coffee went into Fenech's dressing room to offer his congratulations. A very sporting gesture from Jerome. He asked if Fenech would give him a rematch so he could "try to win the belt". Fenech stood up, took his belt off his jeans and said "this is the only belt you'll get from me"

Fenech also offered to fight Callejas in the street after Callejas complained about the stoppage. He would have, too

 

Coffee was a decent fighter around the time. Not champion caliber, but not far away either.

 

Is this part of your career set?

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATvisKoO29A[/ame]