Journeyman boxer snaps 6-loss streak, W comes at a price (jail time)

Luck has been a rollercoaster ride for Martin Tucker ever since his bumpy first few years in the ring. His fifth time out he beat 3-0 novice Rashad Holloway (now a longtime major sparring partner for Manny Pacquiao, also said to have given hell to Vyacheslav Senchenko as well as Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in the early days of the latter's association with Wild Card) but that would prove to be the highlight of a sputtering career hitting a mark of 6-4 (3) before grinding to a halt in mid-2007.

Two years later, apparently unable to find adequate work as a roofing contractor (or having just caught the greed bug), Tucker and an accomplice committed armed robbery of a credit union in Temperance MI on July 16, 2009 with semiautomatic assault weapons. Their whopping grab of 5k was probably still greater than any of Tucker's paydays in boxing...and they seemed to have gotten away Scot free...

The high times continued for Tucker, as a few months later he would return to the ring with newfound swagger and secure his biggest victory in the ring with an upset UD over 13-0 Michael Torres after knocking the prospect down twice. Beating Torres led him to be matched - or rather, overmatched - with several decent fighters over the next few years. He would go 0-6 against opponents who all had or have since had multiple TV appearances.

Finally, this past April, he snapped his streak. He scaled back to the unformidable Devarise Crayton with a dozen losses in twenty bouts, and despite suffering a bloody nose was able to scrape out the 4-round UD in his hometown.

That's all well and good, except that an FBI agent who'd been tailing him went dumpster diving and retrieved the discarded Q-tip his cutman had used on the nose bleed. The DNA evidence from that Q-tip led to his arrest, and it's almost certain the 32-year old saw his hand raised for the last time against Crayton. His efforts to bring his skid to an end may have seemed worth it when it was just a matter of a trickle from the nostril and some busted cartilage - but ultimately they have helped immortalize him on record at 8-10 as what he proved to be outside the ring: a loser.

http://boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=284234&cat=boxer

 

I just love the idea that a G-man paid for a ticket to a boxing show, took it all in and enjoyed himself, for all we know was hooting and hollering during Tucker's match, and then set about trash-picking looking for a nasal swab to nab an armed robber who'd been on the loose for years.

 

Oh ****!! I just now made the connection, I was there @ the MSG Little Theater for Tucker's win over Torres. It was the ass end of an otherwise stacked undercard for JuanMa Lopez vs. Rogers Mtagwa (featuring Odlanier Solis, Yuriorkis Gamboa, John Duddy, Pawel Wolak, a few then-unbeaten prospects....aaaaand, Tucker in his return from a 2-year layoff wherein he was probably supposed to have been "fed" to Torres... :yep)

It was some no-mark vs. some no-mark, so it didn't exactly stick out in my memory among all the others from that night - but I do have vague recollection of an early upset. Racking my brain for details on what his style was like or anything...

 

The poor ****ing clerk in whose face he shoved a gun probably made like $8/hr. :-(