THE WAR ZONE II: Revisiting Classics, Revisited (Vol. 2 - Pernell Whitaker vs. Diosbelys Hurtado)

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Rest in Peace, Sweet Pete.

So why this fight, in particular, to memorialize the greatest defensive boxer (and, one could argue, on a shortlist of the most skillful boxers period) of the modern era? Surely there are more glorious snapshots of his career to be culled from among the rest of his victories, of which this was the fortieth & final - and hell, even from his lone official professional "draw" - no? Surely any of those in which he put that slickness on flashy-and-functional display throughout and wasn't dropped multiple times? Well, hear me out.

This was the win for which Pete had to dig the hardest. With his body already starting to betray him (as have the bodies of fighter reliant on cute lateral movement since time immemorial - from the diminished Willie Pep of the 1950's and 60's before him to near-contemporaries Iván Calderón and Cory Spinks directly in his wake) and with an eventually crippling dependence on nose candy already taking root, Whitaker found himself in with a legitimate 20-0 (13) prospect. That plus column was mostly padded with fluff, true - but the kid had a 221-20 amateur record (including a triumph over future p4p list mainstay Joel Casamayor, his compatriot from "Team Freedom", a crew of amateur stars that defected in the nineties) and was coming off a blitz kayo against former IBF world featherweight champ José Antonio "Toñito" Rivera Suárez.

Longtime followers of my work doubtless remember that I was something of a Hurtado fan-boy while he was active (trail-blazer and harbinger that he was for the current generation of Cuban pro boxers). He was bigger & younger than Whitaker, tough and skilled, and had the style to give the aging Sweet Pea fits. And did.

Look at the way this goddamn match starts. Jesus. Bell rings. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. The very first offensive maneuver of the night is a picture perfect counter 1-2 on the button by Hurtado, as the Napoleonic little swaggering southpaw tries to brashly bully him with an air of "do you know who I am??" - well, yes, he does, and he's prepared for you, Pernell. Are you prepared for him?

Let's review: Whitaker is

• a career long counter puncher, now forced to lead.
• the smaller man, now tasked with pressing the fight against someone natural larger-framed, spryer and younger with a wiry-strong athletic build.
• an historically speed-reliant boxer facing somebody that is longer-limbed (4" reach advantage, plus quite a bit more downstairs), smack-dab in their prime, and themselves quite fleet of hand & foot.
• physically and stylistically not quite an exact replica but a very similar look to El Cepillo, another southpaw with identical tale-of-the-tape dimensions against whom Hurtado not only had experience but had bested in the amateurs.

That's quite a bit for anyone to be charged with overcoming...let alone somebody harboring the dark secret of near debilitating substance abuse. Pea would need to fight against type in this one, marching into the trenches and getting downright dirty... precisely what he did.

Arthur Mercante Jr. was in above his pay-grade, IMO. Even under the best conditions, on a relatively calm night of prizefighting, he could be counted on to be a ...well, inconsistent official. All in all, this could have been a far worse botch job...but a lot was going on in this one, a symphony of both messy chaos and beautiful technicality, sometimes all within the same unfolding sequence, and it would have been nice to have a conductor with their head screwed on correctly to hold the baton. Strip away his rulings, however, and you still have a pretty clear allocation of points lopsided in one man's favor before the crescendo was reached:

1. 10-8 Hurtado (and would have been his 10-9 even without the sonata-allegro's exposition with that flash KD)
2. 10-9 Hurtado, close
3. 10-9 Hurtado
4. 10-9 Hurtado, super close
5. *9/9 (Dio round, but docked a point for rabbit punching, which is fair enough; he dropped that forearm like a guillotine on Pernell's nape...arguably robbed of another flash KD call by Mercante...)
6. 10-8 Hurtado, another 'flash' but legitimate KD. For this one, there was no laugh from Pete. Just a cursory stream of quibble spewed from the side of his mouth in Mercante's direction, and then a hard-set glare fixed on his opponent. Play time's over.
7. *9-9 (see round 5 note. Both of the fouls on which Hurtado got penalized were heat-of-the-moment and unintentional ones that developed organically in the flow of both men thrusting & parrying, southpaw vs. orthodox, but still resulted in Whitaker getting thwacked in his noggin's caboose. Fair calls, both...although it also wouldn't have been wrong to instead just give Hurtado a stern warning to be more careful either time)
8. 10-9 Whitaker, his first clear frame. He finally got into a rhythm, still winging the left hand aloft in poorly aimed (perhaps intentionally so, if strategically diversionary in nature) slashing arcs up top, but stamping quite a bit of leather onto Hurtado's body, and shrugging loose from his wet-blanket tie-ups by dropping a level and then bucking up into him with his full weight. Nice rapid power combos from Whitaker throughout, not letting Hurtado counter effectively nor clinch.
9. *9-9 (Whitaker continued his momentum from that gangbusters eighth, but now it would be his turn for a standard 10-9's worth of effort to see its rewards halved by a shot behind the head...just as in-the-flow-of-things and yet just as blatant as either of Hurtado's in the couple of previous odd-numbered rounds...)
10. 10-9 Hurtado, seemingly putting a lid on this resurgence from the Virginian superstar with a bit of extra zip, stepping lively and countering down the middle with that long mic-boom right cross, and stifling any plays made by Whitaker on the inside by stuffing him with both arms folded across his backside in a timely push down.

(96-89 Hurtado as of the stoppage, on my card)

After ten it was shaping up to be the most unexpectedly drastic schooling of a yankee ATG by a taller, slick-n-dirty Cuban since Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Lorenzo Aragón in the Olympics a year earlier, and before that for a long time prior (dating perhaps all the way to Pablo Romero vs. Evander Holyfield in 1983...) - and while Harold Lederman had it unofficially scored by a hair for Whitaker, 93-92, his card was an outlier. Most observers - as well as the official judges - had the Cuban up, some by quite a comfortable margin.

Even in the first minute of round 11, the best shot was landed by a Hurtado, a peach of a short counter overhand right that elicited a grin & nod of acknowledgment from Whitaker.

...then, from outta deep left field... wowie-zowie!

The adjustment was of subtle construction, but netted substantively massive results. Pea simply began to peel off right jabs like a distracted card-shark, just brushed out like pencil shavings, with increasingly low speed & poor form throughout most of the round until that point - sort of lulling Hurtado by making the jab seem innocuous and non-threatening even as just a range-finder or aim-fixer - but that left hand was dialed in and ready to punish Hurtado the moment he did what Pea scouted him doing a few times in the opening ninety seconds...flurrying over that lazy right jab. When the left did land, it landed on the button, and HARD...and like a bazillion times in a row. You might not think bazillion is a real number, and before 1/24//97 it may well not have existed...but damn if Whitaker didn't invent the SOB.

Hurtado was IMO the best - or at worst second best - of Whitaker's actual scalps at welterweight, behind only perhaps the also underrated Buddy McGirt. Sound controversial? It shouldn't; just have a gander. His other scalps @ 147lbs include: Santos "El Chino" Cardona, Gary "The Kid" Jacobs, Evaristo "Jake" Rodríguez, and Wilfredo Rivera x2 (JCC was a draw; Pestryasev a No Contest; DLH & Trinidad were losses; Julio César Vásquez was fought at super welter). None of those welter opponents dominated him for any stretch - hell, even against Félix Trinidad in his attempted comeback a couple of years later he won at least a few rounds. I do rate Whitaker as capable of beating a good many titlists h2h at welterweight, but he didn't belong in the division. He's a natural lightweight, or super lightweight tops. He was biting off more than he could be reasonably expected to chew, at this weight, at this age, eight defenses into a title reign while being wracked by addiction behind the scenes. Yet he chewed all Hurtado fed him and contemptuously spat him out, like a slugger in the cleanup spot cockily expectorating tobacco across the batter's circle while on deck.

That's why I didn't choose a more "flattering" match as tribute. All those razzle-dazzle performances from his peak halcyon days? Easy-Peasy. In this one, he worked. He overcame adversity to snatch victory, as true greats do, from the jaws of defeat. He "showed signs of an aging fighter" as Ed Schuyler Jr. of the AP wrote in that weekend's Sunday morning edition of the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, but also "the heart of a champion".

His other memorable nights - indeed his entire legacy and place in the boxing pantheon - will be discussed at length for generations to come. In this little corner, in the aftermath of his passing from this realm, this humble minstrel has chosen to bend the listener's ear with a less-examined but still worthy verse of this hero's épopée...one that, for me, leaves his star all the more brightly shining in our sport's constellation.

Sound off; ten bells of silent remembrance.

Thank you, champion.

 

Nary a like nor reply in over 24 hours. Alright...

idk why I'd bothered hoping that a retrospective look at the late ATG (top 15 technical boxer of the filmed era) would net more attention here than really time sensitive pressing matters like "We should cherish the time left of watching Manny Pacquaio" or "prime a-force Audley Harrison vs. prime Andrew Golota..." (actual titles of actual threads bumped past this one); this place simply is what it now, apparently, is. My bad.