Nicolino Locche Documentary

Good show CC, this was a quality thread..enjoyed the vid on one of my faves of all time.

 

Just watched several bouts of Locche I didn't see before, and I'm thinking I may have been overrating his defensive skills somewhat.

 

I agree, he was no Herol Graham.

 

Which of them?

I think his defensive skills are as good as advertised and I've seen most of his filmed bouts. Remember that his opponents didn't have to worry about much return fire, yet they were all completely frustrated by the 15th round.

 

Ortiz (1966), Hernandez (1969), Pruitt (1970) somewhat disappointed me. Even somebody like Antonio Ortiz (1971) has had some success where I didn't expect him to. Although in several others he looked very good.

 

How?

 

Getting tagged by slow overhand right to the head sometimes, not rolling with punches well enough when in close. When he chose to clown and make a fool out of opponents that looked impressive, but when he was in real fight, he wasn't so spectacular anymore.

 

The only footage we have of him in or around his prime are the Ortiz and Fuji fights, though.

 

I don't think he deteriorated that much by May 1969 (vs. Carlos Hernandez) or even vs. Pruitt (May 1970). After all, he looked great vs Cervantes in 1972. And from short highlights of Carlos Ortiz bout Locche looked bad. I think there's truth that Ortiz was robbed of a victory in that bout.

 

Those are the fights I have also. I thought he looked very good defensively against Ortiz considering the level of opposition. He was stunned and dropped against Hernandez, who is an underrated puncher, in the first round but came back with a better offensive display than usual. I thought his defense was impressive in that fight.

The Pruitt fight he didn't look good in, but Pruitt was a swarmer and Locche seemed to run out of gas while trading shots on the inside with the stronger man.

 

Locche didn't look bad here in my opinion:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP5w-d8U73s[/ame]


Maybe I'll have the Carlos Hernandez fight uploaded and have another look at it.

 

Left hook/uppercut at around 0:40 looked impressive. Short punches in the clinches to the head and to the body (by Ortiz) looked good too.

 

When he did have a defensive lapse, his chin more than made up for it. He was only stopped once, on cuts in the Cervantes rematch, a truly bogus call over Nicotino's tearfully vehement protests. In 117 fights, he was never punched down and out. I strongly feel he deserved to finish his career with a retirement challenge of Benitez for his old WBA JWW Championship, a defensive showdown for the ages, but it wasn't to be. (Roacche opened 1976 by beating Emiliano Villa in January, yet it was Villa who somehow got the first shot at El Radar's newly acquired 140 title which Nicotino had held with such distinction.)

 

Perhaps the Villa win was seen as a bad decision at the time?, or even more likely benitez' management were being over cautious with the youngster and looking for perceived easy fights.

 

Do you have the entire Ortiz fight?