Locche VS Fuji: Full Fight on Youtube - Decent Quality - My thoughts, Your Thoughts

This is the day defensive wizard Nicolino Locche became the Light Welterweight Champion of the World. I had never seen the fight until this morning (Thank you, Internet). It's hard to find good quality full fights with some of your lesser known important names on YouTube, as I'm sure you know. I thought this one was pretty decent and I'm used to only short clips and highlights with Locche and was pleasantly surprised to get to find a full fight and impressed with the video quality considering it's in '68 and they're not the biggest names, no reflection on their talent.


Here's the thing. I read something about this fight months ago that ticks me off in retrospect. It seems a complete misrepresentation meant to bolster the story of Locche's defensive ability (which doesn't need bolstering of any kind). Completely false, from what I take away from the video. What I'd read was that Fuji had basically not come out in the tenth out of frustration because he couldn't land cleanly and basically quit, ala Duran VS Leonard. They didn't even mention Fuji taking plenty of punches from the albeit light-handed Argentinian.

Surprisingly to me, I saw something far different than described. I'm used to having a different interpretation when I've read about a fight beforehand, but this was ridiculous. What I see at the end is very troubling body language throughout the last round from Fuji, and then a very necessary retirement in the corner. The language was not the expression of frustration, although I did interpret frustration much earlier in the fight at Locche's slipping his punches.

It looked to me in the last round as though Fuji might have gotten some Vaseline into the eyes and was trying to wipe them off on Locche's shoulder to clear his vision, then I speculated he tried to stay as close to Locche as possible so he had an idea what range he was working from because of his eyes closing up. It's hard to tell how bad the eye(s) were from what little I could see in the corner closeup, but I think at least one was fully closed.

Does anyone have a better insight into this? Am I seeing it wrong? What did you think about the fight? I thought it was a good fight with Locche doing his calm, measured work, mostly with his left through the majority of the fight. Lots of jabs and lead left hooks. Fuji seemed to keep his elbow in a useful place, always flirting with the idea of leading up with it, it seemed. I didn't see Locche even trying to use his right really until the final rounds and there were some sneaky short right uppercuts and a few one-twos. It seemed like the right only came out when it was safe and Fuji was ripe for the picking. Love to hear your thoughts, snippets you've heard about it, etc.


P1:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EDKsWOKIlo[/ame]

Edit: I took out the other parts I'd posted because I discovered it was a TOS violation to put up full fights. You can find the other parts pretty easily by following the link though.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsRX6r19ws0"][/ame]

 

Yeah, I've never seen anybody praise him for his offense but it worked for him. He's got something like ten knockouts on his record in over a hundred fights. I did see one shot from Fuji that seemed to hit hard and clean in the second half but Locche is almost always moving away when he's touched, if he's touched. I should do a poll: Who hit harder, Locche or Malignaggi? Which one cracks an egg first?

 

So, do you-...Excuse me, I have to interrupt what I was going to say to mention your latest avatar is a doozy in a good way-...back to what I was saying- So, do you not think Fuji's vision was an issue?

 

That's it, RC. That's a lot of what I meant by troubling body language. Something was very, very wrong and I think it was a lot more than just being dispirited and scuffed up. I wish I could find some statements from either fighter about this fight.